Politics Archives - Page 78 of 143

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Making Room for Democracy

On the beauty of gray, the social condition, and individual and group responsibility

June 1, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

In my Friday posts, I have focused on the beauty of gray, presenting arguments for the good over the ideal and for openness to people and principles other than our own. I have argued, further, that these are preconditions for acting together against the dark forces of our times, and ...

Education

Etchings of Democracy

School desks and the politics of nostalgia

June 1, 2018 • by Campbell F. Scribner

Desks have been ubiquitous in American schools since the mid-nineteenth century. Made of wood and iron, bolted to the floor, they began as fixtures in the truest sense of the word. So firmly did they anchor the classroom that when progressive reformers finally introduced movable models in the early 1900s, ...

Feature

Post-truth or Moral Truth?

The populist claim to authenticity

May 31, 2018 • by Lone Sorensen

“Enemy agents” is how the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) described the media in 2015. The EFF are an increasingly influential populist opposition party in South Africa, famous for their disruptive action and their calls for former president Jacob Zuma to #PayBackTheMoney he allegedly embezzled. In their attacks on the press ...

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Who Needs Big Brother?

Post-truth, populism, and the crisis of public communication

May 30, 2018 • by Silvio Waisbord

The following is a summary of remarks delivered at the 2018 Jay Blumler Lecture, University of Leeds. Western democracies have been in a constant state of crisis for decades now. It is hard to remember when there was no crisis. In their landmark book, The Crisis of Public Communication (1995), Blumler and Gurevitch ...

Feature

The Spy who Psychoanalyzed Me

Psychology’s long and shameful history with torture

May 28, 2018 • by Tristan Chirico

After a highly controversial confirmation process, Gina Haspel is now director of the CIA. At the heart of the controversy surrounding her nomination were Haspel's alleged ties to the systematic torture of terrorism suspects conducted at so-called “black sites” during the Bush Era -- one of which Haspel oversaw in ...

Feature

Recognitions and Company

Reviewing Brittney Cooper’s ‘Eloquent Rage’

May 26, 2018 • by Wahneema Lubiano

My feelings, for their part, go on strike against me all the time, showing up with picket signs that scream truths I’d rather not hear, all while demanding that I renegotiate terms. —Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage, 204) What might one want when reading a personal narrative, a memoir, a story with multiple ...

Feature

The Banality of Good and Evil

Reflections of an anti-sociologist

May 25, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I want to make it simple and to the point. That’s the best way to go. But some days, as I think and write, things become more complicated, and I struggle. Today is such a day. I wanted to write a straightforward post on a straightforward theme, on mistakes and ...

Education

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Satire and the Abuse of Anti-Bullying Rhetoric

May 24, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

The White House Correspondents Dinner at the end of last month sent social media and the commentariat alight once again, reporting a scandal where the only scandal is how easy it is for persons across the political spectrum to be scandalized by what is, in fact, the healthy efflorescence of ...

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

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Austrian Politics

Black and Blue

May 24, 2018 • by David Kretz

In December 2017, Austria got its new government, a coalition between the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), headed by the charismatic 31-year-old college dropout Sebastian Kurz, the world’s youngest head of state, and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) — European ally to France’s Front national and official partner of Putin’s party United ...

Feature

Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

Reflections on the 1984 Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance

May 23, 2018 • by Claire Potter

When did coalitional organizing between feminists and conservative women become impossible? I’m not sure, but as a feminist there is one place and time that I remember vividly: Indianapolis in the spring of 1984. There, led by Mayor William Hudnut, III Republican politician Beulah Coughenour and local movement conservatives, that city ...

Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

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Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

The Jewish part of Poland’s 1968

May 21, 2018 • by David Ost

This piece is being simultaneously published in Polish by Kultura Liberalna. At its recent commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1968 protests at Warsaw University, the Law and Justice (PiS, in Polish abbreviation) government of Poland presented its official line: that 1968 was a “Polish national social movement against communism,” ...

Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

Feature

Child Welfare and the Intended Consequences of the War on Drugs

The devastating impact on communities of color

May 19, 2018 • by Aarin Michele Williams

In order to properly understand the child welfare system we must grasp its connections to race, class, drugs, and reproduction. Many recognize that our nation’s shameful mass incarceration rates are fueled by our long carceral history and the infamous “war on drugs” with its intentional targeting of Black and Brown communities and impoverished people. We know ...