David Graeber: Anthropologist/Economics/History (Azimuths)

David Graeber (Website on him and his work)

David Graeber Institute ["We believe that a different social narrative has started to emerge which unleashes the political imaginary and reshapes public common sense. It is leading many people throughout the world to challenge the status quo through concrete actions, projects or structures that are making our societies socially and ecologically just and sustainable. The David Graeber Institute (DGI) provides a platform for projects related both directly to David Graeber’s legacy, developing his ideas and for projects that will take on a life of their own, continuing and contributing to his work."]

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Azeez, Hawzhin, et al. "Remembering the Many Lives of Our Friend David Graeber."  ROAR (September 13, 2020)  ["David embodied humanity. His immeasurable generosity of spirit, his astonishing ethics as an anarchist and academic, his legacy with Occupy Wall Street, his open unwavering solidarity with the oppressed of the world, including the struggles of Rojava — all elevate him to one of the greatest visionaries of our times. As the oppressed, we needed intellectuals of such giant proportions to stand in solidarity and unwavering support with us. For those of us who knew what he contributed to our lives and to our struggles, his loss is an unbearable burden."]

Calhoun, Craig and David Graeber. "The Democracy Project." The London School of Economics and Political Science." (April 30, 2013)

Deloria, Philip, et al. "A New History of Humanity." Open Source (August 11, 2022) ["Giant questions this hour, and a slew of fresh answers: Where do we humans come from? Who are we, after all? Where are we going? Was our pre-history a Garden of Eden, or a nasty war of survival, or some of both? Are we human beings good or evil, by the way? Pretty much the same, the world around, or many different varieties? An anthropologist and an archaeologist walked into a bar, so to speak—into an endless chain of emails, in fact, and produced a bestseller, chock full of Stone Age history and modern science. Their book is titled The Dawn of Everything. A main argument is that we’ve been one free-wheeling, improvisational species for fifty thousand years. A main question might be: when and how did we get to feel so stuck in this 21st century? Make way this hour for the news of our human pre-history. Could it be: that our Stone Age ancestors were just as smart as we are, as playful and strong—if anything more inventive and adaptive than we, as they settled a planet and seeded a great variety of civilizations 10,000 years ago? The questions come from a surprise bestseller, The Dawn of Everything: it’s a 600-page brick of a book by an anthropologist and an archeologist, sharing fresh evidence and best guesses in A New History of Humanity. The sadness in reading it is that the American co-author David Graeber died as he was finishing the great work of his life. The relief is that his writing partner in London, David Wengrow, is still grappling with the puzzles they posed."]

Dubrosky, Nika and David Graeber. 

Evans, Ellen and Jon Moses. "Interview with David Graeber." The White Review (December 2011)

Glaser, Eliane. "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber review – the myth of capitalist efficiency." The Guardian (May 25, 2018)

Graeber, David. "America's Kurdish allies risk being wiped out – by NATO." The Guardian (February 1, 2019)

---. "Concerning the Violent Peace-Police: An Open Letter to Chris Hedges." N + 1 (February 9, 2012)

---. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011 [PDF file of the Book: also available Here]

---. "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years." Mute (February 10, 2009)

---. Direct Action: An Ethnography Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009. [Entire book in PDF format]

---. "I didn't understand how widespread rape was. Then the penny dropped." The Guardian (November 5, 2017)

---. "‘I had to guard an empty room’: The rise of the pointless job." The Guardian (May 4, 2018)

---. "Occupy and anarchism's gift of democracy. The US imagines itself a great democracy, yet most Americans despise its politics. Which is why direct democracy inspires them." The Guardian (November 15, 2011)

---. "Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots: The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles." Al Jazeera (November 30, 2011)

---. "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit." The Baffler #19 (March 2012)

---. "On Bureaucratic Technologies & the Future as Dream-Time." School of Visual Arts (January 19, 2012)

---. "On Inequality and Human History." Against the Grain (November 21, 2018) ["Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was the key turning point in human history, when hunter gatherers gave up roaming in small egalitarian tribes and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact. Graeber interrogates this chronicle of paradise lost — and much more."]

---. "On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs." libcom (August 20, 2013)

---. "Roy Bhaskar Obituary." The Guardian (December 4, 2014) ["One of the most influential voices in the philosophy of science and a political revolutionary."]

---. "The Shock of Victory." UK Indymedia (October 15, 2007)

---. The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. Fararr, Straus, and Giroux, 2024. ["Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews. "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes. There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a mythical past. Thinking against the grain, Graeber was one of the few who dared to imagine a new understanding of the past and a liberatory vision of the future—to imagine a social order based on humans’ fundamental freedom. In essays published over three decades and ranging across the biggest issues of our time— inequality, technology, the identity of “the West,” democracy, art, power, anger, mutual aid, and protest—he challenges the old assumptions about political life. A trenchant critic of the order of things, and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to human freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different. During a moment of daunting upheaval and pervasive despair, the incisive, entertaining, and urgent essays collected in The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . . , edited and with an introduction by Nika Dubrovsky and with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, make for essential and inspiring reading. They are a profound reminder of Graeber’s enduring significance as an iconic, playful, necessary thinker."]

---. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Melville House, 2015.

---. "What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?" The Baffler #24 (2014)

---. "Why are world leaders backing this brutal attack against Kurdish Afrin?" The Guardian (February 23, 2018)

Graeber, David and Astra Taylor. "Democracy May Not Exist, But We Will Miss It When It's Gone." At the Bookshop (December 16, 2019) ["In her latest book, Astra Taylor – ‘a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity’s most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions’ (Naomi Klein) – argues that democracy is not just in crisis, but that real democracy, inclusive and egalitarian, has never existed. Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (Verso) aims to re-examine what we mean by democracy, what we want from it, and understand why it is so hard to realize."]

Graeber, David and David Wengrow. "How to Change the Course of Human History (at least, the part that's already happened)." Eurozine (March 2, 2018)

Purves, Miranda. "You’re Not Just Imagining It. Your Job Is Absolute BS." Bloomberg (May 15, 2018)

Robinson, Andrew. "Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power." Cease Fire (September 9, 2011) ["The dominant worldview of medieval Europe was of a natural order which is hierarchical, stable, monolithic and immutable, but poised on the brink of disaster or ‘cosmic terror’, and hence in need of constant maintenance of order. This is similar to Aristotle’s view. For Bakhtin, such a view is oppressive and intolerant. It closes language to change. The fear of ‘cosmic terror’, the pending collapse of order if things got out of control (or the threat posed by the Real to the master-signifier), was used by elites to justify hierarchy and to subdue popular revolt and critical consciousness. Today, we might think of this vision of monolithic order in terms of fantasies of ‘broken Britain’, of civilisation under siege from extremists, and a discourse of risk-management (and the crisis-management of ‘ungovernability’) in which ‘terrorism’, disease, protest, deviance and natural disaster fuse into a secularised vision of cosmic collapse. This vision of collapse has infiltrated legal and political discourse to such a degree that any excess of state power seems ‘proportionate’ against this greater evil. The folk view expressed in carnival and carnivalesque, and related speech-genres such as swearing and popular humour, opposes and subverts this vision. For Bakhtin, cosmic terror and the awe induced by the system’s violent power are the mainstays of its affective domination. Folk culture combats the fear created by cosmic terror.""]

Shaviro, Steven. "Anarchism and Principle of Play: Steven Shaviro reviews David Graeber’s posthumous essay collection The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World." Los Angeles Review of Books (November 15, 2024) ["The volume’s title comes from an earlier book by Graeber: in The Utopia of Rules, he wrote that “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” Such rhetoric is typical for Graeber: a phrase that sounds grandiose (“the ultimate, hidden truth”) is brought down to earth, since the “secret” really consists of things that we already do on an everyday basis. Graeber is unusually optimistic for an anti-capitalist activist: he seeks to remind us that we ourselves have ultimately constructed the forms and institutions that oppress us, which means that these structures of social and economic life have no necessity to them but can be reorganized in multiple ways. Some of these ways may in fact be substantially better than anything we have now."]

 Taylor, Astra, et al. "David Graeber, 1961–2020." The New York Review of Books  (September 5, 2020) ["David Graeber, the anthropologist and activist, died aged fifty-nine on September 2, 2020. The New York Review, to which he began contributing last year, is collecting tributes from his friends and colleagues."]

Velmet, Aro. "An Interview with David Graeber: Anarchism, work and bureaucracy." Eurozine (May 9, 2017)

The Big Lebowski (USA: Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998)

 

The Big Lebowski (USA: Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998: 117 mins)

Ager, Rob. "Greatest Screen Heroes: The Dude in The Big Lebowski." (Posted on Youtube: September 7, 2014)

Beyl, Cameron. "The Coen Brothers." The Directors Series (7 Video Essays: 2017)

Brandt, Jimmy. "Does the Dude Abide by the Tao?: A comparative study of Dudeism and the Tao Te Ching." The Dudespaper (August 3, 2016)

Collins, K. Austin, et al. "Ballad of the Coen Brothers." The Film Comment Podcast (September 26, 2018) ["“In their films—especially Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis—there’s always the sense that the deck is stacked against us and that we’re the authors of our own misery, a doubly discomfiting, Camusian view that perfectly matches their aesthetic approach, an overwhelming omniscience that results in a kind of bravura melancholy,” Michael Koresky writes in his feature about Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in our September/October issue. This week, Koresky, FSLC Editorial and Creative Director, moderates a special Film Comment Podcast featuring three more Coeniacs in conversation about the brothers’ dazzling 30-year-plus body of work, from greatest hits to lesser-known ballads: K. Austin Collins, film critic at Vanity Fair; Aliza Ma, head of programming at Metrograph; and Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic and author of the new book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together (Abrams)."]

Coughlin, Paul. "Great Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen." Senses of Cinema (May 2003)

Ebert, Roger. "Great Movie: The Big Lebowski." The Chicago Sun-Times (March 10, 2010)

Jacobs, Tom. "Scholars and The Big Lebowski: Deconstructing the Dude." Pacific Standard (July 11, 2011)

Kerr, James. "Psychological Analysis of the Dude." The Dudespaper (August 16, 2009)

Mac, Mark. "That's Fucking Interesting, Man." The Dudespaper (February 16, 2013)

Orr, Christopher. "30 Years of Coens: The Big Lebowski." The Atlantic (September 16, 2014)

Swash, Rosie. "My Favorite Film: The Big Lebowski." The Guardian (November 2, 2011)

Tyree, J.M. and Ben Walters. "The Big Lebowski." The Library of Congress (ND)

Make Love, Not War - Music Mix #36

 Kula Shaker; The Liminanas; Amythyst Kiah; Black Pumas; Taylor Swift;The Coup; Nilufer Yanya; Angel Olsen; Death Cab for Cutie; The XX; The Stone Roses; Fontaines D.C.; Blur; Gnarls Barkley; Karen O.; Danger Mouse; Fleet Foxes; The Beatles; The Flaming Lips; King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard; Pixies; Margo Price; Eivor; The The; The Fur Coasts; The Pool Boys; Blitzen Trapper; Sea Lemon; Soccer Mommy; Lady Blackbird; Crystal Murray; Kit Sebastian; Kelly Finnegan; Aaron Frazer; Jungle; Jack White; Jon Hopkins

Make Love, Not War 

Capitalisn't: Podcast - Economics/Political Economy (Shooting Azimuths)

Part of ENG 102: Concepts, Theories, and Thinkers

 Capitalisn't is a podcast hosted by Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean: "Is capitalism the engine of destruction or the engine of prosperity? On this podcast we talk about the ways capitalism is—or more often isn’t—working in our world today. Hosted by Vanity Fair contributing editor, Bethany McLean and world renowned economics professor Luigi Zingales, we explain how capitalism can go wrong, and what we can do to fix it." 

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Ahmari, Sohrab. "When Capitalism Becomes Tyranny." Capitalisn't (November 2, 2023) ["In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It." In this episode, they discuss the complex relationship between capitalism, personal freedoms, and political power. The conversation sheds light on what classical liberalism ignores, how today's Right is discovering what the Left may have forgotten, and ultimately, where today's political Left and Right may be able to work together."]

Coffee, John C. "How Corporations Get Away With Crime." Capitalisn't (July 22, 2022) ["When it comes to corporate rulebreaking, data from 2002 to 2016 reveals that the US government arranged more than 400 "deferred protection agreements" as a means of deterrence. Under these, a company acknowledges what it did was wrong, pays a fine, promises not to misbehave for a period of time -- and thus is largely let off the hook. Columbia Law School Professor and author of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement", John C. Coffee, says these have done little to deter future wrongdoing. Coffee joins Luigi and Bethany, both of whom have also extensively researched and exposed corporate wrongdoing, to discuss how to reform aspects of enforcement, such as self-reporting mechanisms, internal investigations, independent external auditors, whistleblowers, and even shame and humiliation."]

Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]

Haidt, Jonathan. "The Economic Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood." Capitalisn't (July 18, 2024) ["In one of this year's bestselling books, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness," New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that today's childhoods spent under the influence of smartphones and overprotective parenting has led to the reported explosion in cases of teenage anxiety and depression. He calls this process a "three-act play": the diminishment of trust in our communities, the loss of a play-based childhood, and the arrival of a hyper-connected world. Haidt also believes the problem is solvable. On this episode of Capitalisn't, he joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss parenting, learning, adolescence, and in an age where Congress won't act on regulation, his four proposed solutions to break social media's "collective action trap" on children. But are his solutions feasible? How do we weigh their costs, benefits, limitations, risks, and the roadblocks to their implementation? What are the consequences of an anxious generation for our economy — and what can we really do about it?"]

Ahmari, Sohrab. "When Capitalism Becomes Tyranny." Capitalisn't (November 2, 2023) ["In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It." In this episode, they discuss the complex relationship between capitalism, personal freedoms, and political power. The conversation sheds light on what classical liberalism ignores, how today's Right is discovering what the Left may have forgotten, and ultimately, where today's political Left and Right may be able to work together."]

Coffee, John C. "How Corporations Get Away With Crime." Capitalisn't (July 22, 2022) ["When it comes to corporate rulebreaking, data from 2002 to 2016 reveals that the US government arranged more than 400 "deferred protection agreements" as a means of deterrence. Under these, a company acknowledges what it did was wrong, pays a fine, promises not to misbehave for a period of time -- and thus is largely let off the hook. Columbia Law School Professor and author of "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement", John C. Coffee, says these have done little to deter future wrongdoing. Coffee joins Luigi and Bethany, both of whom have also extensively researched and exposed corporate wrongdoing, to discuss how to reform aspects of enforcement, such as self-reporting mechanisms, internal investigations, independent external auditors, whistleblowers, and even shame and humiliation."]

Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]

Mullins, Brody. "How Lobbying Led to Crony Capitalism." Capitalisn't (October 24, 2024) ["Mullins is the co-author (along with his brother Luke, also an investigative reporter) of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government. Brody joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how corporations ranging from Genentech to Google participate in the invisible but massively influential lobbying industry to bend government policy toward their favor. Together, the three trace the roots and evolution of political lobbying from the 1970s to now and explore how it penetrates and leverages other spheres of society to abet its operations. How are academia and the media complicit in this ecosystem of influence operations? How has lobbying adapted to the changing attitudes of Americans towards Big Business? How might it change under either a Harris or Trump administration and beyond?"]

Rodrik, Dani. "The New Economics of Industrial Policy." Capitalisn't (August 1, 2024) ["Harvard professor of international political economy Dani Rodrik has long been skeptical of what he calls "hyperglobalization," or an advanced level of interconnectedness between countries and their economies. He first introduced his theory of the "globalization trilemma" in the late 1990s, which states that no country can simultaneously support democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration. At the time when he proposed his trilemma, Rodrik was considered an outcast. However, economists and policymakers have come to accept his theory as governments seek to address populism, trade imbalances, and uneven growth through renewed interest in industrial policy, or government efforts to improve the performance of key business sectors. Rodrik joins co-hosts Bethany and Luigi to discuss changing attitudes towards globalization: its distributional effects, how it affects politics, and how it is still searching for a narrative consistent between academic circles and the media. Together, the three of them discuss what role corporate America should play in our world restructured by economic and political populism and if economics is getting too far away from the rest of the social sciences when it comes to shaping industrial policy and creating the jobs of tomorrow."]

Schaake, Marietje. "Can Democracy Coexist with Big Tech." Capitalisn't (September 26, 2024) ["International technology policy expert, Stanford University academic, and former European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake writes in her new book that a “Tech Coup” is happening in democratic societies and fast approaching the point of no return. Both Big Tech and smaller companies are participating in it, through the provision of spyware, microchips, facial recognition, and other technologies that erode privacy, speech, and other human rights. These technologies shift power to the tech companies at the expense of the public and democratic institutions, Schaake writes. Schaake joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss proposals for reversing this shift of power and maintaining the balance between innovation and regulation in the digital age. If a "tech coup" is really underway, how did we get here? And if so, how can we safeguard democracy and individual rights in an era of algorithmic governance and surveillance capitalism? Marietje Schaake’s new book, “The Tech Coup: Saving Democracy From Silicon Valley."]

Jason Stanley: Epistemology/Fascism/Language/Political Philosophy/Propaganda (Azimuths)

Beaver, David and Jason Stanley. The Politics of Language. Princeton University Press, 2023. ["
A provocative case for the inherently political nature of language. In The Politics of Language, David Beaver and Jason Stanley present a radical new approach to the theory of meaning, offering an account of communication in which political and social identity, affect, and shared practices play as important a role as information. This new view of language, they argue, has dramatic consequences for free speech, democracy, and a range of other areas in which speech plays a central role. Drawing on a wealth of disciplines, The Politics of Language argues that the function of speech—whether in dialogue, larger group interactions, or mass communication—is to attune people to something, be it a shared reality, emotion, or identity. Reconceptualizing the central ideas of pragmatics and semantics, Beaver and Stanley apply their account to a range of phenomena that defy standard frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language—from dog whistles and covert persuasion to echo chambers and genocidal speech. The authors use their framework to show that speech is inevitably political because all communication is imbued with the resonances of particular ideologies and their normative perspectives on reality. At a time when democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, and diversity and equality are being demanded, The Politics of Language offers a powerful new vision of the language of politics, ideology, and protest."]

Stanley, Jason. "Erasing History." Converging Dialogues (November 3, 2024) ["... Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Jason Stanley about the importance of preserving history. They talked about why authoritarians attempt to erase history, fascist ideas, nationalism, immigration, book burning, classical education, how to defend history, and many other topics. Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and honorary professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University and was also Professor at the University of Michigan (2000-4) and Cornell University (1995-2000). He has his PhD in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT and his BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of seven books, which include How Propaganda Works, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them , and the newest book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future."]

---. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Atria/One Signal, 2024. ["From the bestselling author of How Fascism Works, a searing confrontation with the far right’s efforts to rewrite history and undo a century of progress on race, gender, sexuality, and class.
The human race finds itself again under threat of a rising global fascist movement. In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people all across the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past. Democracy requires a common understanding of reality, a shared view of what has happened, that informs ordinary citizens’ decisions about what should happen, now and in the future. Authoritarians target this shared understanding, seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused. By setting us against each other, authoritarians represent themselves as the sole solution. In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, the authoritarian right’s tip of the spear, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress. In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And he shows that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, he explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway. Deeply informed and urgently needed, Erasing History is a global call to action for those who wish to preserve democracy—in America and abroad—before it is too late."]

---. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House, 2018. ["As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."]


---. How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015. ["How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention. Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

---. "Introduction: The Problem of Propaganda." How Propaganda Works. Princeton University Press, 2015: 1 - 26. ["Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us―not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy―particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality―and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere."]

Fall 2024 ENG 102: First Essay Topics for Student Essays

The rising popularity of cosmetic surgery among young people, driven by social media and popular culture, is reshaping perceptions of beauty and self-worth
The Criminal Mind: What Makes a Murderer? Is it Learned or our Genetics?

Is the Death Penalty helping society
The Positive of The Negative: A Critique of the Myth of Positive Thinking
Abortion - a Pro-choice Argument
Fast Fashion, Please Slow Down
The Importance of Nature to Our Mental Well- Being
Video Games: The Underrated Story Medium
Inflation and How it is Destroying The Economy
The Negative Impact of Social Media on the Young
Social Media: The Negative Impact on Our Society
Ultra-processed food is an addiction and what we are consuming is progressively killing us
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world
Gambling, and Why it Should be Regulated by The Government
The Ongoing Struggle for Equitable Treatment of Artists
Plastic as a Pollutant: How Harmful is it to the Environment
Disability Rights: We Are Human Too
Conspiracy theories: the more they’re denied the harder people fight.
Fitness: The Power of the Mind and Body

Agape: An exploration of “love” in the Christian faith
Exploring the Themes of Fate, Morality, and Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men
A Critique of America's Tipping Culture

Importance of Mental Health
The Effects of Drugs on Athletes
Psychological Analysis of Marvel Characters
The internal military conflicts and civil war in Burma (Myanmar)
Serial Killers: Are They Born or Created?
The impact of a ketogenic diet on mental and physical well-being
The Bible’s Authority in Modern Ethics

Eschatology: The Study of the Biblical End Time
Artificial Intelligence: The Impact on Jobs
Marilyn Monroe: The story behind the blonde beauty

On Social Suffering, Healing, and Art
We need proper mental healthcare in America's prison system

Don’t That Picture Look Dusty?: An Argument for the Continuing Relevance of the Western Genre
The History and Psychology of Advertising
Modern-Day Propaganda: The Biggest Influence on Young Voters
Ancient Slavic pagan myths are not just interesting stories, fairy tales, or legends but also a legacy of ancient knowledge.
Problems with funding and performance of social care in America
The Negative Impact of Electric Vehicles
Social Media: Disconnected Minds
Overmedicating of Prescription Drugs & Loss of “Drug War”
Identify and control your anxiety
Unraveling the Tragedy: Addressing Injuries and Fatalities in Thoroughbred Horse Racing
Improving STEM Education in Grades K–12 for Academic Achievement and Job Readiness
The Origins of you: How your childhood impacts your later life

Why Read: A Defense

The Importance of Enterprise Management in Leadership
The Dangers of Pesticides
Policing and White Power
Childhood Echoes- How Early Experiences Sculpt Later Life
We as a human species need to form a solution to our destructive behaviors before it gets out of control and reaches a point of irrevocability.
Is Social Media Detrimental to Adolescents Development and Mental Health
Social Media: The Teenage Effect
Rapid Etymological Changes in the Language Used by Gen Z
Good and Bad Parenting and Its Effects on Children
The impact of poverty on overall health
Asteroid Mining: Is It Ethical?
Why is soccer so popular, and why is it interesting?
The Power and Influence of Microtrends in Modern Society
Social Media in Relation to Childhood Development and Psychology
Animal Experimentation: Inhumane or Progress
Cybersecurity plays a crucial role in modern criminal justice by enhancing the investigation and prosecution of cybercrimes through advanced digital forensics, legal frameworks, and historical context
Is Cloning Soldiers Ethical in the Star Wars Universe
A Defense of African American Studies
The Red River Gorge does not need a resort built due to economic and environmental reasons.
Black Education as Resistance: From Historical Struggles to Contemporary Activism