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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?

DANIELLE ALLEN DEBATES

DEBORAH MEIER, CARLOS FRAENKEL, DEBRA SATZ, MICHEL DEGRAFF, JEFFREY AARON SNYDER, LELAC ALMAGOR, ROB REICH, LUCAS STANCZYK, AND CLINT SMITH.

 

Editors’ Note
Deborah Chasman and Joshua Cohen

Foundations

Perspective: On Stone Mountain
Christopher Petrella
Made in America: Reversal of Fortune
Claude S. Fischer

Context

Writing Human Rights: And Getting It Wrong
Alex de Waal

Fiction

The Siege
Shruti Swamy

Books & Ideas

Rights vs. Duties: Reclaiming Civic Balance
Samuel Moyn
Holy Wars: Did Secularism Invent Religion?
James G. Chappel

On Poetry

“Discovery” Contest Winners

Ryan Fox, Carlie Hoffman, Gaia Mukomolova, and Miller Oberman

Wear Your Wig: Terrance Hayes’s How To Be Drawn
Christopher Spaide
Elusive Particles: Rae Armantrout’s Itself
Lisa K. Perdigao

 

Summer Poetry Reading
Microreviews of Göransson, Baker, and more.

On Film

Pilgrim’s Progress: Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups
Alan A. Stone

Poems

Fragments
Shūzō Takiguchi, translated by Yuki Tanaka and Mary Jo Bang
(          )
Brenda Hillman
A Disservice
John Ashbery
Poem of My Humiliation
Erika L. Sánchez
Animal Love
Ricardo Pau-Llosa

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