Category
Essays
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The Shape of Ménage à Trois to Come
“However much desire there is for the threesome to maintain its stability, the cultural force of homogenous marriage is strong.”
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The “Diet Soda” of Data
Synthetic data promises to fix racial bias in algorithms used in AI. But its promise is false.
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Protest Pedagogy
The encampments could be understood as masterful examples of project-based learning in civic engagement.
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The Postmodern War Machine—A View of “Dyspolitics” from Russia
This is a war of unusually pure propaganda, in which tanks and bombs are subordinate to bizarre rhetorical turns.
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Fatal Chase: Cops and the Illusion of Control
Police chases place ordinary citizens in grave danger. No amount of training or increasingly strict department policies will change that.
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A Peek Behind the Old Town’s Walls: Dubrovnik, Croatia
“On the top of the walls, I stopped to admire the panoramic Adriatic Sea views. Below, a basketball court abutted the walls, and kids were shooting hoops.”
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Rethinking Holocaust Memory after October 7
“Why continue to teach the Holocaust? Why continue to build and visit Holocaust memorials and museums?”
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The Encyclopedia Project, or How to Know in the Age of AI
In an age when AI regurgitates the blather of meaningless content, seeking its audience in the attention marketplace, it’s a small wonder that it is hard to tell what is really real anymore.
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Finding Sanctuary in Art
A single mural in San Francisco’s Mission District honors Latinx victims of police violence both at the US border and in US cities.
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From Suspect to Perpetrator: How History Shaped the Modern U.S. Border Patrol Agent
I was a modern agent of the state.
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Containment and Care in the Sonoran Desert
Prevention through deterrence did not prevent or deter migration. Instead, it corralled migration, hid it from view, and made it deadly.
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On the Edges of Fascism and Other Unsettling Possibilities
“Borders generate more human possibilities: citizens standing for the rights of noncitizens, finding them refuge, seeking them sanctuary, pushing at the margins of the state and its sovereignty.”
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The Border Patrol and Asylum Exclusion
Border Patrol has regularly abused its authority and mistreated immigrants and asylum seekers in countless ways. Yet its role as the frontline force in asylum exclusion has only grown.
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America’s Medicalized Borders: Past, Present, and Possible Future
“Only by building new models of collective health that are driven by solidarity, rather than fear, do we stand a chance of defeating today’s medical nativists.”
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The 100-Year-Old Racist Law that Broke America’s Immigration System
The Chinese and Asiatic exclusion laws of the 19th and early 20th century paved the way for the Immigration Act of 1924.
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The Border Is the Crisis: Reflections on the Centenary of the Immigration Act of 1924
One hundred years have passed since the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act and the creation of the Border Patrol. But the undercurrents that mobilized both never went away and are resurging with renewed fervor.
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“Things Happen, As They Do in War”: From Chaucer’s Siege of Troy to the Siege of Gaza
“Troilus and Criseyde” is not often regarded as war poetry. But in 2024, it’s impossible not to see the truth at the poem’s core: it’s a work about a city under siege.
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An Open Letter to Harvard: Concerning Protest & Palestine
A group of disciplined students implore Harvard to demonstrate ethical forbearance and drop all of the dubious charges leveled against students who nonviolently protested for Palestine.
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B-Sides: The Poems of John Rollin Ridge, or Yellow Bird (Chees-quat-a-law-ny)
“These were not just celebratory poems praising nature as the genre required, but practical ones recording California’s resources, peoples, and events.”
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B-Sides: L. Frank Baum’s “The Enchanted Island of Yew”
Many know L. Frank Baum for writing the book that inspired the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” However, like any good magician, Baum had a lot more up his sleeve.
