Zoom voice: This meeting is being recorded. Claire August: Oooh. Spooky. Daniela Silva: Okay, let’s start! For these first questions, you say if you prefer or do either this or that. Number one- Zoom or Google Hangouts? Everyone: Zoom. Daniela: Camera on or off? Everyone: On. Daniela: For me, it depends on when my camera
The Coronavirus in Jails and ICE Detention Centers: A Case for Prison Abolition?
The partial halting of the global economy due to the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed economic inequalities that have existed in the world for years. The tragic mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis in the United States provides a glaring case for the need for a single-payer healthcare system. As millions lose their jobs, the calls
Metaphysics y mi condena
Metaphysics. I’d heard this word a few times before, just thrown out there, into a sea of conversation. Thrown out with or without meaning. Thrown out to impress or just to say something that doesn’t sound so trivial, thrown out even because it goes well with physics,
Sir Roger Scruton, in memoriam: A Platonic Tribute
Sir Roger Scruton – professor of philosophy, author, political thinker, composer, theorist of music, barrister, ecologist, wine connoisseur, publicist and gadfly at large—passed away this January 12. As the sad news broke, a global outpouring of tributes began, testifying to the magnitude of Scruton’s achievement and provoking questions about its meaning. Among the first, Timothy Garton Ash tweeted his sadness for the loss of a “provocative, sometimes outrageous Conservative thinker that a truly liberal society should be glad to have challenging it.”
Windows
A window is a frame for seeing beyond the container of one’s physical and immediate space. It is a peephole that propels the gaze outward. Through it, without really moving, you can confront the same two trees, always there and ever-changing, appreciate the paces of birds and bicycles, recognize time in warmth and photons. The window is uniquely suited for daydreaming as it literally displays another place you could be, without requiring the action that would allow for a physical transference, as a door does…
What is oppression?
In a poem, Sarah Nassabieh answers to the first question posed in the class “Social Justice: A Transnational Feminist Perspective” led by Dr. Cassandra Ellerbe at Bard College Berlin this semester.
What’s Next? – A Senior Interview Series (#3: Mandula van den Berg)
Two of the three possible concentrations of the Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought (HAST) program at Bard College Berlin are Literature & Rhetoric and Ethics & Politics. 2020 graduating senior Mandula van den Berg is double concentrating in both and told me all about her experience at BCB and what she gained from being part of these two different concentrations of the HAST degree.
Militarization and Love
My grandmother says, Das Militär steckt in unserem Blut. My grandmother says, The military runs in our family. What is lost in translation is the word steckt. Hides, is stuck, is plugged. Somehow the military exists in our blood, lingering. The verb steckt suggests something active, positive or negative, but a presence nonetheless.