BY LISA DIEDRICHProfessor of women’s and gender studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook Next week, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will launch a major exhibition of the work of David Wojnarowicz, “History Keeps Me Awake at Night.” It notes that Wojnarowicz was “queer and HIV-positive” and an “impassioned … More On David Wojnarowicz, politics, and gestures.
BY KATE VIEIRAUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison I am not an expert on the effects of the forcible separation of children from their parents. I believe the experts. I believe the American Association of Pediatrics president who says that the policy, in that it affects children’s brain chemistry, causes irreparable harm. I believe the scholars of … More ¿Cómo Ubico Mis Hijos? (How do I locate my children?)
BY KELLY OLIVERVanderbilt University Most of us in the US remember the horror of seeing pictures of the tiny body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi laying face down on a Turkish beach. Or the small, ash-covered face of Omran Daqneesh as he was placed in an ambulance in Aleppo. Alan and Omran became tragic “poster children” … More Children are collateral damage in Trump’s border war.
BY THOMAS BIOLSIUniversity of California, Berkeley How should we make sense of “red states” and “blue states,” and in a way that does not fall victim to the political polarization that seems to have reached a crescendo in the present? My new book, Power and Progress on the Prairie, seeks to uncover the history of … More Governing the countryside: On modernity and progress in rural South Dakota.
“Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.” —Aldous Huxley, Brave New World *** BY MICHAEL HAWORTH In 2016 Amazon introduced a new range of products called Dash Buttons. These are pocket-sized internet-enabled interfaces consisting simply of one button mapped to … More From Amazon’s Dash Button to Google Glass: Is there no limit to the capabilities of today’s radical neurotechnologies?
BY CARY J. GRIFFITHAuthor of Gunflint Burning Eleven years ago this month, the most destructive wildfire in modern Minnesota history at the time rallied more than one thousand firefighters, consumed 75,000 acres of forest, with firefighting costs around $11 million and structure losses estimated to top $100 million. Writing about the Ham Lake fire was … More From environmental impact to community saviors, here are seven things you might not know about one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history.
BY NAOMI MORGENSTERNAssociate professor of English at the University of Toronto From a podium in Central Park West, a student activist from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School declared: “The adults failed us and now seventeen people are dead.” During a day of nationwide actions, a coalition of youth would point to the “failure” of adults … More The Child at the Social Limit
BY SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER The world has come to know the wildlife of the Arctic more than its people: The Inuit. For two decades my life’s work, which includes elected positions with an international mandate to protect the rights and interests of our people of the circumpolar world, has been to work diligently to put a … More Earth Day 2018: Facing the greatest human-rights challenge of our time.
BY JOANNA ZYLINSKA The apocalypse is back—with a vengeance! Cue the visually intriguing Altered Carbon on Netflix, the conceptually teasing yet disappointingly humanist Humans on Channel 4 in the UK, and the just plain terrible Blade Runner 2049 (surely a crime against cinema, if not against humanity). But let me make what might seem like … More The End of Man, One More Time.
BY SUSAN BARTLETT FOOTEProfessor emerita in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota In the past two years, the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement have given voice to demands for gender equality. These claims are part of a long history—from suffragists marching for the vote to the cry of feminists in … More Uncovering the brave women behind mental-health reform in Minnesota.
