Spring 2025

This is the first issue of Dissent published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Penn Press will be taking over the entire business end of the magazine—production, circulation, subscription fulfillment, advertising, permissions, and promotion. The new cover by the Penn …

Dissent’s editors asked a number of leading writers and intellectuals of the left to respond to the following questions: “Nineteen sixty-eight was one of the most tumultuous years in the history of the modern left. In this, its fortieth-anniversary year, …

Joanne Barkan, Paul Berman, Susan Cheever, Nicolaus Mills, Maxine Phillips, Ruth Rosen, Jim Sleeper, Michael Walzer, and Darryl Lorrenzo Wellington report from the field.

Ed. Note: Dissent does not review books by members of its editorial board, but we are happy to list books written by our colleagues. Bernard Avishai, The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace At …

The French President after his May election. Photo: Guillaume Paumier This past spring, French President Nicolas Sarkozy won 53 percent of the votes. Dissent co-editor Mitchell Cohen, Philippe Askenazy, Françoise Gaspard, Nancy L. Green, and Jean-Baptiste Soufron consider how the …

Iraqis show ink-stained fingers after voting in the January 2005 elections. Photo: Jim Goodwin (US Army) The editors of Dissent posed the following question to several respondents: Iraq has provoked the bitterest debate about American foreign policy since Vietnam. One …

The editors of Dissent asked a number of distinguished commentators to respond to the following statement and questions: For a quarter of a century, Iran has been ruled by a militant theocracy. After the shah’s regime–authoritarian, brutal, and backed by …

Is the United States facing a constitutional crisis? We posed the following question to a group of prominent writers and intellectuals who represent a range of political opinion: Many people, as politically diverse as members of the National Rifle Association …

This is a time to speak quietly and act carefully…firmly, inventively, boldly, but above all carefully. With all Americans, with decent people the world over, we mourn the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. …