publicseminar.org Debate for now. Always free. Published by The New School. Subscribe to our newsletter: publicseminar.substack.com/https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mzlwio5oos2p"The university’s financial problems tempted successive administrations to exchange its original understanding of higher education as a democratic good for a prevalent vision of education as a commodity to be profitably sold." —Alice Crary on TNS's restructuring https://publicseminar.org/2026/11/if-it-can-happen-at-the-new-school/05 Nov 2026 22:35 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mzlwio5oos2phttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mzg3jo46is2qD. Graham Burnett reflects on the experience of being a professor in the age of AI essays, and offers both appreciation and skepticism for these technologies that know more about us than we do. https://publicseminar.org/2026/11/style-wars-ai/03 Nov 2026 14:49 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mzg3jo46is2qhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mzdlod3nyk2o“I realize we live in a political world, and whether or not you want to participate in that, crimes are committed in your name, wars are funded in your name.” —Yahia Lababidi speaks with Elizabeth Mirabelle on his new book, If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE. https://publicseminar.org/2026/11/yahia-lababidi-interview/02 Nov 2026 15:00 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mzdlod3nyk2ohttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mz3wpwb3dk2bThough Pete Hegseth’s proposal to livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution never came to fruition, Safiyah Rochelle considers the implications of what it means when a state chooses to turn executions into public spectacle. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/nidal-hasan-execution/30 Oct 2026 13:57 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mz3wpwb3dk2bhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mywwlbr5ns2zMagyar must go against the political interests of his own party if he is serious about restoring the system of checks and balances Orbán dismantled” —Imre Szijarto on Hungary’s recent “electoral revolution” https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/will-hungarys-liberation-from-orban-lead-to-lasting-democratization/28 Oct 2026 14:11 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mywwlbr5ns2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3myrummi2ek2aAnnie Lamar and Yuri Sepp examine what the Pentagon’s push to narrow military education to “warfighting” priorities could mean for the future of American military leadership. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/why-our-soldiers-need-to-learn-from-civilians/26 Oct 2026 13:52 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3myrummi2ek2ahttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3myfckdluq226As Brazil prepares for a run-off between incumbent President Lula da Silva and the son of former president Bolsonaro, Felippe Ramos turns to Rodrigo Nunes’s expansive understanding of the Brazilian far right in his latest book, Anatomy of Disintegration. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/disintegration-review/21 Oct 2026 13:57 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3myfckdluq226https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3myahidt3rc24As the possibility of a blue Texas looms with the approaching midterms, Philip Dray remembers Texas’s forgotten history of populism, socialism, and radical political movements in his review of David Griscom’s The Myth of Red Texas. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/myth-of-red-texas-review/19 Oct 2026 15:42 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3myahidt3rc24https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mxw7hwslvs2iBefore Twitter threads and Reddit boards, there was the postcard. Karine Macarez explores how France's 1894 Dreyfus Affair gave rise to the postcard as a precursor to the echo chambers of modern social media. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/before-social-media-there-were-postcards/15 Oct 2026 13:52 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mxw7hwslvs2ihttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mxr6lnwky22rNAZA is a damning indictment of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, putting to rest any remaining sense “that the bulk of the deaths in Gaza were unintended, unforeseeable collateral damage,” writes Mitchell Abidor. publicseminar.org/2026/10/naza/ https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/naza/13 Oct 2026 13:53 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mxr6lnwky22rhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mxepooitgk2nIn a conversation with Emma Robertson, Nancy Folbre talks about her book Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First and the hidden economy of care—the unpaid labor of raising children, supporting loved ones, and caring for one another. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/caring-about-care/08 Oct 2026 14:54 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mxepooitgk2nhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mx7lgeoqas2m“The village does not need to prove that everyone uses the kiosk every day. It needs to prove that when the network thins out, when weather intervenes, when something goes wrong, the box still belongs to the category of things people may need.” – Nicholas Cooke https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/the-last-phone-box-in-sharrington/06 Oct 2026 13:55 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mx7lgeoqas2mhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mwtc342xms2yNatalia Lomaia explores the female voice, patriarchy, sound, desire, and the limits of self-control through Anne Carson and Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film The Double Life of Veronique. https://publicseminar.org/2026/10/is-there-another-human-essence-than-self/01 Oct 2026 16:35 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mwtc342xms2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mwnxyxozzs2fFor 70 years, Italy has promised a bridge across the Strait of Messina. But the long-delayed megaproject has instead become a symbol of political power and economic optimism. https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/the-magic-bridge/29 Sep 2026 13:52 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mwnxyxozzs2fhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mwgnf6pqvs2r“Nobody gets paid. We do it because it’s a calling to tell these stories,” Susan Simensky Bietila tells Julie Allan, reflecting on organizing art builds alongside Indigenous water protectors and creating graphic nonfiction rooted in activism. https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/art-for-the-front-lines/26 Sep 2026 15:53 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mwgnf6pqvs2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvzy72w6lk2d“The optimism and vitality of the revolution passed soon into another stasis, the long anticipation of the new election.” —Ned Wontner on the 2024 July uprising in Bangladesh and its aftermath https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/waiting-for-revolution-in-bangladesh/21 Sep 2026 15:02 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvzy72w6lk2dhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvv6xa3qxc2hSakiko Fukuda-Parr and Sean Jacobs speak with Nolan Young on how their book, The Palgrave Handbook on Decolonizing International Affairs, interrogates colonialism’s long shadow over modern life and forges a path towards exorcising it from international studies. https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/a-call-for-course-correction/19 Sep 2026 17:20 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvv6xa3qxc2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvsgfzzd522vA decade and a half after that first night at Zuccotti Park, what has the Left learned from Occupy Wall Street? Nara Roberta Silva argues that Occupy’s legacy should be one of “reclaiming strategy in its deeper and expansive senses.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/occupy-fifteen-years-later/18 Sep 2026 14:55 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvsgfzzd522vhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvnimc2xuc2dIn a conversation with @apetrossiants.bsky.social, Samuel Stein discusses his new book, A Right to Housing?, and talks reframing the conversation as a right to more than just housing, and “​​what it means to declare a right that we can’t act on.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/take-back-the-city/16 Sep 2026 15:51 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvnimc2xuc2dhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvic5o33522zJeff Dolven explores the history and meaning of that most taken-for-granted of linguistic building blocks, the sentence, and asks if it might not be possible to imagine a new technic for writing. @socres.org https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/the-end-of-the-sentence/14 Sep 2026 14:12 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvic5o33522zhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3muzguaz6ek24What do skateboarding, John Waters, Pee-wee Herman, and Jackass have in common? For Kayley Cassidy, all four embody freedom, both bodily and from the nebulous concept of “taste.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/dropping-acid/08 Sep 2026 16:27 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3muzguaz6ek24https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3muuj7jf32s25“Almanza makes clear that even as we work toward a future where prisons are not needed, we must reconsider how we confine people in the present. Abolition, that is, does not happen overnight” —Emma Robertson on Emily Almanza’s debut book, The Price of Mercy https://publicseminar.org/2026/08/how-to-incentivize-justice/06 Sep 2026 17:25 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3muuj7jf32s25https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mupavdtvus26Thomas Liess and William Milberg argue that Trump’s latest tariffs are not the altruistic tool to fight forced labor they claim to be, but a self-serving way to “refill the US tariff revenue coffers." https://publicseminar.org/2026/08/tariffs-to-eliminate-forced-labor/04 Sep 2026 15:13 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mupavdtvus26https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3msgklvv5is2rSpeaking with Austin Tannenbaum, @ajawoods.bsky.social , author of The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, explores how a once-fringe far-right belief became a “political weapon” for conservatives like Ted Cruz. @versobooks.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-cultural-marxism-bogeyman/06 Aug 2026 17:22 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3msgklvv5is2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrzzv4qy7c2eNancy K. Miller discusses autofiction, internet-speak, and other literary developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, asking: As modernism transformed the novel, will artificial intelligence now reframe the memoir genre? @socres.org https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-new-millennium/01 Aug 2026 17:51 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrzzv4qy7c2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrv667jhvk23In her review of Ben Lerner’s latest novel, Transcription, Elena Rotzokou explores how the pursuit of an exact recording can obscure the messy realities of family and friendship. https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/transcription-review/30 Jul 2026 19:25 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrv667jhvk23https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrseayw6zk2o“The device of ventriloquism is awkward . . . it involves both distancing and intimacy.” — @lanalin.bsky.social speaking with Katie Pruden on writing from her partner’s perspective in The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam. @dorothyproject.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/interview_the-autobiography-of-h-lan-thao-lam-em/29 Jul 2026 16:36 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrseayw6zk2ohttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrnrgysjf22uBig tech jostles for market access, energy, and the most valuable resource of all, the state, writes Nolan Young in a review of Nick Srnicek’s new book, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI. @politybooks.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-silicon-empires-interregnum/27 Jul 2026 20:48 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrnrgysjf22uhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrg6wvsfjk2r“Hate expressed across different structural positions is received entirely differently: pathologized in some, legitimized in others.” —L. Zhang on Şeyda Kurt’s new book, Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion @versobooks.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/against-peace-and-love/24 Jul 2026 20:29 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrg6wvsfjk2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mraohbkgo226Shere Hite’s 1976 survey of women’s sex lives “broke the story that sex was not just a private affair between two people.” Speaking with Rachel Potter, Rosa Campbell discusses her new book on Hite, The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared. https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/re-revolutionizing-the-female-orgasm/22 Jul 2026 15:50 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mraohbkgo226