“Ethics stand no chance in the face of jealousy.” — Paolo Sorrentino on his new film, La Grazia, in an exclusive Public Seminar interview with Mitchell Abidor. publicseminar.org/2025/12/paol...

“Chief among the book’s documentary achievements is its laying out of the breadth of the devastation wrought by the Israeli government and its (mostly) Western enablers.” —Coleson Smith reviews Gaza: The Story of a Genocide @versobooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/11/revi...

70 years after Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Bennett Parten shares a genealogy of social protest: “Nonviolent resistance, after all, is a twentieth-century version of what many American abolitionists knew as simply “nonresistance.” publicseminar.org/2025/11/gene...

"If the average American thinks a Super Bowl halftime show tests the limits of cultural comfort, the 2026 World Cup will be something else entirely." —Sean Jacobs and Ivan Pech Luna on a tournament that promises to shake up US soccer. @seanjacobs.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/11/eigh...

“This was not the chaos of war. This was the systematic destruction of the infrastructure that keeps women alive.” —Urgent writing from Ayotunde Giwa on the geopolitical calculations leaving Sudan's women exposed to sexual violence and genocide. publicseminar.org/2025/12/geno...

“What fascism offers is the promise of pleasure and the promise of a sense of superiority.” —Dagmar Herzog chats w Adam Koehler Brown about her latest book, The New Fascist Body. @nssrnews.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/11/new-...

“Back in my teenage years, I was a terrible writer but ended up becoming a pretty good writer. So I know it can be taught.” —Susan Cheever chats w Elizabeth Mirabelle about letting the writing “take over” in her new book @nssrnews.bsky.social @fsgbooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/11/susa...

Mariam Matar reviews Naguib Mahfouz's posthumous story collection I Found Myself … The Last Dreams, which maps that liminal space where language, longing, and the city converge. @nssrnews.bsky.social @ndbooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/11/nagu...

"I Found Myself … The Last Dreams creates a space somewhere above and beyond the carceral structures that dominate the Egyptian sociopolitical landscape." —Mariam Matar on a new Naguib Mahfouz collection that maps Cairo through dreams. @ndbooks.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/11/nagu...

“With each restaffing of the executive suite, the studios seem to arrive at the same conclusion: Better invest in a small number of blockbusters than a wider array of mid-budget movies.” —Amelia Nonemacher on the shortcomings of the summer blockbuster system publicseminar.org/2025/11/good...

On the 20th anniversary of that debate, I wrote about that line from the debate for @publicseminar.bsky.social. publicseminar.org/essays/why-b...

"What’s changed since the days of the Holland Tunnel’s construction isn’t just the escalation of zoning wars and NIMBYism in US cities and suburbs.” —Achilles Kallergis on Klein and Thompson's ABUNDANCE and the tug-of-war over who gets to build where in housing a crisis. bit.ly/497F8RP

“I hate to canvass. My hatred of it is precisely why I chose to do it: There’s nothing meritorious in donating money if you can do something you hate as proof, if only to yourself, of your serious commitment.” — Mitchell Abidor on how Mamdani’s big dreams drew him publicseminar.org/2025/10/canv...

"Shakespeare, according to Voltaire, offered only an 'obscure Chaos, composed of Murders and Buffooneries.'” —Sophia Charles charts how French critics went from treating Shakespeare as hack to revering him as a genius over the course of a century of social upheaval publicseminar.org/2025/10/shak...

"To treat Mamdani’s membership in the DSA as a threat to Western civilization is absurd. New York is a city where a single chocolate chip cookie costs seven dollars! Radical change is needed here." —Mitchell Abidor goes door-knocking for the #mamdani campaign publicseminar.org/2025/10/canv...

"Is drawing on Romanticism’s bequest, with its emphasis on the individual and its dregs of inward spirituality, the right model for reconciliation?" —@sarahvschweig.bsky.social on Charles Taylor's COSMIC CONNECTIONS @nssrnews.bsky.social @harvardpress.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/10/poet...

Poet Wendy Xu chats with @armando-gabriel.bsky.social about challenging the expectations of documentary writing in her new book, YOUR HISTORICAL LOVELINESS KNOWS NO BOUNDS, out now with @uofmpress.bsky.social @nssrnews.bsky.social @newschoolalumni.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/10/anim...

"Digital 'prospecting' evokes a long history of outsiders extracting knowledge and artifacts without consent." —Annie K. Lamar and Sarah B. McClure on an "Indiana Jones–style" treasure hunt sponsored by OpenAI. publicseminar.org/2025/10/ai-i...

A book review par moi @publicseminar.bsky.social of an important novel by Sergey Khazov-Cassia, now available in English: publicseminar.org/2025/10/the-...

"Of all the ways Frantz Fanon has been misinterpreted, none is more persistent or consequential than the misunderstanding of his theory of violence." —Kwach Abonyo on intimate acts of defiance as a form of inward combat in African uprisings. publicseminar.org/2025/10/fran...

"It’s almost as if the selection committee for the recently ended sixty-third New York Film Festival (NYFF) was acknowledging that giants no longer walk the cinematic earth." —Mitchell Abidor on the highs and lows of this year's New York Film Festival publicseminar.org/2025/10/2025...

"Thiel gestures toward Christianity, founder heroism, and technological disruption as some form of civilizational CPR. But what does he, Peter Thiel, offer, really? Salvation? Liberation?" —Ahmed Bouzid on Silicon Valley hubris and the faith of the future. publicseminar.org/2025/09/pete...

"Even as they adopted a movement uniform that obscured individual identity, these communities of resistance wanted to be seen." —Mike Harrington on the revolutionary style shared by the Zapatistas and the Black Panther Party. publicseminar.org/2025/10/look...

"In a powerful account of his growing disenchantment with his parent’s conception of Israel as a utopia for Jews, Rosenberg presents Zionism as a flawed vision with a tragic aspect." —Coleson Smith reviews a new edition of Rosenberg's ISRAEL: A Personal History publicseminar.org/2025/10/a-lo...

"Gym selfies flex as credentials. Biceps stand in for character. Even the now-ubiquitous 'golden retriever energy' makes clear that softness is only welcome when housed in the right body." Yann Phesans on gender readability and the price of admission to public life publicseminar.org/2025/09/masc...

"I would photograph my mom as a challenge to myself, to be able to earn my right to photograph someone else’s mom." —Sohrab Hura on the existential crisis of photography, his MoMA PS1 show, and the delights of drawing. By Alexandra Chaves @nssrnews.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/10/impe...

"It was young people’s contributions that managed to escape the monitoring of the government—spreading online on screens, then spilling offline onto concrete." —Rayna Salam peels back the palimpsest of political change on Dhaka's city walls @nssrnews.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/09/the-...

Purushottam Bhandare and Katerina Canyon test MAGA's anti-immigrant rhetoric about laziness and crime against the facts: "The average new immigrant reduces the federal budget deficit by over ten thousand dollars during their lifetime." publicseminar.org/2025/09/immi...

Sad to hear of Jonathan Lear's passing. A wonderful philosopher, his work inspired me greatly. Early on in the COVID pandemic, I wrote a piece for @publicseminar.bsky.social drawing on Radical Hope to contemplate how we ought to live when a way of life collapses: publicseminar.org/2020/05/radi...

A Creation Born Out of the Longing of Golus: An excerpt from Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity. publicseminar.org/20... @PublicSeminar

"In the torrent of emotions produced by spectacular violence, viewers may struggle to gain critical distance and instead identify with what is depicted." —@bas2181.bsky.social on the Walter Benjamin's warning: an aestheticized politics primes us for war. publicseminar.org/2025/09/char...

"In Schulz’s language, realism signals resignation—a resignation from myth, or from the mythologizing transformation of reality that is so central to his own poetics." —Karen Underhill chats with Alex Rossen about her book BRUNO SCHULZ AND GALICIAN JEWISH MODERNITY publicseminar.org/2025/09/brun...

"The current episode of international economic policy is in part the inherited legacy of crises past." —Earlier this spring, William Milberg broke down Trump’s "neopatrimonial mercantilism" @nssrnews.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/05/us-t...

My essay for @publicseminar.bsky.social on Elon Musk's curious lack of empathy has gotten a second life on its Substack page. Still relevant for reasons that have to do with more than Musk, particularly as Congress is poised to pull healthcare from millions of Americans.

Did someone say "gold bars"? We're rereading @jjoque.bsky.social on Trump's preoccupation with Fort Knox and the Right's hope that "if only we can get our hands on the gold, the data, the building, we can easily control and manage the chaos of modern existence." publicseminar.org/2025/05/the-...

"Alongside Israel’s ability to delay or freeze the transfer of funds, its grip on the Palestinian treasury’s financial resources includes punitive measures against Palestinian banks and the imposition of restrictions and acts of financial piracy." —Lamees Farraj publicseminar.org/2025/05/how-...

The latest at PS: Rachmi Diyah Larasati on authoritarianism in Indonesia, Benjamin Andrew Schupmann on Trump’s rhetoric, Inga Hajdarowicz on the Polish border, and a survivor of the genocide in Gaza on Palestinian American community. open.substack.com/pub/publicse...

"It is tempting to dismiss Trump’s language as mere rhetoric. But it may signal something deeper: a breakdown in the shared meaning of language, which can threaten the very foundations of a civil society." —Benjamin Andrew Schupmann on why we listen closely to Trump publicseminar.org/2025/06/trum...

"More than two decades after the end of Suharto’s military dictatorship, the terrifying sound of RX King and Honda bikes has returned in Indonesia." —Rachmi Diyah Larasati on strongman politics in Indonesia and the underground music scene's feminist dissent. publicseminar.org/2025/06/moto...

"Together they gambol through Berlin’s club scene, fueled by amphetamines, techno, and allusions to radical politics." —Alexandra Chaves on Aria Aber's GOOD GIRL and whether raving can "deterritorialize us from capitalist competition." @nssrnews.bsky.social publicseminar.org/2025/06/aria...

"Declaring that migrants will enjoy due process is simply Noem’s way of saying that migrant detention at Guantanamo will be as American as Friday night football, and people should not be alarmed." —Joseph Margulies's April essay anticipated months of bad faith ahead publicseminar.org/2025/04/guan...

As New Yorkers vote in the mayoral primaries, we're rereading Inessa Medzhibovskaya's translation of Leo Tolstoy's salute to the activism of young people. publicseminar.org/2025/05/tols...

"The choice is stark: rule by the many, or rule by the billionaires who already act as if they own the world." —Salvador Santino Regilme charts of oligarchs around the world have remade democracy in their own image. publicseminar.org/2025/06/how-...

"I am frustrated with people assigning AI agency. If you look under the hood, you see that it’s a constructed entity, made by humans." —Dennis Yi Tenen chats with Tsering Dolka Gurung about why writers shouldn't treat AI as an existential threat. @wwnorton.com publicseminar.org/2025/06/writ...

“'I am not afraid, as I have your support,' İmamoğlu’s AI-generated voice declared. Thanks to AI, Erdoğan and his Islamicist regime had failed to silence the voice of Turkey’s most significant political opponent." —Selin Bengi Gümrükçü on AI activism in Turkey publicseminar.org/2025/06/turk...

"By exclusively relying on war and aiming for the total obliteration of its enemies, Israel seeks a regional domination that does not integrate the defeated but excludes them and transforms them into 'new Gazas.'” —Prescient writing from Emmanuel Guerisoli publicseminar.org/2025/04/isra...

"If you write about a storyteller—and Pabst was a professional storyteller—then the way that person tells their story shapes the way you tell their story." —Daniel Kehlmann chats with Mitchell Abidor about following G. W. Pabst in his new novel, THE DIRECTOR. publicseminar.org/2025/06/inte...

"How people are disabled impacts the extent to which they are accepted by others," writes @drajp.bsky.social. The scholar proposes a paradigm of “cripnormativity,” which imposes a hierarchy of socially acceptable and unacceptable disabilities. publicseminar.org/2025/06/greg...

"We are narrative agents, and the only narrative agents we know of in the universe—so far." —@floridi.bsky.social chats with Giannis Perperidis and Alexandros Schismenos about syntax versus semantics, the European project, and what we still get wrong about AI. publicseminar.org/2025/06/defi...

"The ICE raids in Los Angeles were the first step in Trump’s goal to impose martial law and consolidate his power. This is hardly far-fetched." —Peter Dreier charts key takeaways on the anti-ICE protests in LA. publicseminar.org/2025/06/la-a...