From late November 1995 until a few days before Christmas, the workers of France’s public sector occupied center stage. They brought buses and subways in French cities to a halt, cut rail traffic to a trickle, slowed the flow of …
Dissent has always taken pride in its openness to a range of democratic and egalitarian ideas, its refusal to impose a “party line.” This makes for bracing intellectual exercise, as one follows the converging and colliding trajectories of its editors’ …
In December 1993 a law known as Finanziaria 1993 was approved by the Italian legislature. A minor article of this law, article 4, introduced a revolution in the Italian educational system, since it required that each single school should be …
This is an oddly depressing book. The oddity has little to do with its allegiances, more to do with its tone, its view of what is worth writing and thinking about, and its author’s conception of the human condition. It …
A key finding in a new Department of Justice report on the nation’s prison population is attracting considerable attention: nearly 7 percent of black males were in prison in 1994, compared with less than 1 percent of white males. These …
When Raymond Williams died suddenly in 1988, at the age of sixty-six, the tributes were generous and admiring to the point of being fulsome, and he was hailed as, among other things, the greatest socialist thinker of his time in …
Editors: Nicolaus Mills (Affirmative Action Symposium, Fall1995) is correct to point out that “[t]he left needs to acknowledge all that affirmative action cannot do…” and that “liberals [should] worry more about…undoing [the past] altogether [rather than compensating for it].” Affirmative …
The Baffler is a Chicago-based political and cultural journal produced by a circle of writers, activists, and musicians in their twenties. But you knew that already: for the last few years, the buzz surrounding the magazine has been difficult to …
I was in Kazakhstan not long ago, on a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to assist the Kazakh Parliament with its drafting of an electoral law. The trip was going smoothly until a critical moment occurred. …
In the last year the American focus on Cuba has shifted from emigration to trade. The threat of unwanted landings of hundreds of thousands of boat people has abated. Nearly all the Guantinamo refugees have been transferred to Florida without …
The Arguments section has been the liveliest part of the last few Dissents (and judging from readers’ responses, the most popular). The actual arguments have focused, several times now,on race and politics in America, and so we decided to treat …
I thought it was only the corporate breed who cut to “the bottom line.” At any rate, Joel Rogers protests too much. The purpose of my comments on the New Party was not to bury what is clearly the wisest …
Recently I found myself discussing the dawning of contemporary feminism with two young women—one a first-year student at Brandeis and another a senior in high school about to enter Brandeis. My cousin—the high school senior—was writing her senior thesis on …
Sometime in late 1992, there was a rally in Little Rock, Arkansas, where President-elect Bill Clinton was busily sorting through résumés and position papers. Although the rally drew about a thousand people, it was little noted in the major media; …
Graduate students go on strike at Yale. The California Board of Regents strikes down affirmative action in the University of California system. Massive student marches clog lower Manhattan. Each of these incidents—and many others—testifies to a deep and wrenching, if …
