May/June 2016
Public education should make citizens, not workers. So says Danielle Allen in our new forum—and she thinks that the focus on STEM can’t accomplish that goal, only the humanities can. Respondents include Deborah Meier, Clint Smith, Michel DeGraff, and Rob Reich. Alex de Waal, one of the nineties’ leading humanitarian reporters, has had a radical change of heart: almost all humanitiarian interventions go horribly wrong, he mourns, so maybe we’re doing more harm than good. Samuel Moyn worries we focus too much on rights and not enough on duties, and James G. Chappel proposes that our obsession with secularism has made religion more inscrutable—and out of control—than ever. Plus a celebration of 2016’s 92Y/”Discovery” Prize–winning poets, and new work from John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, and Brenda Hillman.
Forum: What is Education for?
Opening
Preparation for democratic citizenship demands humanities education, not just STEM.
Ideas & Fiction
White supremacy and the birth of the modern Democratic Party.
- March 30, 2016
Cities are now playgrounds for the rich, with the poor forced into suburbs.
- June 20, 2016
The West likes morality plays with clear heroes and villains, in which we play the role of savior.
- June 6, 2016
In the age of human rights, the language of duties has withered.
- May 16, 2016
Secularism is fundamental to liberal governance. But is it sustainable?
- April 25, 2016
Paul Park’s fantasy troubles the line between fiction and reality.
- July 13, 2016
Selected work from this year’s winners.
- May 9, 2016
Terrance Hayes riffs on pop culture to explore black identity.
- June 9, 2016
Rae Armantrout draws on the language of physics to explore modern life.
- May 25, 2016
Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups is lost in its own symbolism.
- May 5, 2016
Poetry
- June 1, 2016
- May 25, 2016
Life with its sorrow, life with
its tear.
And you know what that
means:
the sky in a drawer . . .
- May 18, 2016
- June 8, 2016
In the market of ideas, of meat
—in the teeth of need—you
will never be happy with
your body—it is not the right
body . . .
- June 15, 2016
Of course they love, says my
student. I slap
my dog sometimes when he
comes to my bedside
just to see if . . .
- June 22, 2016
