The Latest

Arts in Society

Was Architecture Better Under Socialism?

Yugoslavia produced a thrilling variety of buildings, frequently departing from the prefabricated monotony of the Eastern Bloc.

Class & Inequality

Teaching Citizenship

Education’s most important job is to teach students to take an active role in their democracy, starting in their own communities.

Philosophy

Don’t Overthink It

A new book wants us to navigate life’s crossroads with the precision of a military exercise. But personal decisions are more difficult than even the most consequential political decisions.

Race

Confronting the Relics of the Old South

Two attractions in Alabama—the new national lynching memorial and the First Confederate White House—show a nation struggling to contend with its legacy of racial violence.

Law

What Statistics Can’t Tell Us in the Fight over Affirmative Action at Harvard

A group seeking to ban affirmative action has sued Harvard for discriminating against Asian Americans. The core issues won’t be resolved by statistics alone.

Law

Mass Starvation Is a Crime—It’s Time We Treated It That Way

The famine in Yemen is not simply “man-made.” Particular men are responsible, and they should be brought to justice.

Arts in Society

The Private Edward Gorey

The cult artist and author proves an evasive subject for biography, a fact that would surely have delighted him.

Politics

American Extremism Has Always Flowed from the Border

Donald Trump says there is “a crisis of the soul” at the border. He is right, though not in the way he thinks.

Law

Trump’s Foreign Policy Isn’t the Problem

It reflects, like a funhouse mirror, a twisted image of U.S. imperialism.

Arts in Society Law

How to Think About Empire

An interview with Arundhati Roy on censorship, storytelling, and her problem with the term “postcolonialism.”

From the Editors: Left Elsewhere

Left Elsewhere puts rural progressives in conversation with their urban cousins.

Gender & Sexuality

Every Woman Is a Working Woman

Silvia Federici interviewed by Jill Richards.

Gender & Sexuality Law

Those Left Behind When #LoveWon

Did the success of gay marriage erode the radical potential of queer politics?

Gender & Sexuality

A History of Cyborg Sex, 2018–73

How sex with robots became safer—and better—than sex with actual men.

Class & Inequality

Puerto Rico’s War on Its Poor

In the 1990s, Puerto Rico showed Washington how militarized policing and privatization can extract profits from poor people of color.

Gender & Sexuality

Aging into Feminism

Taking better care of homeless retirees is part of feminism’s next big challenge.

Science

Climate Gut Check

Beneath the jargon, a UN report serves up a revolutionary response to climate change.

Politics Science

No Collision

In the face of climate apocalypse, the rich have been devising escape plans. What happens when they opt out of democratic preparation for emergencies?

Law

Citizenship v. The Surveillance State

We have surrendered the cherished value of “innocent until proven guilty” for the security logic that we are all “risky until proven safe.”

Race

What Happened to Kanye West?

Kanye represents what happens when the liberties of artistic genius are confused for political insight.

Gender & Sexuality

All the Witches They Could Not Burn

A woman’s body is both a site of exploitation and a site of resistance. It is out of this vexed space that the witch is conjured.

Race

The Missing Malcolm X

Unpublished material from his autobiography has come to light, deepening our understanding of his life and thought.

Race

The Racist Politics of the English Language

How we went from “racist” to “racially tinged.”

Class & Inequality Philosophy

Is Philanthropy Anti-Democratic?

Most charitable foundations are endowed in perpetuity. But John Stuart Mill argued eternal rights make for bad governance.

Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox


A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization