These new DHS-funded graphic novels want to train citizens to be critical readers of all kinds of information, except their own propaganda.
Politics
Editors: Ivan Ascher & Joanne Randa Nucho
What Future for Health Activism?
A more critical consciousness of the connections between family, health, race, and gender was brewing among food allergy advocates in the exceptionally catastrophic summer of 2020.
Small Nations, Big Feelings
In the 1930s, Americans fell in love with Czechoslovakia and Spain; today, it’s Ukraine. What happens when one finds a “second mother country”?
Law’s Force, Law’s Farce
Books about law are often utilitarian. But perhaps sometimes we should embrace sublime uselessness.
Can Motherhood Bend Toward Justice?
Can the work of mothering and everyday acts of care merge with efforts to achieve social justice?
The War with Inflation and the Confederacy
During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration demonstrated that a progressive agenda and effective anti-inflationary measures could overlap.
“Content” Erases Wall Between Fact & Fiction
“We’ve never had a period like this in modern American history,” lamented Governor DeSantis in April 2020, one with “such little new content.”
Public Thinker: Lara Putnam Wants You to Knock on Your Neighbor’s Door
“Campaigns matter in part because of who meets whom, about the social networks that are shaped by that campaign as well as shaping it.”
Sanctuary Cities and Sanctuary Theater
Even in Shakespeare’s era, theaters literally shielded people from the state. Today’s theaters might talk sanctuary, but rarely practice it.
Succeeding through Failure: Andrew Lakoff on Preparing for Emergencies
“What is the range of available measures to address our catastrophic future?”
What to Do About Freedom?
Once, radical artists and thinkers shook up conservatives. Now, it’s the right gleefully transgressing a “moralizing” left. What happened?
Tending Orwell’s Garden
Orwell was free from doctrinaire sectarianism. At the same time, he firmly hated the exact bastards who deserve to be hated.
Hindu Nationalism: A Movement, Not a Mandate
Most authoritarian populists in power across the world are politicians, at the helm of parties that have won elections. Modi is more than that.
Freedom’s Stakes
Postwar culture was divided between “freedom” and “totalitarianism.” Or was it?
Build Culture, Build Community, Break Fascism
On both sides of the border, artivistas—art activists—infuse their creative and political work with minority struggle and solidarity.
Tolerance by Accident, Trust by Design
Today, trade and globalization often reinforce the incentives for coercion and violence. But what might the history of India reveal about the economic conditions of toleration?
Democracy’s Horizons: Talking with Michael Hanchard
“The question becomes, What can we do to make democracy more economically, socially, and politically just?”
The Melting of the American Mind
Figuring out how people became fascists was the aim of Adorno and his colleagues’ 1950 study, The Authoritarian Personality. Has the answer changed?
When Law Attacks the Rule of Law
“Precedent” is one of the key mechanisms for restraining autocratic legalism, as demonstrated by the Trump campaign’s tactics following the 2020 election.
Freedom for Whom?
What right does a society have to extoll freedom as its highest virtue if that same society is dependent on the unfreedom of others?