We speak as Americans of the democratic left. We wish to advance our views regarding the current American situation—without, of course, any pretense to completeness or agreement on every point. Our hope is to stimulate the forces that work for …
During three years of reporting on anti–free-speech tendencies in higher education, I’ve been at more than twenty colleges and universities—from Washington and Lee and Columbia to Mesa State in Colorado and Stanford. On this voyage of initially reverse expectations— with …
Prague is lovely in springtime when a cloud-burst clears the air and sun lights up the bright green slopes above the river and the pastel facades of the Old Town. The narrow streets fill with folk; there is music in …
We print below an excerpt from Benevolence and Betrayal, an extremely rich portrayal of the fate of the Italian Jews during the Second World War. By showing the varying fates of several Italian Jewish families, Alexander Stille, a gifted young writer …
At the beginning of 1990, the ideology of laissez-faire had made a triumphal return to the Polish political scene, and nothing appeared likely to disturb the self-assurance of the neoliberals. By now, however, there are increasing signs of disarray, crisis, …
Following the referendum on the union held last March, President Mikhail Gorbachev and his supporters claimed that the outcome demonstrated that a majority of the people in the Soviet Union wanted to maintain the union. Putting aside the ambiguity in …
Though it lasted only sixteen months, the magazine Seven Arts (1916-17) defined an important cultural moment in the United States. Distinctively American but cosmopolitan, modernist in commitment but democratic and constructive in spirit, Seven Arts was, in the phrase of …
Dear Jirina, In June 1990, we sat in your Prague apartment sipping tea as a soft summer breeze floated through opened windows. I asked you endless questions about the experiences of female dissidents and the problems facing Czechoslovakian women after …
David Miller’s “A Vision of Market Socialism” (Summer 1991) is a thought-provoking contribution to Dissent’s ongoing discussion of this topic. He deserves our appreciation for the way in which he specifies five basic socialist values and then defends his model …
Two hot-selling, over-analyzed gossip books— Julia Phillips’s You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again and Kitty Kelley’s Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography—give pause to consider the peculiar symbiosis that exists between those who acquire power in our society and …
The Founding Fathers were dubious about democracy. They thought that most of their fellow citizens knew too little to have a voice in political decisions. Writing a Constitution for a country in which few men, and fewer women, were educated …
Securus iudicat orbis terrarum, says a maxim of Roman law; which means, loosely translated: the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement can’t all be wrong. Isaiah Berlin is a certified sage, an …
Multiculturalism is in the air. The recent movement in American education—both in the schools and in colleges and universities— to incorporate into the curriculum works from non-Western cultures has aroused an exceptional amount of public debate. A cover story in …
Since the fall from power of the ruling parties in Eastern Europe during the amazing events of autumn 1989, most commentators in the West and the East have proclaimed the death of communism. If communism is defined as consisting of …
Nowhere in Europe did the Gulf War provoke so explosive a public debate as in unified Germany. It was not Germany’s reluctance to contribute military forces to the coalition (deployment of troops outside of NATO territory is prohibited by the …
