Back to School

The heck with Zoom -- have your students read Public Seminar

After a short August hiatus, we are back with fresh, new essays that—as we promise—address the pressing issues of our times. Don’t forget to check the “syllabi” we published every week while we were away: on Black Lives Matter, Covid-19, and last week’s, on Election2020, each with terrific essays to weave into your course readings.

Race

• Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King, “A New Era in America’s Racial Politics: How a racial reparations alliance can prove that Black lives matter.” (August 27, 2020)

• Karyn Lacy, “Why We Shouldn’t Try to Erase America’s Racist Past: Twitter’s misguided attempts at censorship.” (August 25, 2020)

• Daniel Osborn, “Good History Makes the Familiar Strange to Us: Why The 1619 curriculum belongs in our schools.” (August 26, 2020)

Plague

• Isabel Perera and Sidney Tarrow, “What America Got Wrong About COVID-19–and What We Can Learn from France and Italy: Institutional fragmentation and a lack of national solidarity have derailed the pandemic response.” (August 27, 2020)

• Eileen Hunt Botting and Edwin Michael, “The Pandemic Has Revealed the Driving Values of American Higher Education: Universities like UNC are going online for the public good, while other universities persist in reopening for perceived prestige and elite branding.” (August 24, 2020)

• Teresa Ghilarducci, “How to Reopen the American Economy Now: We don’t have to choose between a depression and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.”

Justice

• Dahlia Lithwick and Claire Potter, “Covering SCOTUS in the Age of Trump: A conversation with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick.” (August 27, 2020)

Classics Reconsidered

• Steven B. Smith, “What Did Aristotle Think About Slavery? Why we need to read great books closely.” (August 27, 2020)

Conceptual Puzzlement

• Ben Kodres-O’Brien, “Is Capitalism in Crisis, Dying, Dead — or Very Much Alive, for Better or Worse? In search of an elusive concept.” (August 27, 2020)