“What state and federal environmental regulatory agencies in the US have not yet done is reform the way agency staff make decisions.”
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Walking Among the University’s Ruins
Some wager that the end is not inevitable: that universities can reassert their centrality to the American liberal democratic project.
In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans
“I'm aware, as I'm writing, that I'm changing camera angles.”
Ahmed’s Good Grief
Institutions separate complainers from one another and from their own support networks. But what if we complained as a collective?
Borders Cast Long Shadows on Nations: Talking with Malini Sur
“Borders continue to gather life’s promises, even when walls and checkpoints brutally divide nations and societies.”
McCarthy’s Perpetual Motion Scam
Tom McCarthy hasn’t evaded the literary brand: if you continually say nothing, “saying nothing” becomes what you, the novelist, say.
The US Arrested Her—Then She Changed Chicago
In the 1960s, Chicago’s white neighborhoods didn’t want Mexican Americans moving in. But one determined real estate broker changed everything.
Why Does France Think Migration Is Growing?
Teach the history of colonization and decolonization—for this is the best antidote to the venom of exclusion and racism that threatens France.
Gaza: Landscapes of Exclusion and Violence
Design can lift some communities. But it can also subject others to live precariously, often at the same time.
Portrait of the Global Migrant Crisis
COVID-19 highlights how the global order is built on, and excels in, closing the path of migrants unjustly.
Where We Live Now
The family portrait is part of the immigrant tradition. An establishing shot for family history, they remind us of who we come from, who we love.
“No Words”: Refugee Camps and Empathy’s Limits
Empathy will not close the refugee camps, nor will it aid refugees. So what will?
Migrant Lives, Global Stories
How can migrants speak? And what can listening to them reveal about the system of national sovereignty, the persistence of legal exclusion, and the longing for home?
Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut and Andrew van der Vlies
“A lot of people have been pushed a little closer to the margins.”
B-Sides: Lucy R. Lippard’s “I See/You Mean”
“Few libraries list it among their holdings, and sometimes I have wondered if the book in my possession actually exists.”
Poetry for the Deluge
Amid this turbulent present, can poetry call attention to creative forms of survival and persistence, human and nonhuman?
Are There “Good-Enough” Feminists?
The way women practice feminism differs between Quebec and France, especially in how they welcome—or don’t—Muslim women.
On Dressing Down Myth
“I research specific instances of Black artists who strip themselves out of mythologized dressings around race, sexuality, and gender.”
How Mexican Chicago Remembers Tenochtitlan
500 years have passed since the fall of the Aztec capitol. But like that city, Pilsen’s power lies not in its buildings, but in its people.
Baghdad: The Once and Future City of Stars
The city testifies to the vast intellectual curiosity of medieval Muslims, and the splendor they translated from astrology into their designs.