Hi subscribers,
We’re trying something new with the newsletter this year. Besides the shorter essays on current and urgent events we will continue to send you, we’re also going to be sending monthly updates on what is happening here at the Democracy Seminar. The past month has been busy, and we’re excited to share with you some of what is to come. We’re also currently building a website, which should make it much easier to read our essays, watch our videos and keep updated on upcoming events.
We’ve published four pieces on Public Seminar since our last newsletter. Udeepta Chakravarty’s essay on the Kisan Adolan, or Farmer’s Protests, in India explores the political significance of the protests, elucidating the symbolic threat that protesting farmers pose to the self-image of Modi’s BJP and Hindu nationalism. Jeffrey Wasserstrom provided the latest contribution to the ongoing ‘The Last Time I Saw Them: On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life’ series, where he discussed the similarities between the crises of 2020 and the crises of 1900, with particular attention paid to East Asia. We republished Pawel Knut’s piece for Więź magazine, ‘A Few Remarks on Outing’, discussing the debate around the acceptability of ‘outing’ LGBT politicians in Poland. Most recently, we also published William E. Scheuerman’s piece on Trump and the work of Carl Schmitt.
Following on from our two webinars on the US election late last year, we have uploaded a series of YouTube shorts with some of our favorite moments from the sessions in a much more digestible size for viewing and sharing on social media.
An initiative to support the nomination of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny for the Nobel Peace Prize has been circulating among our colleagues. Following his poisoning last year, Navalny has been nominated by a diverse group of political and intellectual figures, including Lech Wałęsa, Alexander Etkind and Zhanna Nemtsova. Masha Gessen’s recent profile in the New Yorker provides more details.
On March 26th from 10-11:30am EST we will be hosting a book launch for ‘Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality’ by Agnieszka Kościańska. More details, including registration information, will be released shortly on the Democracy Seminar events page. We hope to see you there!