Politics

Letting Go of Normal

It is easy, but wrong, to see development in terms of ‘genes for X’ or a nature/nurture balance.

  • Anne Fausto-Sterling

What Journalism Can and Can’t Do for Politics

The most consequential and controversial questions in politics are not amenable to fact-checking.

  • Andrew Mayersohn

The Conscience of Syria

An interview with activist and intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh.

  • Yassin al-Haj Saleh
  • Danny Postel
  • Nader Hashemi

Tiger Couple Gets It Wrong on Immigrant Success

High-earning immigrants often come from highly educated or affluent families to begin with.

  • Stephen Steinberg

Why the Success of the Rest is Good for America

Charles Kenny's The Upside of Down.

  • Ali Wyne

Risk-Sharing

Early Americans well understood that life and making a living were precarious.

  • Claude S. Fischer

Sign up for our newsletter

Who’s Hot?

Looking ahead to the 2014 midterm elections.

  • John Sides
  • Michael Tesler

Soft Power in Nigeria

The U.S. is funding development in restive Northern Nigeria, but soft power isn't blunting anti-American sentiments.

  • Ameto Akpe

Tsarnaev: Dismantle the Gallows

Granting mercy is among humanity’s hardest tasks.

  • Simon Waxman

Under the Cross in China

Christian weddings are on the rise in China, even among non-believers.

  • Xiao-bo Yuan

Walking on Ice to Clean Up Congress

Lessig’s New Hampshire rebellion.

  • Archon Fung

Libertarianism Is Very Strange

Outside the fantasy novels of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, libertarianism does not make much anthropological or historical sense. 

  • Claude S. Fischer

Being Jewish in Today’s Germany

Yascha Mounk explores Jewish identity in modern Germany.

  • Lucy McKeon

What Killed Egyptian Democracy?

The promise of democracy lies in its potential to cultivate political virtue over time. But Egypt’s liberals, unnerved by the policies of the legitimate Muslim Brotherhood government, refused to wait.

  • Mohammad Fadel
with responses from
  • Ellis Goldberg
  • Micheline Ishay
  • Nathan J. Brown
  • Andrew F. March
  • Akbar Ganji
  • Anne Norton

From Democrats to Terrorists

The notion that elimination of the Muslim Brotherhood would produce a liberal democratic order was wishful thinking.

  • Mohammad Fadel

The Syria Dilemma: A Critical Dialogue

On December 2, 2013, the Center for Middle East Studies at University of Denver co-hosted a debate on Syria with Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. 

  • Boston Review

On Evgeny Morozov

“I hate the word ‘problematizer,’ but it leaps to mind when I think about Evgeny.”

  • Joshua Cohen

Trusting the Poor

Welfare policy breeds distrust, which in turn undermines outcomes. Judith A. Levine offers modest proposals for how we can reach the most disadvantaged among us.  

  • Judith A. Levine

Trench Democracy in Criminal Justice: an Interview with Lauren Abramson

Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places.

  • Albert W. Dzur

Do Game Changers Matter?

Political science and political reporting.

  • Lynn Vavreck

Obama Got the Law Right and the Politics Wrong

His ACA employer mandate delay was constitutional—why didn’t he say so?

  • Louis Fisher

How De Blasio’s Real Estate Choices Can Save NYC

Cities can make decisions. Cities can set their own priorities. Cities can resist the self-interested categories of those with extraordinary wealth.

  • Michael Gecan

Can Greece’s SYRIZA Change Europe’s Economy?

The biggest threat to Greece’s left-wing coalition is itself.

  • Yanis Varoufakis

Exhuming Equality: The Forensics of Human Rights

All around the world, we are digging up the dead.

  • Adam Rosenblatt
trending_flat
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

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe