Spring 2025

Among the most controversial opinions in this past year’s term of the United States Supreme Court was U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, where five justices, over the bitter dissent of their four colleagues, struck down Arkansas’s attempt to impose term …

When I first came to work at Dissent, Mark Levinson told me a little about the different people who worked at the magazine. When he got to Manny, he said, “You’ll like Manny. Manny’ll make you feel at home.” Then …

It was not long ago that very few readers had heard of Michael Eric Dyson. However, during the past five years Dyson has been an intellectual whirlwind. His writings have appeared in many national journals, he has published two books, …

A lot of good people came to Washington last October 16. Surveys published afterward suggest that the “million men,” whatever their actual number, were a substantial representation of the African American working class and middle class (except that both these …

Last spring and summer, as Newt Gingrich and his followers gleefully set about dismantling what remained of the American welfare state, there were many stories in the press about the debut of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard. For those …

Fidel Castro came to New York this past fall and had the wisdom to conclude his visit by popping into the offices of the New York Times. He boasted about how he had tricked the Times correspondent Herbert Matthews into …

The aim of my essay was not to measure reputations, as Martin Kilson claims The aim was to assess how reputations get measured these days. The essay grew from my dismay at how the conceits of celebrity journalism have increasingly …

In the spring of 1995, I taught an undergraduate class in women’s studies at Rutgers University, a large public university. All of the students, even the “nontraditional” ones, were younger than I. I felt a fine affection for my students: …

The Mexican devaluation and subsequent crisis of December-January, 1994-1995 put all Latin American governments on alert. The “tequila effect,” as the Mexican debacle was known, was the result of problems facing the whole region, despite avowals by government ministers in …

Let me say straight off that I do not think the Sean Wilentz article “Race, Celebrity, and the Intellectuals” (Summer 1995) warranted publication in Dissent. Why? Because of protocol. As a long-time reader of Dissent from its start-up days under …

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there …

Two and a half years as book editor at the Muppets opened my eyes: we live in the age of the licensed image. Before my sensitization, I admit I’d never reflected on the “source” of, say, the Mickey Mouse watch …

Seventy years ago, American elites knew how to enforce the two-party system. “In 1924,” Robert and Helen Lynd reported in their classic study, Middletown, “It was considered such ‘bad business’ to vote for the third party [the Progressives, who ran …

I am not going to join the argument between Sean Wilentz and Martin Kilson, both of whom are fellow editors and friends of mine. But I do want to say in response to Kilson that I am glad that the …