In Iran, women have stood as a first line of opposition against government repression for at least 150 years, advocating for social and economic equality, pushing back against discriminatory Islamist edicts, and fighting for a new vision of politics. Today, young women are pouring into Iranian streets again, using phones and social media to capture and share their call for …
The German sociologist Max Weber once described the regularity of public administration as protection against arbitrariness, since everyone has to play by the same rational rules. But does this definition still hold up today, with rising populism on both sides of the Atlantic targeting public administration? What is the role of bureaucracy when the legitimacy of electoral processes is constantly …
Beyond debates over keeping statues up or tearing them down, and changing the names of schools and streets, lie more fundamental questions at the intersection of personal and public memory. Whom do we remember, who remembers, and whom does remembering serve? What do we owe to those who lived before us and those who come after us? How can we …
The Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel did not believe in collective guilt. Instead, he asked for repair, and for holding the post-World War II generation of Germans responsible “not for the past, but for the way it remembers the past. And for what it does with the memory of the past.” Other societies and communities have taken up Wiesel’s call—at the …
Recent attempts to confront difficult history appear to be dividing the United States and entangling communities in cultural and legal conflict. But historians, social justice activists, and many others argue that grappling with the sins of the past, and the way they reverberate into the present, is a necessary foundation for reimagining the future. What are the best and most …
