Spring 2025

The Economist, long identified with libertarian economic ideals, lauded the “Nordic model” in a cover story last month as a “centrist” economic path for global capitalism.

Throughout Mumbai, one can see members of a vast, seldom-remunerated labor pool that does not share in globalization’s promises of plenty and exists on the legal margins. Sixty-two percent of Mumbaikars live on land to which they have no legal claim.

In the last few years, Dresden became the site of an intense political struggle over how to adequately respond to thousands of neo-Nazis marching annually in the streets. It also became the site of an ongoing authoritarian-conservative backlash against social movements.

The CCTV Headquarters constitutes Koolhaas’s attempt to mitigate the pervasive banality he associates with the present. It is probably his masterpiece.

The ex-comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement is now the first party in the Italian parliament. His rise, along with the resurgence of Berlusconi, signal a stable right-wing hegemony in Italian politics and society.

A college professor once taught me that a decaying empire clenches onto power with a chokehold. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people may not be an empire, but after nearly forty-six years, it has become a sort of reigning paradigm …

For reactionaries of all stripes, complaining about the inefficiency and tyranny of clerks has long served as an excuse to call for both limited government and enhanced executive power.

Two new online exclusives on private initiatives to reform higher education: James Dennis on the CUNY Pathways Initiative and Geoff Shullenberger on the rise of the MOOCs.

It is cliché now to say that we live in a “risk society.” We simultaneously celebrate “risk-takers” and blame those who undertake “risky speculations” without much pausing over the contradiction.