In Defense of Universalism 
The squeamishness of today’s left has turned culture into the political terrain of the right.
Spring 2025
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In Defense of Universalism
Keith Ellison’s Narrow Victory
Minnesotans voted to reelect the attorney general who prosecuted Derek Chauvin. The result holds important lessons for the Democratic Party on its approach to criminal justice.
Los Angeles Is Creating a Model for Fighting Mass Incarceration
Abolitionists and advocates of criminal justice reform in Los Angeles County have amassed some impressive victories, laying out a vision for reducing incarceration and providing care that could have national significance.
Black Capitalism in One City
Soul City was a boondoggle—not a story of lost or forgotten roads tragically not taken.
The Carceral Logic of Child Welfare
An interview with Dorothy Roberts, the author of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.
The Political Philosophy of Care
In Reckoning, Deva Woodly makes a case for radical Black feminist pragmatism, a philosophy “that takes lessons from many twentieth-century ideologies and forges them into a political ethic for our times.”
The Deep History of Climate Change
An interview with Amitav Ghosh, the author of The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.
Permission to Imagine
A new collection of Stuart Hall’s writing offers a guide to the limits of representation in building anti-racist politics.
Why Do We Call the Police?
An interview with Derecka Purnell, the author of Becoming Abolitionists, about what makes communities unsafe—and how she went from calling 911 to fighting for abolition.
The Ivory Tower Is Dead
A discussion on the rise of the “UniverCity.”
The New Black Internationalism
The Movement for Black Lives has developed an incipient internationalist language and vision, with the potential to remap America’s place in the world.
Academia After the Pandemic
A roundtable on how COVID-19 has changed American universities.
Racial Metaphors
If colorblindness rests on the claim that the civil rights movement changed everything, the idea that racism is in our DNA borders on a fatalistic proposition that it changed little or nothing.
Racism’s Roots and Branches
Racism in the United States is not mainly about individual bias but about divisions forged long ago by the super-exploitation and political dispossession of racialized groups.
Why We Need Good Police
Even after a massive redistribution of resources, there will remain a need for an agency with the authority to investigate, restrain, and detain those who insist upon criminally victimizing their neighbors.
