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The University and the Company Man  

Not so long ago, the social contract between workers, government, and employers made college a calculable bet. We built a university system for the way we worked. What happens to college when that social contract is broken—when we work not just differently but for less? And what if the crisis in higher education is related to the broader failures that have left so many workers struggling?



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The Rise of Respectability Politics  

What started as a philosophy promulgated by black elites to “uplift the race” by correcting the “bad” traits of the black poor has evolved into one of the hallmarks of black politics in the age of Obama. In an era marked by rising inequality and declining economic mobility for most Americans—but particularly for black Americans—the politics of respectability works to accommodate neoliberalism.













Howard Zinn’s History Lessons  

Every work of history, according to Howard Zinn, is a political document. He titled his thick survey A People’s History so that no potential reader would wonder about his own point of view: “With all its limitations, it is a history …





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The Last Page  

Dissent has recently acquired a fax machine—not, to be sure, the very latest model, the cast-off of one of our editors who is “upgrading,” but a new machine for us nonetheless. Will this make us more efficient? Maybe so, and …



“What’s in a Name?”  

I had forgotten the incident completely, until I read Trey Ellis’s essay, “Remember My Name,” in a recent issue of the Village Voice (June 13, 1989). But there, in the middle of an extended italicized list of the by-names of …