Chicago event: “The Good of Academic Research,” hosted by the UChicago Society of Fellows on May 15th. With talks by @chadwellmon.bsky.social, Susan Buck-Morss, Pascal Brixel, Anton Ford, and others. Co-organized by Point contributing editor Ben Jeffery. Details here:

Crucial reading on what progressive education is for in 2026, from our most recent issue’s forum on the left and the good life:

New online, Barry Schwabsky on what makes “The Leucothea Dialogues” Cesare Pavese’s masterpiece:

“The universal depends on particularities of identity or nationality: it requires them in order to transcend them. When those particularities are withdrawn, the larger categories waver.” Amit Chaudhuri on the tradition of art without markers:

“To look at an Andric photograph does not involve seeing an object, but refocusing on what we know and on whatever is unaddressed by the inherited, institutional ways of recognizing a ‘Western,’ ‘non-Western,’ ‘modern’ or ‘ancient’ object.”

New online, Amit Chaudhuri on the art of Ljubodrag Andric and the tradition of which it’s a part—the “work without markers”:

“In his Cubist period, he reassembled their bodies into geometrical contortions, and even his more flattering portraits collapsed women into one of his signature styles. “ thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

In Picasso’s works on paper, writes Zachary Ginsberg, “he performs the almost impossible task, at once earnest and provocative, of transporting viewers into the mind of a monster, preserving his baseness and allowing us to empathize with him.”

New online, Zachary Ginsberg on the confessional genius of Picasso’s works on paper:

The suburbs have long been a symbol of an America devoid of politics. But in the campaign to draw up a new map for Virginia’s congressional districts, the suburbs roiled with civic fervor, Lewis Page writes:

New on Forms of Life, Lewis Page on canvassing for Virginia’s congressional redistricting in the fired-up suburbs:

New online, Scott Spillman on an ironic new account of the intellectual origins of American slavery:

The bottomless riches of Iris Murdoch's books yield this good piece in The Point by Parker Henry, specifically about Murdoch's gift for "individualizing morality" thepointmag.com/criticism/mo...

Learning to write like Leylâ Erbil—new essay for @thepointmag.bsky.social: thepointmag.com/criticism/a-...

New online, @kayagenc.bsky.social on Leylâ Erbil’s experimental novel “What Remains,” and his path toward understanding her challenge to Turkish literature and politics:

In collaging her life with the life of her country, Leylâ Erbil had fermented a new strain of autofiction, using her life to write something thoroughly historical and political.

Including @jrichards.bsky.social’s translation of Marosia Castaldi, originally published in issue 33!

recommended monday morning reading: thepointmag.com/politics/bey...

Before the war, my biggest teaching worry was AI-generated content submitted for essay assignments. Now I receive messages from students tending to wounded relatives in the hospital… it doesn’t take long before everyone knows someone affected by the bombing thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

Zeead Yaghi on Israel’s war on Lebanon, a campaign that has produced massive destruction, displacement, and terror, while also reigniting sectarian tension. A harrowing article. thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

New on Forms of Life, Zeead Yaghi on sectarianism at its breaking point in Lebanon, and Israel’s strategy of stoking it:

My sister and her family — husband, four-year-old, two-year-old — live in Beirut. They are still there, still trying to teach at AUB and still trying to keep their kids' lives normal despite constant disruptions. I think about them constantly. Her husband wrote this. thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

New on Forms of Life, a dispatch from DeVan Ard on the first week of conflict in Beirut:

“[O]nce I was relieved of the burden of having to figure out the answer to the other, I could more clearly see and appreciate the complex mystery of whoever stood before me” Parker Henry’s beautifully personal review of Hopwood’s The Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch thepointmag.com/criticism/mo...

In his recent book on the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch, Mark Hopwood gives us “a Murdoch who is no longer just a defective analytic philosopher, but a thinker in a tradition of her own,” writes Parker Henry:

New online, a web supplement to our issue 36 forum on the left and the good life: Ege Yumuşak on making space for political engagement in everyday life.

Applications are open for our fully funded Summer Workshops on the philosophy and practice of public thinking—an incredible opportunity for college students interested in writing and engaging the public. Learn More: www.publicthinking.thepointmag.com/workshop

"We can excuse someone being an asshole if they go on to do great things, if they do the things we can’t. There’s much less to sympathize with in the asshole who ends up choosing the small life like the rest of us." @zeets.bsky.social on "Marty Supreme". thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

Really good piece on the stylelessness of liberals: 'There is no liberal Joe Rogan because his liberal equivalent would rather soliloquize and tweak a couple of ordinances than enter into an unscripted tête-à-tête for hours.' thepointmag.com/criticism/li...

I wrote about Marty Supreme and the problem with writing a compelling unlikable protagonist and then undercutting him at the end in the name of sentimentality thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif...

New on Forms of Life, @zeets.bsky.social on sports movies, “Marty Supreme,” and the trouble with its ending:

“Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind,” wrote the liberal critic Lionel Trilling, “we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind that we will not like.”” thepointmag.com/politics/on-...

New online, Alex Gendler on Voice of America’s downfall and the end of soft power:

An AI-driven reconstruction of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS @newyorker.com, Wes Anderson @thepointmag.bsky.social, Michael Almereyda @nytimes.com + @hammertonail.bsky.social + @screenslate.bsky.social, @szacharek.bsky.social on the underappreciated … Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...

Ah that feeling when you read something that says everything you're currently trying to write, but better. Love this piece on progressive education by @annieabrams.bsky.social: thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

"Good politics, like good art, does not lecture or declaim. It strains; it argues; it is an unending negotiation with the difficult and intransigent adventure of humanity." || via @thepointmag.bsky.social

From the new issue, Becca Rothfeld on two recent books that “typify the liberal tendency to fiddle while Rome goes up in flames”: Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s “Abundance” and Cass Sunstein’s “On Liberalism”:

great article by Jensen Suther on the faults of degrowth Marxism thepointmag.com/politics/rad...

With Russia's full-scale invasion, contextualizing Ukraine’s Soviet past became more complicated than ever. An essay I wrote for @thepointmag.bsky.social looks at what its meant for the museum holding Ukraine's largest collection of Soviet socialist realist art. thepointmag.com/corresponden...

wonderful piece on the life of a smoker — and the process of quitting — by @johnphipps.bsky.social thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

“Education is for the student’s benefit, not for the benefit of their future employer…students go to school not merely to acquire skills but to develop an entire social and intellectual life: to have something good and to have it forever” @thepointmag.bsky.social thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

Enjoying Becca Rothfeld's skewering of "Abundance" and Cass Sunstein's latest thepointmag.com/criticism/li...

I really love that Annie’s work doesn’t simply defend the liberal arts, it actively demonstrates how taking up its texts & traditions can provide invaluable insight into contemporary issues. English classes should be invitations to appreciate, enjoy, & contribute to living traditions & communities.

A poignant, poetic take on the waning Canadian migrant dream, and the very hot, present, (im)migrant pivot across the globe. Vikrant Dadawala is clear-eyed and nuanced about his grasp of the situation and where he himself stands in it: thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

"Teachers can show students what has moved others to use language with care...and invite them to join a long tradition of people who have found a way to say something new." - @annieabrams.bsky.social, in a crucial essay on the struggle for liberal education. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

"Forms of labor that conserve, fix, make and care for others once had a place in the mythos of America, not to mention on the mantle of the Old Left." Extraordinary essay about what the last year has been like in DC by Noelle Bodick in @thepointmag.bsky.social thepointmag.com/politics/rig...

“calling our current public-education policy ‘progressive’ is, read most generously, imprecise” great essay about what progressive education ought to aim for—one that hopefully clarifies things not only for the Tates of the world, but also for those of us who aim to do this kind of work ourselves.