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May/June 2016

What is Education for?

Danielle Allen leads a forum on public education. Deborah Meier, Clint Smith, Michel DeGraff, and Rob Reich respond. Plus, writing by John Ashbery, Josie Graham, Alex de Wall, and more.

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.


 

Editors’ Note

Deborah Chasman & Joshua Cohen

 


Forum: What is Education for?

Opening
Danielle Allen
Danielle Allen
Clint Smith
Rob Reich
Lucas Stanczyk
Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Lelac Almagor
Debra Satz
Michel DeGraff
Deborah Meier
Carlos Fraenkel

Ideas & Fiction

Christopher Petrella

White supremacy and the birth of the modern Democratic Party.

Claude S. Fischer

Cities are now playgrounds for the rich, with the poor forced into suburbs.

Alex de Waal

The West likes morality plays with clear heroes and villains, in which we play the role of savior.

Fiction
Shruti Swamy

I asked my husband to let the woman go.

Samuel Moyn

In the age of human rights, the language of duties has withered.

James G. Chappel

Secularism is fundamental to liberal governance. But is it sustainable?

John Crowley

Paul Park’s fantasy troubles the line between fiction and reality.

Poetry
Ryan Fox, Carlie Hoffman, Gala Mukomolova, Miller Oberman

Selected work from this year’s winners.

Christopher Spaide

Terrance Hayes riffs on pop culture to explore black identity. 

Lisa K. Perdigao

Rae Armantrout draws on the language of physics to explore modern life.

Boston Review

New books to savor in the summer sun.

Alan A. Stone

Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups is lost in its own symbolism.


Poetry

Poetry
Sh?z? Takiguchi
The ruby of my body glittered in my body, which didn’t die. The ruby felt a three-second chill. The perfect neck of a youthful Venus comforts me. . . .
Poetry
Brenda Hillman

( )

The word saudades cannot easily be translated. Our mother & i translate Brazilian poetry, & when we come to the word saudades we hesitate. . . .
Poetry
John Ashbery

Life with its sorrow, life with
     its tear.
And you know what that
     means:
the sky in a drawer . . .

Poetry
Erika L. Sánchez
After the salt feast, I watched a bird peck at another bird who was already dead. . . .
Poetry
Jorie Graham

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 . . .

Poetry
Ricardo Pau-Llosa

Of course they love, says my
     student. I slap
my dog sometimes when he
     comes to my bedside
just to see if . . .

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