Alasdair MacIntyre: An Intellectual Biography by Émile Perreau-Saussine Reviewed by Jonathan Rée Marx’s optimism proved to be ill-founded. The proletariat did not live up to expectations, leaving latter-day Marxists scrambling to find alternative superheroes. Hence, according to MacIntyre, the multitudes of ‘conflicting … political allegiances which now carry Marxist banners’, all expressing a well-founded hatred of capitalism but none offering… Read More Like a Top Hat
HARTOSH SINGH BAL This is an edited excerpt from a keynote address delivered at Stanford University, on October 10, 2023; while accepting the Shorenstein Journalism Award on behalf of The Caravan. I know that I speak against the backdrop of the horrors unfolding in Israel and Gaza. At such a time, there is little reason to stress the… Read More The Broken Compact
Since 2018, the US military has been ramping up its use of gaming to recruit more people, at a critical time when the US armed forces face the worst recruitment struggle since becoming an all-volunteer force after the Vietnam war. Targeting gamers makes sense from the military’s perspective, as it gives them access to the young, tech-savvy population they want joining up. But… Read More The US military is embedded in the gaming world. Its target: teen recruits
“He is one of very few scholars now alive who have, in effect, invented a field of study” Peter Brown: A Life of Learning – American Council of Learned Societies; Haskins Lecture, 2003 I remember the occasion when, in 1988, I had to perform the sad duty of writing the obituary of my friend and mentor,… Read More Peter Brown: A Life of Learning (2003)
Bahzad Al-Akhras I’m a doctor and psychiatrist, and before the war in Gaza, my days followed a reliable routine. I would go to work in the clinic, visit my friends and spend time with my family. I lived a normal life. Now, my family and I are refugees in Rafah, after the Israeli army ordered us… Read More In Rafah, we sit in flimsy tents as the bombs fall. There is no escape: we can only wait for the worst
First posted June 19, 2016 Reviewed by Edward Mendelson Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism – by Judy Wajcman Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age – by Bernard E. Harcourt Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art – by Virginia Heffernan Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media… Read More In the Depths of the Digital Age: Five books on psychological life in the internet age / We Are Hopelessly Hooked by Jacob Weisberg
GAZA casualties live statistics On December 7, the beloved Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. In the week of mourning since, tributes to Alareer’s life, writing, mentorship, and activism have flooded in from around the… Read More Watch Brian Cox read ‘If I Must Die’ by murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer
REBECCA GORDON Of course, the all-American penchant for banning books didn’t begin in the Trump era. Just ask almost anyone who lived through the Red Scare days of the 1950s (not to speak of the first Red Scare of 1917-1920). But the last few years have seen a remarkable acceleration of attempts to keep certain… Read More American Public Libraries under Threat: Banning what Matters
GAZA casualties live statistics B. Michael One of the most puzzling and saddening spectacles of the past few days is the sight of Jewish protesters at the Kerem Shalom crossing and the Ashdod Port, fighting like lions to ensure we do not fail in our inhumanity. They have joined the experts on evil on the… Read More God Forbid Israelis Show Any Humanity to Innocent Palestinians in Gaza
How paranoid accusations of “violence” became all the rage… When scholars of higher education write the history of this strange period, they will surely wonder that, with so much real violence raging elsewhere, the denizens of some of the safest spaces in the world fretted so much over merely verbal arrows. By Len Gutkin Shai Davidai,… Read More The Hyperbolic Style in American Academe
After the truth-shower 