The Latest

Gender & Sexuality

The Feminist Past History Can’t Give Us

Recent efforts to commemorate Laura Bassi—a pioneering physicist in eighteenth-century Italy—often say more about us than the world of women in science.

Politics

How Israel Weaponizes International Law

The country has manipulated rules of engagement to serve its colonialist project in Palestine.

Arts in Society

Queer Shoulders at the Wheel

John Wieners was one of the most important gay poets of his generation.

Gender & Sexuality

Violence Has No Gender

The penalties of gender and sexual violence are not equally distributed, but psyche violence is genderless.

Science

AI’s Future Doesn’t Have to Be Dystopian

AI can be used for good—but only if we modify our approach.

Politics Race

Reclaiming the Power of Rebellion

Derecka Purnell interviews historian Elizabeth Hinton about her new book and how talk of “riots” discredits Black political demands.

Politics

Why Aren’t We Talking about Farmers in India?

They are fighting in a global war over the future of agriculture. Modi is chocking the debate.

Class & Inequality

One Simple Policy to Save Welfare

Direct payments to families should replace backdoor tax breaks.

AI’s Future Doesn’t Have to Be Dystopian

AI can be used to increase human productivity, create jobs and shared prosperity, and protect and bolster democratic freedoms—but only if we modify our approach.

Arts in Society

‘Ancestors’ Contributors Reading

A recording of our digital reading of poetry, fiction, and essays from our annual literary anthology, with ASL interpreting.

Arts in Society

Autofiction’s First Boom Was in Turn-of-the-Century Japan

Newly translated into English, Minae Mizumura’s An I-Novel is a vivid portrait of immigrant displacement and the ironies of our global cultural ecosystem.

Politics

The World of Edward Said

His milieu was one of global, and specifically Palestinian, anticolonial struggle.

Gender & Sexuality

How ACT UP Did It

Sarah Schulman’s history shows how AIDS activists forced the government to accept that they mattered.

Law

The Menthol Cigarette Ban Shows There Is No Democracy Without Petitions

The menthol cigarette citizen’s petition recalls the lost political tradition of petition democracy, when not only could the complaints of any citizen get a hearing, but that hearing would occur publicly—in Congress.

Politics

How the Modern NRA Was Born at the Border

Watch our release of the documentary short The Rifleman. Then read an interview with the filmmaker.

Politics

The War on Critical Race Theory

The highly orchestrated right-wing attacks cast a body of scholarship about race in the law as a great threat to American society.

Race Science

Race, Policing, and the Limits of Social Science

Studying the social world requires more than deference to data—no matter the prestige or sophistication of the tools with which they are parsed.

Class & Inequality

Portrait of the United States as a Developing Country

Dispelling myths of entrepreneurial exceptionalism, a sweeping new history of U.S. capitalism finds that economic gains have always been driven by the state.

Class & Inequality Politics

The Monstrosity of Maritime Capitalism

Two books unmask the colossal shipping industry behind global trade.

Science

Science Doesn’t Work That Way

Its authority derives not from unbiased scientists but from the institutions and norms that structure their work.

Arts in Society Science

Poetry in the Critical Zone

In a new book of lyric essays, poet Cole Swensen answers a call issued by theorists Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel: to reimagine the globe in terms of the fragile surface ecosystems that support all life.

Politics Race

Police and the License to Kill

Detroit police killed hundreds of unarmed Black people in response to the civil rights movement.

Arts in Society

Three poems

Winner of the 2019 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest

Class & Inequality

“Progress for People of Color Doesn’t Come at White Folks’ Expense”

A conversation with Heather C. McGhee about the zero-sum thinking that has long dominated American attitudes to race and wealth—and how to organize to secure public goods for everyone.

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