“There were so many new laws, I had to make a map showing the spread and intensity of antimargarine laws in states over a quarter century.”
Public Thinker
In this interview series, public scholars talk about how they found their path and how they communicate to a wide audience.
Public Thinker: Marcia Chatelain on Feminism, Fast Food, and First Gens
“Being in community with people and teaching and learning outside of the confines of our classroom: I still actually really believe in that.”
Public Thinker: Virginia Eubanks on Digital Surveillance and People Power
“We have to build against the legacy of inequality. Intentionally. We have to build our values into our design practices.”
Public Thinker: Geraldo Cadava on the Past and Future of Hispanic Republicans
“I was shocked to learn that Hispanic conservatives celebrate Cortes’s arrival in Mexico.”
Public Thinker: Astra Taylor on Democracy’s Long Crisis
“If we want democratic scrutiny, the demos must first have power.”
Public Thinker: Nancy K. Miller on Feminist Lives
“Although I was reluctant to generalize about women’s friendship, I was also thinking about a model that would counter the male model of friendship.”
Public Thinker: Yarimar Bonilla on Decolonizing Decolonization
“Hurricane Maria ushered in a great deal of trauma and suffering, but it also allowed us to reassess the very nature of the political.”
Public Thinker: Tressie McMillan Cottom on Writing in One’s Own Voice
“You don’t tell children not to grow. And you don’t tell a writer not to write.”
Public Thinker: Jenny Price on Refusing to Save the Planet
“First: Why are we not making more progress? Second: Why do so many people hate environmentalists?”
Public Thinker: Kevin Gannon Sets the Record Straight
A professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, and the ...
Public Thinker: Donna M. Riley on Engineering, Ethics, and Social Justice
Donna Riley is a lifelong social activist and student of liberation theology who also happens to be a ...
Public Thinker: Ian Bogost on Games, Doorknobs, and General Readers
Particularly with the advent of the handheld device, digital games now seem a ubiquitous part of our culture ...
Public Thinker: A. Naomi Paik on a Future without Rights
What is specific to or even unique about the condition of “rightlessness,” to the ...
Public Thinker: Frances Negrón-Muntaner on Puerto Rico, Art, and Decolonial Joy
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is an innovative and multimodal thinker and artist, and a professor ...
Public Thinker: Kevin Kruse on Why Recent History Is Still History
“Historian. Author/editor of White Flight; The New Suburban History; Spaces of ...
Public Thinker: Leah Price on Books, Book Tech, and Book Tattoos
Readers today believe that they are living through unprecedented changes in how ...
Public Thinker: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on Dark Matter and White Empiricism
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is one of fewer than a hundred Black American women ...
Public Thinker: Adolph Reed Jr. on Organizing, Race, and Bernie Sanders
Growing up in a family of politically engaged black intellectuals in the ...
Public Thinker: Louis Moore on Athlete-Activists before and after Kaepernick
In late 2016, amid the furor over Colin Kaepernick’s on-field protests against police brutality and rampant ...
Public Thinker: Kim Phillips-Fein on Austerity and the Fall of New York
With New York City teetering on the brink of fiscal collapse at the end of 1975, Congress passed ...