Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s Reckoning

What kind of coalition must the Left forge in order to defeat Trumpism and whatever comes after it?

Black Lives Matter was not born in the streets, even if it sometimes moved there following the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014, and again after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. But the movement, after these intense episodes of protest and direct action has not stayed in ...
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Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s <em>Reckoning</em>

Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

West Side Story displaces the true story of the Young Lords Organization’s civil rights struggle

For many, West Side Story is simply an iconic musical with catchy tunes. For me, however, it became a critical entryway into political consciousness about when and how Puerto Ricans matter in United States history, and why popular representations are instrumental to that....

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Puerto Rican History Deserves More Than a Musical

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Award-winning historians Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston spoke (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss their new book Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Edited by Nichols and Preston with fellow historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the collection of curated essays discusses what American grand strategy ...
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Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

Who Should Tell Pauli Murray’s Story?

Why a white documentarian should have stepped aside and created space for a Black filmmaker

My hand is trembling as I stick it into the dark air. I wasn’t planning on asking a question. Definitely not this question. But it needs to be asked, and I don’t see any other Black people in this theater in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. “I’m so glad My ...
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Who Should Tell Pauli Murray’s Story?

Can We Talk about Race?

An award-winning journalist says yes—it isn’t easy, but everyone can learn to do it

Celeste Headlee, an award-winning journalist, professional speaker and author of We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter (Harper Wave, 2018), and Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving (Harmony, 2021) met (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss writing about the difficult conversations that need to happen ...
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Can We Talk about Race?

Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble.  In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...
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Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Why the perception of the Constitution will inevitably be a central part of an extended process of political self-reckoning

It’s a fact that the United States is no longer the world’s pre-eminent superpower—a change that cannot help but transform America’s political conception of itself.  Its decline in relative power will of course take time. The dollar still rules, the military reach of the States is unequalled. But the US has ...
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The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

The Moderates Have to Catch Up

In the fight over his agenda, Biden is making liberals the center

I continue to think regime change is a useful way of understanding politics. That’s the idea that American political history turns in cycles. For 40 or 50 years, one party and its ideas prevails over the other with a majority of voters. From the 1930s to the 1970s, it was ...
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The Moderates Have to Catch Up

The Fall of Facebook

Plus the insurrection subcommittee prepares to confront Trump and the debt ceiling fight continues

“hello literally everyone,” the official account of Twitter tweeted on Monday afternoon, after Facebook and its affiliated platforms Instagram and WhatsApp went dark at about 11:40 this morning. The Facebook outage lasted for more than six hours and appears to have been caused by an internal error. But the void ...
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The Fall of Facebook

Are White People Really in Decline?

No, but when the mainstream media reports changing racial demographics as a contest for social domination, they validate white supremacists’ worst fears

_____ When the United States Census Bureau released its 2020 census on August 12, 2021, the news media highlighted two important trends in race and ethnicity: a drop in the number of white people and a rise in the number of people who identify with more than one racial group. Both facts represent ...
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Are White People Really in Decline?

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania.  “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...
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How Banning Abortion Will Transform America