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"The university’s financial problems tempted successive administrations to exchange its original understanding of higher education as a democratic good for a prevalent vision of education as a commodity to be profitably sold." —Alice Crary on TNS's restructuring publicseminar.org/2026/11/if-i...
If It Can Happen at The New School - Public Seminar
Alice Crary reflects on how The New School's recent restructuring undermines its historical legacy of academic freedom.
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D. Graham Burnett reflects on the experience of being a professor in the age of AI essays, and offers both appreciation and skepticism for these technologies that know more about us than we do. publicseminar.org/2026/11/styl...
Style Wars—AI Edition - Public Seminar
Humans may not be able to distinguish between AI and human creation, but do we need to? Or do we need more appreciation for style?
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“I realize we live in a political world, and whether or not you want to participate in that, crimes are committed in your name, wars are funded in your name.” —Yahia Lababidi speaks with Elizabeth Mirabelle on his new book, If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE. publicseminar.org/2026/11/yahi...
Writing Toward Mercy After Gaza - Public Seminar
An interview with a Palestinian American author on how to keep writing when poets aren’t allowed to say the word “genocide.”
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Though Pete Hegseth’s proposal to livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution never came to fruition, Safiyah Rochelle considers the implications of what it means when a state chooses to turn executions into public spectacle. publicseminar.org/2026/10/nida...
What Does the State Want Us to See? - Public Seminar
Considering the implications of when a state makes executions public following the cancelled livestream of Nidal Hasan's death
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Magyar must go against the political interests of his own party if he is serious about restoring the system of checks and balances Orbán dismantled” —Imre Szijarto on Hungary’s recent “electoral revolution” publicseminar.org/2026/10/will...
Will Hungary’s Liberation From Orbán Lead to Lasting Democratization? - Public Seminar
Péter Magyar is committed to reforming Hungary's electoral system. Can he curb his own supermajority to restore the checks and balances Orbán dismantled?
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Annie Lamar and Yuri Sepp examine what the Pentagon’s push to narrow military education to “warfighting” priorities could mean for the future of American military leadership. publicseminar.org/2026/10/why-...
Why Our Soldiers Need to Learn From Civilians - Public Seminar
The Pentagon’s assault on civilian faculty risks producing officers trained to follow orders rather than leaders capable of questioning them.
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As Brazil prepares for a run-off between incumbent President Lula da Silva and the son of former president Bolsonaro, Felippe Ramos turns to Rodrigo Nunes’s expansive understanding of the Brazilian far right in his latest book, Anatomy of Disintegration. publicseminar.org/2026/10/disi...
When Disintegration Becomes Political Desire - Public Seminar
Rodrigo Nunes’s new book explores what Brazil’s far right can teach us about the fundamental motivations of the far right across the world
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As the possibility of a blue Texas looms with the approaching midterms, Philip Dray remembers Texas’s forgotten history of populism, socialism, and radical political movements in his review of David Griscom’s The Myth of Red Texas. publicseminar.org/2026/10/myth...
When Texans Were Socialist Revolutionaries - Public Seminar
David Griscom’s The Myth of Red Texas reveals Texas’s forgotten history of populism, socialism, and radical political movements.
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Before Twitter threads and Reddit boards, there was the postcard. Karine Macarez explores how France's 1894 Dreyfus Affair gave rise to the postcard as a precursor to the echo chambers of modern social media. publicseminar.org/2026/10/befo...
Before Social Media, There Were Postcards - Public Seminar
Did Dreyfus Affair-era political postcards predict the social media echo chambers of today?
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NAZA is a damning indictment of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, putting to rest any remaining sense “that the bulk of the deaths in Gaza were unintended, unforeseeable collateral damage,” writes Mitchell Abidor. publicseminar.org/2026/10/naza/
NAZA Gives A Name to the Machinery of Killing - Public Seminar
Mitchell Abidor examines NAZA, the documentary on the Gaza genocide by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and the testimony at its center.
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In a conversation with Emma Robertson, Nancy Folbre talks about her book Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First and the hidden economy of care—the unpaid labor of raising children, supporting loved ones, and caring for one another. publicseminar.org/2026/10/cari...
Caring About Care - Public Seminar
Nancy Folbre's bold critique of conventional economics reveals why the time and money we devote to care work is vital to our economic future.
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“The village does not need to prove that everyone uses the kiosk every day. It needs to prove that when the network thins out, when weather intervenes, when something goes wrong, the box still belongs to the category of things people may need.” – Nicholas Cooke publicseminar.org/2026/10/the-...
The Last Phone Box in Sharrington - Public Seminar
In a small English village, the threat of eliminating the community’s last working phone box brings its residents together.
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Natalia Lomaia explores the female voice, patriarchy, sound, desire, and the limits of self-control through Anne Carson and Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film The Double Life of Veronique. publicseminar.org/2026/10/is-t...
Is There “Another Human Essence Than Self”? - Public Seminar
Exploring the female voice, patriarchy, sound, desire, and the limits of self-control through Anne Carson and Krzysztof Kieślowski
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For 70 years, Italy has promised a bridge across the Strait of Messina. But the long-delayed megaproject has instead become a symbol of political power and economic optimism. publicseminar.org/2026/09/the-...
The Magic Bridge - Public Seminar
by Giuliano Fleri. For 70 years, Italy has promised a bridge across the Messina Strait. Today, the project remains unfinished.
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“Nobody gets paid. We do it because it’s a calling to tell these stories,” Susan Simensky Bietila tells Julie Allan, reflecting on organizing art builds alongside Indigenous water protectors and creating graphic nonfiction rooted in activism. publicseminar.org/2026/09/art-...
Art for the Front Lines - Public Seminar
Susan Simensky Bietela describes her experiences creating art for social justice and her work with the World War 3 Illustrated collective.
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“The optimism and vitality of the revolution passed soon into another stasis, the long anticipation of the new election.” —Ned Wontner on the 2024 July uprising in Bangladesh and its aftermath publicseminar.org/2026/09/wait...
Waiting for Revolution in Bangladesh - Public Seminar
Policy researcher Ned Wontner recounts the days leading up to the 2024 uprising in Bangladesh that ousted Sheikh Hasina.
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Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Sean Jacobs speak with Nolan Young on how their book, The Palgrave Handbook on Decolonizing International Affairs, interrogates colonialism’s long shadow over modern life and forges a path towards exorcising it from international studies. publicseminar.org/2026/09/a-ca...
A Call for Course Correction - Public Seminar
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Sean Jacobs's new book applies a decolonial framework to climate change, global trade, and yes, academia.
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A decade and a half after that first night at Zuccotti Park, what has the Left learned from Occupy Wall Street? Nara Roberta Silva argues that Occupy’s legacy should be one of “reclaiming strategy in its deeper and expansive senses.” publicseminar.org/2026/09/occu...
Occupy, Fifteen Years Later - Public Seminar
A decade and a half after that first night at Zuccotti Park, Nara Roberta Silva explores how the movement transformed strategy on the Left.
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In a conversation with @apetrossiants.bsky.social, Samuel Stein discusses his new book, A Right to Housing?, and talks reframing the conversation as a right to more than just housing, and “what it means to declare a right that we can’t act on.” publicseminar.org/2026/09/take...
Take Back the City - Public Seminar
Samuel Stein talks public-private housing, Mamdani, and the relative unimportance of hope in his new book, A Right to Housing?
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Jeff Dolven explores the history and meaning of that most taken-for-granted of linguistic building blocks, the sentence, and asks if it might not be possible to imagine a new technic for writing. @socres.org publicseminar.org/2026/09/the-...
The End of the Sentence - Public Seminar
Jeff Dolven explores the function, history, and relative importance of a workhorse of speech: the sentence.
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What do skateboarding, John Waters, Pee-wee Herman, and Jackass have in common? For Kayley Cassidy, all four embody freedom, both bodily and from the nebulous concept of “taste.” publicseminar.org/2026/09/drop...
Why Does Dropping Acid Leave Such a Bad Taste? - Public Seminar
On the tantalizing gender freedom promised by skateboarding, Pee-wee Herman, and the Jackass films.
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“Almanza makes clear that even as we work toward a future where prisons are not needed, we must reconsider how we confine people in the present. Abolition, that is, does not happen overnight” —Emma Robertson on Emily Almanza’s debut book, The Price of Mercy publicseminar.org/2026/08/how-...
How to Incentivize Justice - Public Seminar
Emma Robertson reviews The Price of Mercy, a book by Emily Galvin Almanza that reflects on the US prison system and its possible futures.
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Thomas Liess and William Milberg argue that Trump’s latest tariffs are not the altruistic tool to fight forced labor they claim to be, but a self-serving way to “refill the US tariff revenue coffers." publicseminar.org/2026/08/tari...
Tariffs to Eliminate Forced Labor - Public Seminar
President Donald J. Trump at the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas (2026) | Official White House Photo by Molly Riley...Read More
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Speaking with Austin Tannenbaum, @ajawoods.bsky.social , author of The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, explores how a once-fringe far-right belief became a “political weapon” for conservatives like Ted Cruz. @versobooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-...
The Cultural Marxism Bogeyman - Public Seminar
Austin Tannenbaum interviews author A. J. A. Woods about their new book, The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, and critical theory in culture wars.
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Nancy K. Miller discusses autofiction, internet-speak, and other literary developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, asking: As modernism transformed the novel, will artificial intelligence now reframe the memoir genre? @socres.org publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-...
The New Millennium - Public Seminar
From The Invention of Painting (ca. 1808) | Louis Ducis / Public Domain Every style is a means of insisting...Read More
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In her review of Ben Lerner’s latest novel, Transcription, Elena Rotzokou explores how the pursuit of an exact recording can obscure the messy realities of family and friendship. publicseminar.org/2026/07/tran...
An Embarrassment of Exactness in Ben Lerner’s Transcription - Public Seminar
Truth, interpretation, and exactitude are entangled with the messy realities of family in Ben Lerner's latest novel.
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“The device of ventriloquism is awkward . . . it involves both distancing and intimacy.” — @lanalin.bsky.social speaking with Katie Pruden on writing from her partner’s perspective in The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam. @dorothyproject.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2026/07/inte...
The Queer Tendency of The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam - Public Seminar
Katie Pruden interviews author Lana Lin about reimagining Gertrude Stein’s form in The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (Dorothy Project, 2026)
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Big tech jostles for market access, energy, and the most valuable resource of all, the state, writes Nolan Young in a review of Nick Srnicek’s new book, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI. @politybooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-...
The Silicon Empire's Interregnum - Public Seminar
Nolan Yong reviews Nick Srnicek's Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI and discusses the fusion of big tech with state interests.
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“Hate expressed across different structural positions is received entirely differently: pathologized in some, legitimized in others.” —L. Zhang on Şeyda Kurt’s new book, Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion @versobooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2026/07/agai...
Against “Peace and Love” - Public Seminar
Lydia Zhang reviews Şeyda Kurt’s, Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion (Verso, 2025), newly translated from German to English.
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Shere Hite’s 1976 survey of women’s sex lives “broke the story that sex was not just a private affair between two people.” Speaking with Rachel Potter, Rosa Campbell discusses her new book on Hite, The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared. publicseminar.org/2026/07/re-r...
Re-Revolutionizing the Female Orgasm - Public Seminar
Rachel Potter interviews Rosa Campbell about her scholarly biography Shere Hite, The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared
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