A Makeshift Alliance
A professor’s critical support for the student protests.
Fall 2024
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Putting Liberal Democracy First 
Those of us who consider ourselves “left liberals” have expressed particular alarm about the symbolic and practical dangers posed by leaders such as Donald Trump and his supporters. To name but a few: mass rallies denouncing “the liberal media”; inciting …
Last Call: Why Leftists Should Vote for Hillary Clinton
If any kind of “political revolution” is to continue, the choice on November 8 could not be clearer.
Camus on Trial
Kamel Daoud’s Meursault, contre-enquête is complex and irreverent, scorning both colonialism and Eurocentrism as well as postcolonial dreams of national liberation and clerical authority.
The Mirage of Neo-Communism
It is no longer clear that social democracy possesses a coherent and compelling political identity. But it is clear that social democracy has one important thing going for it: the serious commitment to democracy.
Public Inquiry and Democracy: Should the National Science Foundation Fund Political Science Research?
Senator Tom Coburn has introduced an amendment to prohibit NSF money from funding most political science research. But not all political scientists are upset. We should take their criticisms seriously—and still oppose the amendment.
Political Science Departments and Political Advocacy: Some Reflections By an Academic Liberal Who Believes in the Importance of Admittedly Fuzzy Boundaries
The recent decision of the Brooklyn College political science department to co-sponsor an event advocating the Palestine Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), and the loud and angry response to this decision by opponents calling for the cancellation of the …
Thinking about ‘Victory’ in Iraq
As I write in mid-May, what George W. Bush has described as “the second battle in the war on terrorism” appears to have been won. My charge is immensely easier than that presented to those who, in winter, were asked …
Right-Wing Patriotism
What William Bennett Doesn’t Understand
Jeffrey C. Isaac Responds
I argued in my Dissent essay that the campus antiwar left is moralistic and politically irresponsible. Steger asserts that my tone is one of “haughty confidence” and claims that I caricature the pacifism of the campus left and idealize “realist …
Rethinking the Cultural Cold War
Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters is a widely discussed retrospective on post—Second World War liberalism that raises important questions about the relationships between intellectuals and political power. Obsessed with …
Ends, Means, and Politics
Politics is about ends and means—about the values that we pursue and the methods by which we pursue them. In a perfect world, there would be a perfect congruence between ends and means: our ends would always be achievable through …
Thinking About Human Rights Interventionism
A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West by Noam Chomsky Verso, 2000, 145 pp., $23.00 Powerless By Design: The Age of the International Community by Michel Feher Duke University Press, 2000, 167 …
Response to Liza Featherstone
Liza Featherstone argues that United Students Against Sweatshops activists are active in other anticapitalist efforts symbolized by “Seattle,” that their anticapitalist framework furnishes them with inspiration and vision, and that their radicalism has thus empowered them. These are good points. …
Thinking About the Antisweatshop Movement
A Proposal for Modesty
