An Old Story: The Corporate University  

Yale University’s plan to open a campus in the city-state of Singapore next year has been greeted with impassioned protest by much of its faculty. (Dissent subscribers can read more about this in Jim Sleeper’s article on the future of …





Archive Image

Frankenstorms  

Intense tropical cyclones would presumably have formed in the absence of the current warming of the oceans by the greenhouse effect. Maybe Sandy would have been one of those. But the fact is that Sandy is not one of those.



Archive Image

Romney, Obama, and the Myth of Single Parenthood  

Amid the barrage of humorous memes, status updates, tweets, and reports emanating from the second presidential debate, one moment was mostly lost, perhaps misfiled among those infamous “binders full of women.” When the candidates were asked to address the circulation …



The Presidential Obsession  

Liberals have an obsession with the presidency. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt strode across the political arena like a colossus (albeit a colossus in a wheelchair), liberals have tended to equate success with electing one of their own to the White …



The College Issue and a Discussion on Student Debt  

Welcome to Dissent‘s new website! On it, you’ll find our fall issue, with a special section on higher education. Right now, non-subscribers can read Aaron Bady and Mike Konczal’s “From Master Plan to No Plan: The Slow Death of Public …





An Archival History of Greater Sudan, 2007-2012  

There are two dangers in constructing a history of greater Sudan since the conclusion of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005. First, there is the pronounced tendency by interested parties to rewrite key parts of this history in ways …



Archive Image

Climate Change: Connecting the Dots  

Sometimes pictures tell the story best. Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change complied and published the results of several studies on renewable energy. The good news is that there is tremendous potential for the use of renewable forms …



Archive Image

The Curious Case of Mitt and the Apartment  

Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo notices something odd in Mitt Romney’s health insurance rhetoric. The uninsured, in Romney’s world, always live in apartments. “We don’t have people who become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have …



Archive Image

A New Era for Wal-Mart Workers?  

There is no such thing as a spontaneous strike, protest, or any other kind of social irruption. Spontaneity is just another word for ignorance on the part of those in power who are the object of subaltern scorn and protest.



Israeli Counter-Intellectuals Take Aim at Academic Freedom  

Here is one more thing in which Israel is imitating America: neocon tactics. American neocons think that American universities are overwhelmingly liberal, and so they have created alternatives in the form of think tanks designed to foster conservative thought. This, …





Archive Image

Eric Hobsbawm and the Limits of Marxism  

While Hobsbawm will be remembered as a historian of singular gifts, his writings already seem less a harbinger of the shape of things to come than sterling examples of an older kind of scholarship at its best.




Socialist thought provides us with an imaginative and moral horizon.

For insights and analysis from the longest-running democratic socialist magazine in the United States, sign up for our newsletter: