Democracy’s real deal September 15, 2023 Was the US Consitution a masterpiece? The common answer has frequently been an unabashed “yes,” but many critics now complain that the Constitution was fatally flawed from the beginning. Read More
Listen in: To Build a Black Future September 14, 2023 Listen to a sample chapter from To Build a Black Future – an incisive portrait of how the new Black politics can forge a future centered on collective action, community, and care. Read More
Bill Clinton’s failure September 13, 2023 By 1995 Bill Clinton was fighting to remain “relevant” to the politics of his day. Many would soon label Clinton a “Democratic Eisenhower,” leading a party whose electoral success was predicated upon a wholesale accommodation to the ideologies of its opponents. Read More
Insect intelligence September 13, 2023 You don’t need spaceships or psychoactive drugs for journeys into alien worlds. I invite you to come into the cockpit of an insect, and view the world through its strange senses. You will discover that inside their exquisitely miniaturized brains, there are surprising levels of sentience and intelligence. Read More
PUP Speaks: Emily Hund on the rise of the influencer industry September 11, 2023 The rising popularity of the social media influencer has significantly reshaped culture, the flow of information, and the way we relate to ourselves and each other. Read More
How Uber disrupted Washington, D.C. September 11, 2023 The first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company created a playbook for how to deal with intransigent regulators and to win in the realm of local politics. Read More
In Praise of Good Bookstores September 07, 2023 Jeff Deutsch—the director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world—pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. Read More
24/7 Politics September 07, 2023 As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Read More
To see a world in a beam of light August 24, 2023 On July 11, 2022, U.S. President Biden revealed the First Official Image obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope. It was a terrific way to start a press event—but where were the exoplanets? Read More
Emily Hauser on How Women Became Poets August 24, 2023 Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own to write. So, too, have women writers throughout history needed a term to describe what it is they do. Read More
Liberalism’s back to the future moment August 23, 2023 Today liberalism faces a global challenge from populism. To successfully meet this challenge, liberals must return to certain features of liberalism common in the nineteenth century but largely absent since WWII. Read More
Spotlight on Supporting Diverse Voices: Bridgett vonHoldt August 22, 2023 In this Author Q&A, we highlight the work of Dr. Bridgett vonHoldt, Supporting Diverse Voices grantee and Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Read More
From empire to federation? The view from the Middle East August 22, 2023 The European Union, India, the United States of America, and the United Arab Emirates all have something in common: they are all types of federations. Read More
Uber’s view of urban life August 21, 2023 For years, Diana, who has lived her whole life in the D.C. area, took jobs at fast-food restaurants even though she hated the work. When she started to drive for Uber in 2016, she told us she was enthusiastic about its potential to free her from a reliance on fast-food jobs. Diana was conflicted about Uber, however. Read More
Emotional creatures and the cultivation of mental health August 21, 2023 In Britain and America, mental health is increasingly thought of as a transversal issue, as important for psychologists as for patients, probation workers as for prisoners, politicians as for constituents. Read More