A New Chapter
Correspondence with Vladimir Kara-Murza, American liberalism, and more
This week at Public Seminar, we’re debuting our website redesign. We hope you like it!
We’re taking a break from publishing over July and August. Until the fall semester, please enjoy our archive, and make sure to read our editor’s picks from the past week, which include a letter from Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, and a book review of Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century.
Wishing you a safe and happy summer,
Public Seminar
Letter from a Russian Prison
“In Russia, major upheavals always come unexpectedly. Both the Tsarist Empire in March 1917 and the Soviet regime in August 1991 literally collapsed in three days—and no one predicted it. It will be the same next time.” In correspondence with journalists Anastasia Shteinert and Alex Strelnikov, Russian activist Vladimir Kara-Murza reflects on the future of Russia and his 25-year prison sentence for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. (June 26, 2023)
Conspiracy Theories
In the latest episode of Why Now?, Claire Potter chats with Jeffrey Toobin about the parallels between the January 6 insurrection and Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. (June 26, 2023)
The New Democrats
“In March 1990, delegates gathered at New Orleans’s beaux arts Fairmont Hotel for the annual conference of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Many New Orleanians continued to call the hotel by its midcentury name—’The Roosevelt’—and in the early 1930s, Louisiana’s legendary populist leader Huey Long maintained a lavish suite there. To the conference-goers of 1990, this history was freighted with significance. For they had come to New Orleans, they said, to lay to rest the ghosts of twentieth-century liberalism.” Henry Tonks reviews Brent Cebul’s Illusions of Progress and its challenge to common narratives about liberalism’s rise and fall. (June 27, 2023)