In last week’s Partial Readings, I suggested that conservatives and other corporate allies in Washington are most successful when they advance regressive laws and dismember progressive ones behind the scenes, rather than seeking public approval—or even majority approval in Congress—for …
If pressed to reduce the last century of economic history into one graphic, I would go with something like this. The blue line traces the rise and decline of organized labor since the end of the First World War. The …
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.
Almost four years into the “recovery,” the employment picture is still grim. It’s not just the unemployment rate’s agonizingly slow descent. We still face persistently high rates of underemployment (including those who would like to work but have given up …
If there’s one thing that brings out the top ten–list impulse in progressive journalists, it’s the rantings of conservatives. By standing up for, say, rape and slavery in spite of the damage they risk to their public image, today’s Tea …
Forty-eight years ago tomorrow, on March 21, 1965, I was part of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. There were only 3,200 of us who started out from Brown Chapel on that bright Alabama Sunday, but as far as …
Last Saturday, two undercover police officers in an unmarked car approached a teenager walking down the street in his Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush after he broke off from a group of friends. According to police reports, Kimani Gray, sixteen, …
The following is an exchange based on a recent Dissent article by Meredith Tax. To take part in the debate, you can visit Dissent’s Facebook page. In her essay “An Expedient Alliance? The Muslim Right and The Anglo-American Left,” …
In November 2000, as Argentina’s economic crisis escalated, the country’s bishops, led by Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, emerged from a plenary conference with a statement that was hardly welcome news to proponents of economic neoliberalism. Arguing that the true …
Wednesday, March 13, the news broke and took practically everyone by surprise: Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, from Argentina, had been elected Pope. I was at home, standing at the bottom of the stairs, when I heard the news on television. I …
We are pleased to announce that in just a few weeks, Dissent will launch our first podcast, Belabored, with hosts Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe. Josh and Sarah are among the finest labor journalists working today. And we hear they …
The decision to let this pipeline come through America is the most fateful decision you will ever make, Mr. President. It would be like jabbing a dirty needle into this country from Canada. It would be like lighting a fuse …
How Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities inspired PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s intellectual conversion.
Will the next pope embrace liberation theology? The conventional answer would be: fat chance. However, without going too far out on a limb, one could also answer in the affirmative. In their own ways, both responses will likely be correct. …
With Chuck Hagel confirmed as Secretary of Defense after a 58-41 vote on Tuesday—the tightest confirmation vote ever for a Pentagon chief, split almost exactly along partisan lines—the hubbub over Obama’s second-term cabinet appointments is beginning to subside. It’s been …
