In a famous essay, the political philosopher Gerry Cohen asked, “If you are an egalitarian, how come you are you so rich?” He pointed out that many professed egalitarians are quite wealthy, yet they devote only a small amount of …
The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s by Richard Wolin Princeton University Press, 2010, 391 pp. IT WOULD BE EASY—and perhaps entertaining—to write a history of Maoism in France that would …
“Why would you want to live in Israel?” Irving Howe asked me, his voice rising in bemusement. It was 1981, and we were at Leo’s Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue near 86th Street. I was two years out of Sarah …
I was raised enough of a Jew to take some things for granted: certain blessings rolling off the tongue; instinctual skepticism of pork chops; good deeds ringing in my mind as “mitzvot”; a general support for Israel. I attended a …
“Check your Rolex. It’s time for a rebellion.” In the fall of 2010, protesters against the reform of the French pension system lacked neither catchy slogans nor energy. For more than a month, unionists and a variety of left activists …
Daniel Bell’s The End of Ideology is one of the Times Literary Supplement’s “100 most influential non-fiction books published since the Second World War.” Bell, who died in late January at the age of ninety-one, never dishonored the intellectual’s motto: …
When you find yourself caught between a “9/11 Truth” banner and the contemplative face of Mumia Abu-Jamal, you may reasonably question your political judgment. And Chambers Street on this contentious September 11, 2010, was awash in the dregs of lefty …
The U.S. war in Afghanistan started off with rousing optimism in the fall of 2001, but by the end of the decade has devolved into a quagmire for U.S. troops and potential disaster for the Afghan people. For all its …
The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn Harvard University Press, 2010 344 pp., $27.95 HUMAN RIGHTS—the rights one holds simply because one is a human being—are a modern idea. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by …
In this second installment of “Party of the Future: Voices from the Millennial Generation,” we have asked a new group of under-thirty authors to talk about relationships—everything from sex to family ties to ordinary friendship. The first set of “Party …
As I walk to the Memorial of Resistance in São Paulo a few days before the election, I wonder whether a revolution is no longer necessary in Brazil. The memorial is symbolically located in what used to be the Department …
In the annals of European politics, the elections of spring 2010 will undoubtedly be viewed as a watershed. Under the twin pressures of the global financial slowdown and the Greek economic crisis, far-right parties made significant and worrisome electoral gains …
To see an MSNBC interview with Barkan about this article, click here. For resources and further reading suggested by Barkan, click here. The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. …
Senior spring of high school is supposed to be fun, that’s all there is to it. Finally, you are finished with applications for colleges, and your grades have been sent in. For once there is time to relax, to unwind. …
In the Fall 1991 issue of Dissent, Richard Rorty published an essay called “Intellectuals in Politics.” It was not a profile of model figures but something of a jeremiad, castigating American intellectuals for their disconnection from politics and standing by …
