BY BRIAN MASSUMI It is hard not to despair. The enormity of the problems dwarf the human scale, even though it is we, humans, who have created them. We seem to have fallen under the wheels of an economic system whose signature products are inexorably increasing social inequality, periodic crises from which only the top … More Occupy Surplus-Value: Toward the Revaluation of Value
BY MICHAEL SCHUMACHERExcerpt from The Contest: The 1968 Election and the War for America’s Soul***** A political campaign is a dehumanizing rite. Its only purpose is power, and tends to bring out the worst in men. Repetition, exhaustion, anxiety, and pressure must be endured cheerfully. Instincts have to be disguised. Sleep and privacy are elusive. … More "History is nothing if not a collection of antecedents, one leading to the next": Michael Schumacher on the 1968 election and the war for America’s soul.
BY JOHN HULTGRENBennington College Academics are typically tasked with giving complex accounts of complex situations. We specialize in stories of nuance, where power operates with such subtlety that its movement through the social body requires explaining and unmasking. Simple explanations are to be suspect, as are prescriptions for immediate action. There are moments, however, when … More Children. Before. Borders.
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.
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.
BY JANET HALLEY, PRABHA KOTISWARAN, RACHEL REBOUCHÉ, AND HILA SHAMIR As we celebrate International Women’s Day, it is hard not to be struck by how ubiquitous the political message of feminism is. Until recently, announcing one’s feminist credentials elicited looks of surprise, incomprehension, or outright hostility. Fast forward to 2018 and Sweden has a foreign … More International Women’s Day 2018: On feminism’s political message and its past, present, and future.
Miles Lord: Minnesota’s Maverick Judge will air on TPT/Twin Cities PBSon Sunday, Nov. 19. Here’s a preview.More about the book. BY ROBERTA WALBURN There was once a generation of young Minnesotans who, imbued with a social-gospel populism, set out to make their state, their nation, and their world a better place for all. Especially in … More Judge Miles Lord: Our Brothers’ and Sisters’ Keeper
BY CEDRIC JOHNSON (The Neoliberal Deluge and Revolutionaries to Race Leaders) AND THOMAS JESSEN ADAMS Excerpt from article published in Jacobin: The rains over Corpus Christi and Houston have finally stopped, and floodwaters are beginning to recede. Some residents are still stranded, while others — tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands — won’t be able to … More The Coming Storm
BY SHIRI PASTERNAKAssistant professor, School for the Study of Canada at Trent University If Canadians want to understand why some First Nations are sitting out the Canada 150 celebrations, they need look no further than to fifteen community members who took an eight-hour drive from Barriere Lake in Quebec to Toronto on Thursday. The Algonquins … More Algonquins’ struggle for land, coexistence builds as Canada’s 150th approaches.
