Cultural Criticism and Analysis

Jaime Cook, principal of Sackets Harbor Central School.

The People Are Resisting While the Elites Are Surrendering The People Are Resisting While the Elites Are Surrendering

The Ivy League is silently complicit in Trump’s war on international students.

Apr 14, 2025 / Jeet Heer

“Blues People” and Black Life: A Conversation With Imani Perry

“Blues People” and Black Life: A Conversation With Imani Perry “Blues People” and Black Life: A Conversation With Imani Perry

We spoke with the scholar about Black in Blues, a poetic exploration of the relationship between the color blue and Black people.

Apr 14, 2025 / Q&A / Elias Rodriques

9 Ways You Can Save the Internet Right Now

9 Ways You Can Save the Internet Right Now 9 Ways You Can Save the Internet Right Now

Because the danger to cultural preservation has never been greater.

Apr 11, 2025 / Maria Bustillos

Two men in suits sitting down. One of them is holding several papers and addressing a microphone.

Worse Than McCarthyism: Universities in the Age of Trump Worse Than McCarthyism: Universities in the Age of Trump

The target then was the nonexistent threat of Communist teachers; today, it’s the supposed radicalism of the academy and its alleged failure to fight antisemitism.

Apr 3, 2025 / Ellen Schrecker

A student walks past the Rotunda, under renovation, on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville.

Trump’s Academic Purge Will Make America Stupid and Provincial Again Trump’s Academic Purge Will Make America Stupid and Provincial Again

The administration’s targeting of international students is a return to a disgraced tradition of xenophobic anti-intellectualism.

Mar 31, 2025 / Jeet Heer

Roxane Gay on What Feminism Can Do in This Moment

Roxane Gay on What Feminism Can Do in This Moment Roxane Gay on What Feminism Can Do in This Moment

An interview with the best-selling author about her latest project, The Portable Feminist Reader.

Mar 25, 2025 / Q&A / Sara Franklin

Dodger Jackie Robinson stealing home in a Cubs game on May 1, 1952.

Brooklyn Dodger 1, Draft Dodger 0 Brooklyn Dodger 1, Draft Dodger 0

Donald Trump picked on the wrong athlete. Even though Jackie Robinson died in 1972, last week he bested Trump in a contest about the role of racism and the civil rights movement.

Mar 24, 2025 / Peter Dreier

JKF riding in a car through a parade.

JFK Assassination: The Final Secrets JFK Assassination: The Final Secrets

The release of the John F. Kennedy papers sets a standard for transparency that must also be applied to the current administration.

Mar 21, 2025 / Peter Kornbluh

Mario Savio, a leader of the University of California Free Speech Movement, center, with Jack Weinberg and Susan Goldberg and other arrested demonstrators during their trial, Berkeley, California, 1965.

America Needs a New Free Speech Movement America Needs a New Free Speech Movement

Donald Trump is showing us what an unaccountable class of corporate decision-makers looks like—and it looks like a lot of fear, and a terrible loss of freedom.

Mar 19, 2025 / Zephyr Teachout

Trump Took Over the Kennedy Center, but Silencing the Arts Will Not Be So Easy

Trump Took Over the Kennedy Center, but Silencing the Arts Will Not Be So Easy Trump Took Over the Kennedy Center, but Silencing the Arts Will Not Be So Easy

Our last best hope for sharing, shaping, and wrangling over independent ideas may turn out to be America’s scrappy and disparate arts spaces—if they can hang on financially.

Mar 18, 2025 / Alisa Solomon

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