Spring 2024

The state mental hospital system, which took shape in the late 19th century, was extravagantly heralded as a cheap and humane solution for the problem of mental illness. But this high hope proved unjustified: the mental hospital merely became a …

That Lionel Abel misinterpreted Peter Weiss’s Marat/ Sade is entirely forgiveable, though not a little pitiful considering the play’s straightforwardness and clarity of intention. But that Mr. Abel should have based a criticism of contemporary culture, more particularly of modern …

East Berlin, June 17, 1953: The workers’ uprising is seething in the streets; on stage, the “Boss”—artist and man of the theatre, a figure clearly modeled on Bertold Brecht—is rehearsing his new production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. At the close of …

Historically, it has been a basic premise for socialists that because the trade union constituency is composed of workers, unions must play a progressive role in society. This assumption was rarely challenged, especially since unions for many years did exercise …

The end of civilian rule in Nigeria, a country regarded as a happy exception to the trend toward one-party dictatorships in newly-independent countries, has far-reaching political implications. The popular Western version of Nigeria—a showplace of democracy in black Africa—was a …

The limiting case of the President’s generalization is the CIA’s enrollment in—or, perhaps, enrollment of—Michigan State University’s Vietnam project. In this extreme instance the university was used as a tool, though as a rule the academic community is handled more …

One supposes that when raw nerves are exposed there will be some sort of reaction. All too often such reactions are like the flailing of arms by a patient in a dentist’s chair. Mr. Simon behaves like the patient. Mr. …

In the 1930’s, when it became unwise—even dangerous—for Soviet historians to concern themselves with Russian revolutionary history, the custodianship of this profession passed to a dwindling group of emigres. The greatest representative of the exiled historiography is Boris I. Nicolaevsky …

On March 18, 1966, an Ad Hoc Commission on the Rights of Soviet Jews held a full day of hearings at which a series of expert academics and eyewitnesses testified. The Commission was chaired by Bayard Rustin and the other …

Since liberalism has a long agenda of needed action, it is crucial that we put the important items first, and not be diverted by imaginary bogiemen. Criers of alarm— notable among them Don Michael, Mary Alice Hilton, Robert Heilbroner, and …

The modern world is full of things which, contrary to what we tend to think, have never been seen before today. It does not seem, for example, that the ancient world knew the disconcerting and, in some ways, terrifying phenomenon …

It is a pleasure to be commended by George P. Elliot,* whose style is quite as good when he praises as when he is finding fault. Elliot finds this fault in my Maratl Sade piece: I went too far, he …

Kafka’s recent entry into Russia has a history of its own. For several decades the visionary from Prague belonged—theoretically he still belongs—to the Unholy Trinity of Proust, Joyce, and Kafka. This Trinity has been condemned in Russia on every possible …

The issue which has been raised by the students in asking that ranks should be withheld is one which is involved in a tangle with other issues. Among these are the issues of the rightness of student deferment altogether, the …