Democracy Archives - Page 62 of 97

Feature

Before Charlottesville There Was Jamestown

An Essay

August 28, 2017 • by Mindy Fullilove, Robert Fullilove, William Morrish and Robert Sember

Nearly 400 years of division have created an apartheid society: we need a new social infrastructure to carry us through the challenges of climate change, decaying physical infrastructure, rapidly evolving jobs, underperforming schools, uneven access to health care and lack of affordable housing. Our central task is to engage as ...

Before Charlottesville There Was Jamestown

Feature

Aristotle on Charlottesville

‘Mixed Actions’ and Exercising Judgement on Violence

August 28, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In the opening movement of book 3 of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that, at bottom, each and every human being is responsible for essentially every action they undertake; put another way: there is nothing a human being does for which they ought not to be praised or blamed. This ...

Feature

American Idiot

Rethinking Anti-Intellectualism in the Age of Trump

August 25, 2017 • by Nicholas Baer

“On my arrival in the United States I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the subjects, and so little among the heads of the Government.” We may fairly assume that Alexis de Tocqueville would be even more surprised if he were to visit today. For while Tocqueville ...

Feature

On Trump’s Response to Charlottesville

Political Encounters and Ideological Evasions

August 25, 2017 • by Leonard A. Williams

The recent clashes involving “Unite the Right” protestors and counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia, cost Heather Heyer her life. Her death and President Trump’s response to it have dominated the news of late. To recount the salient events, fighting broke out between “Unite the Right” protestors (a group of white nationalists, white ...

Feature

A Sign of Resistance; A Symbol of Hope

An Interview with Mateusz Halawa, Head of Social Sciences and Humanities at the School of Form in Poland

August 24, 2017 • by Susan Yelavich

As Polish citizens gathered to protest a bill that signals a national shift away from democracy, thousands of them brandished, clung to, wore, and waved one simple graphic designed by Luka Rayski: a poster saying “Konstytucja”, which means “constitution” in Polish. Colored to emphasize the “ty” (“you”) and “ja” (“me”), ...

Feature

Turkey One Year After the Coup Attempt

Erdogan has set up an autocracy

August 23, 2017 • by Ahmet İnsel

The proclamation of a state of emergency in Turkey on 20 July 2016, four days after the abortive coup there, has paved the way for the general rule of arbitrariness. The government, by violating the limits imposed by the constitution on the jurisdiction of the state of emergency, has since ...

Education

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere III

Truth, Politics and the Bifurcated Sphere of Publics

August 21, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As I have been reporting on the Wroclaw seminar’s progress, in the shadow of the collapse of democracy in Poland, I have been dumbfounded by events in the U.S. since I got back from Poland. President Trump has threatened nuclear war with North Korea, disregarding all expert opinion about the appropriate ...

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere III

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On Free Speech

An appeal to leverage the 1st Amendment as it stands

August 21, 2017 • by Lisa Aslanian

Don’t shut it down. Don’t look to qualify what is meant and protected by the right to free speech by making an exception to the rule for hate speech. Don’t move to make hate speech illegal. Take a step back and let your cooler head prevail. The First Amendment was written to protect minority ...

Feature

The Courage to Speak Truth in Untruthful Times

Reading Former FBI Director Comey as Parrhesiastes

August 20, 2017 • by Louis Jargow

On June 8th, James Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), gave honest and sincere testimony in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. His testimony concerned President Trump’s handling of the FBI investigation into General Flynn’s relationship to Russian interference in the United States presidential ...

The Courage to Speak Truth in Untruthful Times

Education

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

The Sphere of Publics and its Bifurcation

August 19, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As our seminar on authoritarianism and public life progressed, we focused on the work of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, and Joshua Meyrowitz to develop an understanding of mediated public life. Their sociology of media is a sociology of mediated interactions, rather than studies of the media, i.e. major newspapers, ...

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere II

Feature

Corporate America Alone Cannot Save Us from Trump

Activists must fight to ensure that all of our institutions are inclusive of all people

August 18, 2017 • by Jessica Ann Levy

Corporate America took a stand against hatred and bigotry this week. On Monday, Merck pharmaceuticals CEO Kenneth Frazier resigned from Donald Trump’s manufacturing council in response to the President’s equivocations about the white-nationalist riot that took place in Charlottesville over the weekend. Even after James Alex Fields, Jr. murdered 32-year ...