As much as the past year has been defined by what has changed—the tragic reascent of Donald Trump, a shifting geopolitical order, a climate crisis intensifying by the day—it has also, in many ways, been haunted by what hasn’t: Israel’s ongoing onslaught on Gaza, an abortion landscape decimated by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the steady forward march of corporate-owned AI. In their own way, all of our twenty-four most loved pieces of 2024 capture both the forces that are radically remaking our world and those that continue to hold it in stasis.
Some contributors make sense of our world through the lens of history. Peter E. Gordon draws parallels between the 2024 election and nineteenth-century France; Abena Ampofoa Asare tells a decades-old story of a South African dissident fired for teaching Zionism critically; Samuel Klug finds a keen understanding of our contemporary world order in the writings of anticolonial revolutionary Frantz Fanon.
Others complicate the story of our present. Aaron Bady takes up the “parenting question” amid public alarm over an epidemic of childlessness; Bonnie Tenneriello explains why a promising prison reform failed; writing on the crackdown against UCLA’s campus protest, Robin D. G. Kelley exposes virulent sources of violence and anti-Semitism. Together, these essays, reviews, interviews, and forums reflect what Boston Review does best. Beyond diagnosing all that remains to be remedied, their deeply informed, rigorously edited writing maps a better future—even if, as Joelle M. Abi-Rached wrote from Beirut in October, that future must be born under the “ever-looming threat of another catastrophe.”
The View from Besieged Beirut
In the wake of exploding pagers, universalism plunges into the abyss.
The Silencing of Fred Dube
Forty years ago, the exiled South African activist dared to teach Zionism critically. A furious backlash ensued.
The Parenting Panic
Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.
Against False Universals
Seyla Benhabib’s 2024 Adorno Prize lecture.
Is the State Here to Stay?
After decades of deference to the market, states are exerting greater control over capital. In the face of climate change, it may be too little, too late.
The Violent Exhaustion of Liberal Democracy
A conversation with Wendy Brown on the U.S. presidential election, the exclusions liberal democracy is built on, and why we must aim at more than restoring its mythical former splendor.
Wendy Brown interviewed by Francis Wade
Who’s to Blame for White Poverty?
Dismantling it requires getting the story right.
Shockwaves in the Global Order
While the U.S.–Israel alliance has become isolated, new ones are emerging.
Rule by Militia
Governments wracked by debt have found militias an efficient way of managing restive populations.
Inside Project 2025
Backed by the Heritage Foundation, the initiative seeks to undermine longstanding safeguards against abuses of executive power.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald J. Trump
The tragic reascent of Trump is not an anomaly to democracy but its fatal flaw.
UCLA’s Unholy Alliance
House Republicans accuse student protesters of vicious anti-Semitism, but it is administrators who are courting violence.
Who’s Afraid of Frantz Fanon?
Long decried by liberals and conservatives alike, the Martinican psychiatrist remains one of the most piercing critics of colonialism.
Abortion’s Future
Activists, not elites, are leading the way forward in a world without Roe.
Forum: The AI We Deserve
Critiques of artificial intelligence abound. Where’s the utopian vision for what it could be?
Evgeny Morozov with Brian Eno, Audrey Tang, Terry Winograd, and others
We Are Not from Where We Are From
A Palestinian catalog of ruin and resilience.
What Happened to Liberalism?
Becca Rothfeld speaks with Samuel Moyn about his book Liberalism Against Itself and why liberalism is in crisis.
Samuel Moyn interviewed by Becca Rothfeld
A Menacing Silence
Why is the reality of Palestinian suffering denied in the Israeli consciousness?
Walter Rodney’s Radical Legacy
On the Guyanese revolutionary’s writings on anticolonial struggle.
False Messiahs
How Zionism’s dreams of liberation became entangled with colonialism.
Forum: Climate, State, and Utopia
The defeat of fossil fuel interests is the first step to social justice.
For a Solidarity State
The state structures society. It can make us more prone to care for one another.
Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Astra Taylor
Prison Reform’s Shell Game
Hard-won legislation meant to limit or end solitary confinement has run up against the power of correctional systems to neutralize change.
Liberals Are to Blame for the Rise of J.D. Vance
Their long embrace of “responsible conservatives” has always been dangerous.
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