The Latest

Arts in Society

Trump’s Culture Wars Come to Architecture

Missing in all the controversy are the economic forces behind the business of building.

Arts in Society

Hyman Bloom’s Messy Bodies

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ retrospective of Hyman Bloom offers visitors the chance to engage with work that exemplifies how art can foster justice-minded, ethical looking.

Arts in Society

Emily Dickinson Escapes

Until recent decades, Dickinson was most often depicted as a sentimental spinster or reclusive eccentric. A new biography and TV show reveal instead a self-aware artist who created a life that defied the limits placed on women.

Law Politics

Impeaching for Imperialism

Beneath Trump’s impeachment lurks a troubling complacency—among Democrats and Republicans alike—with the nature of U.S. imperial power.

Philosophy

The Weakness of the Furies

Victim anger can be useful to political struggle, but it can also become excessive and obsessive, deforming the self.

Class & Inequality

For Whom the Markets Toll

Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Henry Paulson still have not reckoned with the failures of neoliberal planning in the wake of the financial crisis.

Arts in Society

Painting the New York Times

An interview with Nicky Nodjoumi—one of Iran’s greatest artists, in exile since 1980.

Arts in Society

Four Poems

Class & Inequality

The War Against the Poor Knows No Borders

The Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran and cuts to SNAP benefits are two sides of the same war that the rich are waging against the global poor.

Arts in Society

Poetry and Fiction Contests

Enter for your chance to win $1,000 and publication in Boston Review. Plus, entry is free to all those outside of the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe.

Class & Inequality

High Stakes Tests Aren’t Better—And They Never Will Be

Accountability is important. But tests that tie school funding to student performance only make things worse.

Gender & Sexuality Science

Science Won’t Settle Trans Rights

Appeals to the biological facts conceal a deeper contest over political equality—and scientific authority itself.

Arts in Society

The Private History of Ethiopia’s Wars

Maaza Mengiste’s novels reject grand narratives, offering uncommonly intimate glimpses of dictatorship and displacement.

Philosophy Science

Science Hasn’t Refuted Free Will

A growing chorus says that science has shown free will to be an illusion. But it actually has offered arguments in its favor.

Law Politics

Designing Better Impeachments

How other countries’ constitutions protect against political free-for-alls.

Class & Inequality

Taxing the Superrich

For the sake of justice and democracy, we need a progressive wealth tax.

Arts in Society

Two Poems

Science

Science for Sale

Using a variety of ploys to manufacture doubt, a whole industry of science-for-hire experts helps corporations put profits over public health and safety.

Politics Race

Missing Zinn

Cornel West opens up about his friendship with Howard Zinn and what he would have made of the last decade.

Arts in Society

Mother, Grow My Baby

Winner of the Fall 2019 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest.

Politics Race

The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy

Critics of the 1619 Project obscure a longstanding debate within the field of U.S. history over the antislavery implications of the American Revolution.

Class & Inequality

Conservatives’ Newfound Interest in Dignified Work

They can give up free-market orthodoxy, but they still can’t bring themselves to embrace labor.

Class & Inequality Race

American Bottom

Designed as a working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains.

Gender & Sexuality Race

The Radical Lives of Abolitionists

Many took part in other radical movements—including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.

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