The Point Magazine
@thepointmag.bsky.social
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A magazine founded on the suspicion that modern life is worth examining. thepointmag.com
pinned post!
Issue 36: The left and the good life | Coming soon.
4 months ago
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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:
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Weissbourd Conference 2026: The Good of Academic Research
What do we think matters, truly, about academic research?
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/weissbourd-conference-2026-the-good-of-academic-research-tickets-1987562939255
13 days ago
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Crucial reading on what progressive education is for in 2026, from our most recent issue’s forum on the left and the good life:
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14 days ago
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New online, Barry Schwabsky on what makes “The Leucothea Dialogues” Cesare Pavese’s masterpiece:
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In the Reckless Hour | The Point Magazine
An irritating thing about reviewing books translated from languages you think you know is getting past the title.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/in-the-reckless-hour/
14 days ago
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“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 When those particularities are withdrawn, the larger categories waver.”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:
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The Work Without Markers | The Point Magazine
In the late 1990s, I read a short story by Nirmal Verma called “Terminal.”
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-work-without-markers/
20 days ago
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“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.”
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The Work Without Markers | The Point Magazine
In the late 1990s, I read a short story by Nirmal Verma called “Terminal.” It had been written, like all of Verma’s fiction, in Hindi, […]
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-work-without-markers/
20 days ago
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New online, Amit Chaudhuri on the art of Ljubodrag Andric and the tradition of which it’s a part—the “work without markers”:
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https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-work-without-markers/
21 days ago
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The Point Magazine
Ken
22 days ago
“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...
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The Mind of a Minotaur | The Point Magazine
In these diaristic works, Picasso exhibits an unflinching willingness to stare down his dark side and put it on display.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-mind-of-a-minotaur/
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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.”
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The Mind of a Minotaur | The Point Magazine
In these diaristic works, Picasso exhibits an unflinching willingness to stare down his dark side and put it on display.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-mind-of-a-minotaur/
25 days ago
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New online, Zachary Ginsberg on the confessional genius of Picasso’s works on paper:
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The Mind of a Minotaur | The Point Magazine
In these diaristic works, Picasso exhibits an unflinching willingness to stare down his dark side and put it on display.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-mind-of-a-minotaur/
25 days ago
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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:
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Emergency Measures | The Point Magazine
On Tuesday the people of Virginia approved a referendum to change the electoral map of the state in favor of the Democratic Party. The amendment […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/emergency-measures/
26 days ago
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New on Forms of Life, Lewis Page on canvassing for Virginia’s congressional redistricting in the fired-up suburbs:
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Emergency Measures | The Point Magazine
On Tuesday the people of Virginia approved a referendum to change the electoral map of the state in favor of the Democratic Party. The amendment […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/emergency-measures/
26 days ago
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New online, Scott Spillman on an ironic new account of the intellectual origins of American slavery:
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Ideas of Slavery | The Point Magazine
The rise of racial slavery in the New World was one of the most significant developments in modern history, shaping the economy, society, politics and culture of at least four continents over the cour...
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/ideas-of-slavery-john-samuel-harpham/
27 days ago
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The Point Magazine
Sam Sacks
about 1 month ago
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...
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Moral Mysteries | The Point Magazine
“It is always a significant question to ask about any philosopher: what is he afraid of?” wrote Iris Murdoch in her slim work of moral philosophy, The Sovereignty of Good.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/moral-mysteries/
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The Point Magazine
Kaya Genç
about 1 month ago
Learning to write like Leylâ Erbil—new essay for
@thepointmag.bsky.social
:
thepointmag.com/criticism/a-...
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A History of Erasures | The Point Magazine
When I set out to become a novelist in Turkey in the early 2000s, Leylâ Erbil had yet to publish what is perhaps her most accomplished work, What Remains.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/a-history-of-erasures/
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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:
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A History of Erasures | The Point Magazine
When I set out to become a novelist in Turkey in the early 2000s, Leylâ Erbil had yet to publish what is perhaps her most accomplished work, What Remains.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/a-history-of-erasures/
about 1 month ago
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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.
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A History of Erasures | The Point Magazine
When I set out to become a novelist in Turkey in the early 2000s, Leylâ Erbil had yet to publish what is perhaps her most accomplished work, What Remains.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/a-history-of-erasures/
about 1 month ago
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Including
@jrichards.bsky.social
’s translation of Marosia Castaldi, originally published in issue 33!
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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Barry Maguire
about 2 months ago
recommended monday morning reading:
thepointmag.com/politics/bey...
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Beyond Equality | The Point Magazine
What I’m about to say is going to seem like a bad joke: the trouble with the left is its egalitarianism.
https://thepointmag.com/politics/beyond-equality/
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PG Holmlov
2 months ago
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...
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One Week in Beirut | The Point Magazine
Monday Recently my four-year-old has grown interested in the notion of infinity. Can you add a number to infinity? she asks on the way to […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/one-week-in-beirut/
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Adam Shatz
2 months ago
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...
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Breaking Point Beirut | The Point Magazine
One million. That is the latest figure from the Lebanese government briefing of the number of people who have been displaced in the nineteen days […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/breaking-point-beirut/
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New on Forms of Life, Zeead Yaghi on sectarianism at its breaking point in Lebanon, and Israel’s strategy of stoking it:
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Breaking Point Beirut | The Point Magazine
One million. That is the latest figure from the Lebanese government briefing of the number of people who have been displaced in the nineteen days […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/breaking-point-beirut/
2 months ago
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Hannah Keyser
2 months ago
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...
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New on Forms of Life, a dispatch from DeVan Ard on the first week of conflict in Beirut:
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One Week in Beirut | The Point Magazine
Monday Recently my four-year-old has grown interested in the notion of infinity. Can you add a number to infinity? she asks on the way to […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/one-week-in-beirut/
2 months ago
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Mariel Goddu
2 months ago
“[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...
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Moral Mysteries | The Point Magazine
“It is always a significant question to ask about any philosopher: what is he afraid of?” wrote Iris Murdoch in her slim work of moral philosophy, The Sovereignty of Good.
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/moral-mysteries/
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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:
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Moral Mysteries | The Point Magazine
“It is always a significant question to ask about any philosopher: what is he afraid of?” wrote Iris Murdoch in her slim work of moral […]
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/moral-mysteries/
2 months ago
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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.
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Where Does Politics Take Place? | The Point Magazine
The starkest, most disquieting scene from the film was printed on postcards and handed out at the door. We picked up our postcards as we […]
https://thepointmag.com/politics/where-does-politics-take-place/
3 months ago
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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
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Summer Workshop — Public Thinking
https://www.publicthinking.thepointmag.com/workshop
3 months ago
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Simão Freitas
3 months ago
"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...
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Larger than Life | The Point Magazine
At the screening of Marty Supreme that I went to before Christmas, Timothée Chalamet said that his performance was in part inspired by The Last […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/larger-than-life/
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Rob Topinka
3 months ago
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...
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Listless Liberalism | The Point Magazine
Where is liberalism’s “Fascinating Fascism”? Who is its Riefenstahl?
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/listless-liberalism/
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The Point Magazine
Zito
3 months ago
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...
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Larger than Life | The Point Magazine
At the screening of Marty Supreme that I went to before Christmas, Timothée Chalamet said that his performance was in part inspired by The Last […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/larger-than-life/
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New on Forms of Life,
@zeets.bsky.social
on sports movies, “Marty Supreme,” and the trouble with its ending:
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Larger than Life | The Point Magazine
At the screening of Marty Supreme that I went to before Christmas, Timothée Chalamet said that his performance was in part inspired by The Last […]
https://thepointmag.com/forms-of-life/larger-than-life/
3 months ago
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The Point Magazine
Frank Pasquale
3 months ago
“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-...
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On the Liberal Imagination | The Point Magazine
There are understandable reasons why liberal and leftist intellectuals are cautious about discussing the good life.
https://thepointmag.com/politics/on-the-liberal-imagination/
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New online, Alex Gendler on Voice of America’s downfall and the end of soft power:
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Soft Power in Hard Times | The Point Magazine
Marx famously wrote that men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please—a line that has often crossed my mind […]
https://thepointmag.com/politics/soft-power-hard-times-voa/
3 months ago
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The Point Magazine
David Hudson
3 months ago
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...
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The Point Magazine
Shai-Hulud Gilgeous-Alexander
3 months ago
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...
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Freedom of Intelligence | The Point Magazine
In the name of progress, public education is now pressed into the service of agendas that align with corporate profit, workforce readiness, ideological reproduction and demand for quantifiable results...
https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/freedom-of-intelligence/
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The Point Magazine
d.e.i., claudius
3 months ago
"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
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Listless Liberalism | The Point Magazine
Where is liberalism’s “Fascinating Fascism”? Who is its Riefenstahl?
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/listless-liberalism/
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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”:
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Listless Liberalism | The Point Magazine
Where is liberalism’s “Fascinating Fascism”? Who is its Riefenstahl?
https://thepointmag.com/criticism/listless-liberalism/
3 months ago
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𝕶𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖐 Redux
3 months ago
great article by Jensen Suther on the faults of degrowth Marxism
thepointmag.com/politics/rad...
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Radical Eudaimonism | The Point Magazine
The choice is not between growth and degrowth but capital growth and rational growth.
https://thepointmag.com/politics/radical-eudaimonism/
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The Point Magazine
Megan Buskey
4 months ago
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...
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Tragic Heritage | The Point Magazine
The questions surrounding this small museum can be extended to the country at large: What value does Soviet heritage have in Ukraine now?
https://thepointmag.com/correspondence/tragic-heritage/
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The Point Magazine
James Vincent
4 months ago
wonderful piece on the life of a smoker — and the process of quitting — by
@johnphipps.bsky.social
thepointmag.com/examined-lif...
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The Point Magazine
Phil Klay
4 months ago
“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...
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The Point Magazine
David Klemperer
4 months ago
Enjoying Becca Rothfeld's skewering of "Abundance" and Cass Sunstein's latest
thepointmag.com/criticism/li...
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The Point Magazine
Trevor Aleo
4 months ago
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.
add a skeleton here at some point
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anandi m
4 months ago
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...
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The Great Replacement | The Point Magazine
None of us—Camus, the peddlers of multicultural ephemera, the internet Nazis or me—is immune to the self-forgetting that follows the transformation of genuine cultural memory into kitsch.
https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/the-great-replacement/
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Ben Wurgaft
4 months ago
"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...
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Freedom of Intelligence | The Point Magazine
In the name of progress, public education is now pressed into the service of agendas that align with corporate profit, workforce readiness, ideological reproduction and demand for quantifiable results...
https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/freedom-of-intelligence/
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The Point Magazine
Sam Klug
4 months ago
"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...
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Right and Left | The Point Magazine
Another fed worker tells me he spends his days pacing the marble corridors of his office like an absolute madman. The Lana del Rey lyric “I don’t wanna do this anymore” plays on loops in his head in L...
https://thepointmag.com/politics/right-and-left/
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The Point Magazine
John Downes-Angus
4 months ago
“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.
add a skeleton here at some point
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