Dear Reader,
Boston Review was founded nearly 50 years ago. Since then, we have become “an indispensable pillar of the public sphere,” as sociologist Alondra Nelson recently put it. We are also a small, independent nonprofit, and we need your support more than ever.
We know you turn to Boston Review for serious writing. Our contributors this year have included a Nobel Prize–winning economist, a National Book Award finalist for fiction, and three brave West Virginia University faculty members, who wrote a viral open letter protesting the decimation of public education. We published many dozens of essays and reviews as well as three incisive forums—on the war in Ukraine, equality of opportunity, and obstacles to solidarity in social movements. (A fourth forum, on freedom, is on the way for our last issue of 2023.) And we extended our deep archive on prospects for peace in Israel and Palestine. This coverage has reached millions of readers, and we did it all without ads or paywalls.
The key to our success is that we funnel the vast majority of our resources into editorial and production expenses. The pieces you read are often the product of many weeks—sometimes months—of work by our small but dedicated staff. That’s why distinguished historian Robin D. G. Kelley calls the “rigor and care” of our work “a miracle in an age when editing has all but disappeared.”
But this miracle is impossible without your support. Our costs keep rising, from rent to web development and health care benefits for our staff. More and more publications are putting up paywalls to cope with tight finances, but we won’t do that. We think democracy depends on the free and open exchange of ideas.
Will you please consider making a contribution to support this mission? If only 500 generous readers contribute $100, we would reach our goal. But any amount helps. Besides helping to maintain our website, your donation—tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law—goes directly to publishing great writing, informed analysis, and constructive debate on the most urgent issues of our time. Our annual report explains even more about the impact we generate on a limited budget.
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Thank you for your support. We couldn’t do it without you.
Sincerely,
Deborah Chasman & Joshua Cohen
Editors
