United States Archives - Page 3 of 73

Activism

Rent Is the Crisis

Framing it as a “housing crisis” ignores that from the perspective of its winners, the system works just fine

March 21, 2025 • by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis

Every first of the month, we hand over a share of our wages to meet our human need for housing. Our rents rise faster than our incomes, and inequality grows. Every first of the month, more tenants go without food, medication, and basic necessities to pay this tribute. More people ...

Migration

Asylum and the Hierarchy of Suffering

Limitations of the US migration framework

February 27, 2025 • by Charlotte Soehner and Olivia Woldemikael

Even before Trump barred asylum seekers from the US-Mexico border by declaring all unauthorized border crossings to be “invasions,” American asylum was a system with no winners. Now, while migrants at the border are stripped of the meager options they previously had recourse to, it’s crucial to understand what it meant, until very ...

Democracy

“If You Wish to Know Who a Man Truly Is, Give Him Power”

By eroding the values of inclusivity and fairness, Trump’s rhetoric cultivates instead an exclusionary ethos, one deliberately designed to undermine the idea that all citizens possess equal moral worth and deserve equal opportunities to participate in public life

February 25, 2025 • by Melvin L. Rogers

Reflecting on Abraham Lincoln in 1894, the American orator and lawyer Robert Green Ingersoll observed that “nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, ...

“If You Wish to Know Who a Man Truly Is, Give Him Power”

Democracy

What Is Illiberal Democracy?

Scholars discuss Trump, Modi, and Erdoğan

February 20, 2025 • by Senem Aydin-Düzgit, Mark Frazier, Jeffrey C. Isaac and Pratap Bhanu Mehta

In November 2024, the India China Institute at The New School hosted the online panel "Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Democratic Regimes," which featured scholars Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Senem Aydin-Düzgit, and Jeffrey C. Isaac in conversation with moderator Mark W. Frazier about patterns of takeover, decay, and distrust of political institutions ...

Podcast

The Great American Crack-Up

Episode 67: Julian Zelizer asks us to reimagine political division as a good thing in a conversation about his new book, In Defense of Partisanship

February 10, 2025 • by Claire Potter

Back in 2016, like about a million other fans, I was listening obsessively to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show, Hamilton: An American Musical. Unlike a lot of stage-door Johnnies, I am a historian of the United States. So, when my friend and colleague Renée Romano called to suggest we edit a collection ...

Democracy

From Erdoğan’s Turkey to Trump’s America

What we can learn from a parallel history

February 7, 2025 • by Phyllis Jeffrey

In 2002, voters in Turkey—reeling from an economic crisis that halved the value of the Turkish lira and produced a 7.5 percent drop in GDP—elected a new party by a plurality: 34.3 percent of the vote. Though hardly a resounding mandate, the margin enabled the party, an Islamist offshoot led by ...

From Erdoğan’s Turkey to Trump’s America

Democracy

The Dictatorship of the Tech Bros—or, What Is to Be Done?

A conversation about DOGE and Trump and Musk’s attempt to smash the state

February 7, 2025 • by Forrest Deacon and James Miller

Editor’s note: In December 2024, Forrest Deacon, a Humanities lecturer at Villanova University who is also completing a dissertation in politics at the New School for Social Research, approached Public Seminar, offering to write a piece about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). At the time, this seemed like a ...

The Dictatorship of the Tech Bros—or, What Is to Be Done?

Democracy

Trump Returns

Anyone who knows what will happen in 2028 probably doesn’t know much

February 6, 2025 • by David Plotke

The following remarks were first presented on November 13, 2024, in a public lecture at the New School for Social Research. Donald Trump’s substantial victory was a big deal, but not yet a full-scale political shift. Trump made a successful move in the trench warfare that now defines American politics, ...

Feminism

No Sex With Men

The South Korean radical feminist movement 4B arrives in the United States

February 5, 2025 • by Iman Sultan

The night of the election, when it had become clear Donald Trump was winning the race, a call to action reverberated across the internet. “Ladies, I’m being so fr when I say this, it’s time to close off your wombs to males. this election proves now more than ever that ...

History

Israel’s American History

On Israel’s ambivalent relationship with the United States and OZ Frankel’s latest book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973

January 29, 2025 • by Oz Frankel and Claire Potter

Historian Oz Frankel's new book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973 (Stanford University Press, 2024), examines the multifaceted and contradictory presence of the United States in Israel during a short but significant period of history. In a conversation with Claire Potter, Frankel shares the ...

Kinships

Family Values or Family Exclusion?

How right-wing policies fail working mothers

January 22, 2025 • by Elide Vincenti

Parental entitlement policies represent a complex interplay of cultural, social, and economic priorities for far-right leaders in both Italy and the United States. On the one hand, many religiously minded conservatives uphold traditional family values, which would seem to support policies that promote marriage and the growth of families. At ...

Music

Election Anxiety Mixtape

What a Public Seminar editor is listening to in order to alleviate election dread

November 5, 2024 • by Alex Rossen

For the past year, commentators from all sectors of the American political spectrum have remarked on the impending enormity of the 2024 US presidential election. I am here not to join them but to offer a token of wellbeing. This week, Public Seminar’s editorial team is turning to music for escape, ...