On Wall Street  

For over half a century, Dissent made its home in what was once affectionately called in these pages “the intellectual kibbutz of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.” The neighborhood was synonymous with Jewish intellectual life. It was a small world, perhaps, …





Introduction  

If U.S. higher education is in crisis, as a spate of recent books and articles would have it, then it’s a strange crisis. Outside the anti-intellectual Right, and even inside it when its writers forget themselves, we hear that advanced …





From the Many, 99 Percent  

The financial crisis and the ruin of recession are only a few years old, but we’ve been marching for forty years toward income inequality, a service-based economy (finance and fast food), and political rule by and for the rich. Where …











Holidays  

My father moved out the summer before I began middle school, just before I turned twelve. The first months of separation were marked by his efforts to reach out to my two sisters and me. He came to all our …