Revival Magazine Examines the State of the Left

Revival on 15th Street, a cheap bar with a patio, became a regular spot for the NSSR community to meet for a post-class drink near campus. One particular group of graduate students routinely went to Revival together every Friday night. They would talk about The New School, the chaos of graduate life, and the intricacies of leftist ideologies and movements happening in, around, and far from the university. These discussions soon became the inspiration to start their own magazine.

“The idea to establish Revival Magazine originated from the realization that The New School, and in particular NSSR, lacks accessible and student-led spaces where we can exchange ideas and arguments that are not academic in nature,” says founding co-editor and Economics MA student Ruben Brockbreder. “We wanted to create Revival to document these conversations, which, while most passionately delivered in the dim light of the bar and animated by Friday night spirits, would often dissipate within daily routine and university madness.”

“All That’s Left”

The first issue of Revival launched in May of 2019, entitled “All That’s Left.” “The quite gloomy title for Issue I describes our attempt to collect or survey the condition of leftist movements and parties around the world,” Brockbreder says.

The issue featured three sections: commentaries on the state of the left in seven different countries; research briefs spotlighting the work of MA and PhD students in NSSR’s Three-Minute Thesis Challenge; and art and essays on themes of labor, alienation, and a sense of belonging in and near the left. Submissions came from across NSSR, representing how social science students are grappling with today’s most pressing issues.

Ye Liu, a Sociology PhD candidate, wrote a commentary on China:

Amy Osika, a Historical Studies MA student, explored the use of satire by the New Left and the U.S. counterculture for social and political critique in 1960s.

P.J. Gorre, Philosophy PhD candidate and Coordinator of Academic Affairs at NSSR, shared advice from his mother amid difficult times.

Kalpa Rajapaksha, an Economics PhD student, presented photographs from “beyond the horizons of capital in New York City.”

Making a Magazine

But as Brockbreder tells Research Matters, an idea is far from enough to make a magazine materialize from scratch. The original team of five editors found funding for Revival through NSSR’s MA Project Grant, which provides support for initiatives launched by MA students that focus on learning, research, and community-building.

“From the very beginning, we all agreed that we wanted to produce a physical rather digital product that we could ‘hold in our hands and pass around’. From getting submissions for essays and artwork, to editing and finally printing and binding, everything in setting up Revival, in fact, has been refreshingly physical,” Brockbreder says. They printed and bound the magazine by hand at Parsons Making Center, with a digital copy created as an archive.

Isobel Chiang, a Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism MA student and Revival’s art director, has worked as a publishing fellow with the New Republic and as an assistant at both the Parsons School of Design and at a New York City design firm. She points to the Parson’s Graphic Design Lab and its technician, Joe Hirsch, as major resources for producing the physical magazine. She included her notes on design and layout in the arts section of Revival:

“Our goal when typesetting and laying out Revival was not to make a magazine that succumbs to stale associations of leftism (the color red, images of people protesting, stars, etc.),” she writes. “Our goal, instead, was to somehow carry over the spirit of the left into a print product.” The magazine uses only three colors on uncoated paper.

Publication design is an essential part of the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism (CPCJ) curriculum. All CPCJ MA students take Design and the Future of Publishing, a hands-on studio course investigating typography, book and pamphlet design, digital printing, content on the web, and ideation. They also examine contemporary issues that cross design and publishing through readings and analysis of contemporary books, magazines, and periodicals across both printed and digital platforms. Every spring, Parsons School of Design undergraduates join CPCJ students in multidisciplinary teams that work to create conceptual publishing projects — a truly New School-only experience.

Looking Left of The New School

Buoyed by student response and a second MA Project Grant, Revival’s editors are working on its second issue, “For our second issue, we now want to shift the focus from the global to the local to focus on the movements and debates organized by New School students and workers,” Brockbreder says.

Submissions for the second issue should touch broadly on the relationship between leftist ideas and ‘liberal institutions,’ such as The New School, timely in the year of its centennial. Some topics suggested in the call for submissions include how the New School’s health insurance policy is affecting students, the meaning and symbolism of sanctuary schools, and labor organizing on campus and at other academic institutions.

As the first issue told us, “We want to continue thinking beyond academia; coming from within but looking beyond. This is an attempt at reviving that tradition.”

If you would like to write for Revival, please email revivalmag@newschool.edu with a brief pitch of your idea; the essay does not have to be written at this point in time. If you have a complete essay, please submit that as an attachment with a brief summary of the essay in the body of your email. The submission deadline is December 15, 2019.

Cailin Potami is a writer, an editor, and a student in the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism MA program. They live in Queens with their cats, Linguini and Tortellini.

Lucas Perelló, Politics PhD Candidate, Wins Fulbright to Honduras

Free elections contested by parties are central to our conventional notions of democracy. But on what basis does a voter relate to their party: ideology, favors, personal interests, something else? And once party systems are established, how do they evolve? For New School for Social Research Politics PhD candidate Lucas Perelló, these questions provide the framework for his dissertation. And starting in September, he’ll be investigating them as a Fulbright Scholar in a country going through a nearly unprecedented political shift: Honduras.

Born in the U.S. and raised in Chile, Perelló studied politics broadly before focusing on comparative politics, especially in Latin America. After completing an MA in Chile, Perelló completed an MA in Applied Quantitative Research at New York University. But as he approached a career as a political scientist, he felt something was lacking. Looking to expand his conceptual formation, Perelló moved a few blocks north to NSSR.

“The New School overlapped with one of my other interests, which was to expand my methodological knowledge qualitatively. I was drawn to the emphasis given to aspects of development to solve conceptualizing things differently, giving you a different theoretical lenses to study particular political phenomenon.”

Political Party Shift

Immersing himself in empirical case studies and theory, Perelló began to formulate a research plan that married these elements tightly while renewing his passion for comparative approaches. “I study how political parties, and how is it and why is it that party systems change…and how it is that political parties engage with voters,” Perelló says. In this case, ‘political party systems’ refers to how elections are set up, whether voters choose between two parties or multiple parties. The question of party linkages looks at how parties get votes.

“This is a continuous debate within political science and comparative politics, but originally people thought political parties would appeal to voters on either on a programmatic basis, or a clientelist basis, or a charismatic one.” In other words, people vote for a party based on either an ideological agreement, a quid-pro-quo arrangement whereby a vote can be redeemed for favors, or force or personal magnetism of a candidate alone.

Of course, one party can have multiple sorts of such ‘linkages’ with voters, varying according to target demographic, general level of development, or ideology, and changing over time. With this interest party linkages and their evolution, Perelló was drawn to a comparatively understudied region, Central America, specifically Honduras. “Honduras actually presents very interesting insights into the entire discussion of party system change, and the types of party linkages that exist within society,” Perelló says.

Case Study: Honduras

Like many Latin American countries, Honduras transitioned from military dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s. For several decades after — even through a coup in 2009 — the country featured a two-party system that operated on a decisively clientelist model. But in the 2013 elections, a fundamental shift occurred: the two-party system gave way to a multi-party one, including an upstart Anti-Corruption Party led by a popular sportscaster.

“What is interesting about this change is that not only did the party system change quite abruptly, but the types of linkages that the political parties are adopting also shifted suddenly,” Perelló explains. Whereas clientelism and corruption were once the norm, programmatic appeals on the basis of ideology are gaining ground, especially among wealthier constituencies.

There are several reasons that clientelism can lose its power. Appeals based on loyalty-for-favors become weaker as countries become wealthier. Additionally, clientelism can disenfranchise large parts of a population. “There’s many levels associated with this, but at least in the Honduran context these are very exclusive networks,” says Perelló. “For example, you can have a low-income household that is very dependent on some specific policies. The benefits that you might receive from these policies that are actually aimed at reducing poverty are contingent upon who you vote for. And [the government can] keep the electorate poor because they’re dependent on them if they want to stay in power. It’s been so entrenched that the way that it also molds how individual voters, how citizens actually see democracy.”

Because this shift from clientelism to programmatic appeals in developing countries is so unusual, Honduras is a fascinating case study against which to test existing theories of party systems and linkages. Perelló has visited Honduras several times, but found that pervasive clientelism made it nearly impossible to access the people and spaces relevant to his research. It also made for an interesting situation of mistaken identity. Once, while dressed up for a visit to the National Congress, dozens of older women surrounded him. “They approached me with receipts, with CDs, pictures of their kids, asking me if I could get their sons or their daughters who just graduated a job, if I could help them pay for receipt of electricity,” he says. Only when he opened his mouth to speak — in Chilean Spanish — did the crowd realize he was not a government official and could not help them. Local politicians were similarly reluctant to let Perelló in, stonewalling him or only disclosing details of the opposition’s approach.

Opening New Doors

Returning for 10 months with the prestigious Fulbright scholarship and an office and teaching position at Central American Technological University (UNITEC), Perelló is hopeful that more doors will open to him, especially among the political elite. “I really need to spend more time there — more time to conduct interviews, more archival research,” he says. He applied to several different grants and credits his Fulbright success to the wisdom and guidance of David Plotke, Professor of Politics and his dissertation advisor, as well as Tsuya Yee, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs. But he’s cautious: “A Fulbright can work in favor or against you in the sense that, perhaps you’re seen as a representative of the U.S. government who’s meddling around internal politics of a country that has been historically intervened by the U.S. But at least to get my foot in the academic world, Fulbright has so far worked in my favor!”

Despite his focus on Honduras, Perelló believes his project can help scholars and the public understand how political systems can move away from clientelism, and how two-party systems can become more open and contested. “My overall objective in understanding these changes is to understand how can you strengthen democracy in countries that have such a strong authoritarian past.”

Lucas Ballestin is a PhD candidate in Philosophy. He specializes in political philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. His dissertation is on psychoanalytic theories of political ideology in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Economics PhD Student Kyle Moore Talks Policy and Capitol Hill

This story originally appeared on the Insights blog from the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School for Social Research

Kyle Moore starts a new job on Capitol Hill next week. He’ll be joining the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) as a Senior Policy Analyst.

Our first order of business is to offer Kyle a hearty congratulations on his success! Kyle is a long-time member of the SCEPA and New School community, and we wish him well as he goes forward in his economics career.

Kyle earned his MA in Economics from the New School for Social Research, served as a SCEPA fellow within the Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab), and went on to pursue his PhD in the department, which he is currently writing. Some of Kyle’s ReLab work can be found here and here. The Review of Black Political Economy also recently published his research done with ReLab.

As Kyle begins his journey to impact policy within the hallowed halls of our government, he shares a little of his experience below. His story reflects the same desire to confront some of today’s biggest challenges that attracted many of us to the New School. He talks about how he got to where he is today and gives some advice to those who will follow him.

What will you do in this job?

My role will be to write reports and issue briefs on the economic policy issues that matter to Democratic Members of Congress, to prepare briefings for and help contact experts to participate in Congressional hearings on those topics, and to help write the JEC response to the annual Economic Report of the President.
Can you describe your research work and focus?

As a researcher, I’m mainly interested in understanding the causes and consequences of identity group-based social and economic disparities. I want to provide explanations (and hopefully policy solutions for) persistent gaps in health, wealth, income, and employment across race and gender. To do this, I work within the traditions of stratification economics, institutional economics, and the political economy of health. My dissertation work is centered on the health consequences of racial disparities in access to economic resources and exposure to potentially stressful events. I also have a deep interest in the philosophy of social science and in economics’ role in academia and policy circles as a social science
What interested you in working on Capitol Hill?

My interest in working with the JEC, and with economic policy more broadly, stems from my view that social scientists have a responsibility to put their knowledge and their work into practice. Because the subject matter of the social sciences (particularly economics) is human well-being, those who have the time and resources to study the social sciences are called to two purposes: to make others aware of the causes and extent of social and economic problems, and to do what’s possible to alleviate those problems. Inequality, poverty, and racial disparities in mortality and morbidity are too important to be treated as only academic concerns; they have real consequences for people’s lives. Working with the JEC gives me the opportunity to get research directly into the hands of members of Congress — research that could make a real impact on people’s life chances.
What are your hopes as you go forward in this new position and in your career?

I’m looking forward to learning a lot about how economic policy is shaped while working with the JEC. My hope is that I’ll be able to direct people towards better understandings of the causes and consequences of economic inequality. I’d especially like to bring the expertise I’ve built studying persistent racial economic disparities to the staff, in hopes that progress can be made towards reducing those disparities. I also hope that the position will give me a more well-rounded understanding of economics and economic policy, beyond my current areas of expertise, that will be valuable for the students I plan to teach once I make my way back into academia.
How did your time at SCEPA and in the NSSR Econ Department influence your decision to work in policy?

Taking courses within the Economics department at NSSR and working at SCEPA and the Retirement Equity Lab set me up to take on this role in policy. Both sets of experiences were essential in shaping my understanding of the relationship between academic research and economic policy.
NSSR’s Economics department is steeped in a tradition of political economy that’s constantly asking of its students “What is the end (purpose) of economic study?” Without that framing, it’s possible to treat economic study as just a set of interesting data puzzles. The critical perspective that’s baked into the coursework at NSSR steers students towards discussions of social and economic inequality, and what we can do about that inequality. Working at SCEPA and ReLab allowed me to put that critical frame developed through courses in the Econ department to practice, translating academic research into policy briefs and white papers using accessible (non-academic) language. I was able to produce a body of work on the intersection between race, aging, and retirement policy while there, developing some expertise on those subjects. I also gained valuable technical skills working with statistical software, government databases, and longitudinal surveys that I’ve used for my own research and will continue to use in my work with the JEC.
As a role model for other NS Economics students, what advice would you give a current NS Econ student if they wanted to follow in your footsteps?

It’s important to seek out opportunities to produce work with your name on it that will be publicly distributed. Whether it’s a blog post, an op-ed, a chapter review, a policy brief, or an academic research paper. Your body of work is something that accumulates over time, follows you throughout your career, and will often open a lot of doors for you. Any time is a good time to start writing.

Start going to seminars, academic conferences, and events. Ask questions there, meet people, talk about your research, and if you don’t have a clearly defined topic, talk about what you’re interested in. The key is to make connections with people; the more people that know who you are and what you’re interested in, the more of a chance there is that when they hear about an opportunity that might be good for you, they send it your way. Doing good work is a necessary but insufficient condition for getting to a position where that work can make a difference.

Put together a group of colleagues and mentors you can rely on to speak openly with about work, research, and the troubles that come along with academic life. It’s not easy for anyone, and no one gets through coursework or research entirely on their own. Research and scholarship are both social processes, so it makes sense that the best research and scholarship is done in groups. Most importantly though, having people to talk to and confide in is essential for maintaining mental health throughout grad school.
Given the polarization of politics today, what role do you think current New School Economics student can play in creating real and positive change?

NSSR Economics students are perhaps uniquely positioned among the universe of Econ students in that they aren’t discouraged from taking Economics’ role as a social science with real social and political implications seriously. NSSR Econ has a “vision” that is, at its core, unabashedly progressive. That vision is something that economics as an academic discipline desperately needs, but it’s equally needed at think tanks and in the places where economic policy is shaped.

Dean’s Fund Supports 2019 Graduate Student Conferences

A glance at the history of The New School for Social Research and the work done here reveals a shared commitment by faculty and students alike to critical reflection and analysis that helps transform our social reality.

That theory is important for practice, and that practice can but only enrich theoretical pursuits is something of a given at NSSR. When we move beyond what’s given, however, the collective task becomes clarifying and understanding the implications of the relationship between theory and practice in and on our time. The idea that the academy is situated within a socio-historical reality and should be responsive to that reality rests as a leitmotif in much of the influential discipline-shaping work that has been and is being done here. It can be experienced not only in the classroom and in faculty research, but also in the many public faces of NSSR, such as the online intellectual commons Public Seminar. But focusing on this side of NSSR alone risks overlooking the rich and dynamic projects and conversations being had by that other important academic population: graduate students.

Much like the faculty that advise them and the institution that houses both, the master’s and doctoral students at NSSR form a dedicated and eclectic group of scholars and activists who come from all over the globe. As active members of the school’s intellectual life, they add to the research community by organizing conferences and workshops on topics and themes that allow their studies to meet contemporary issues and connect with the world outside NSSR. Often times trans- and interdisciplinary, student-run conferences blur and contest traditional lines inside and outside of academia and are one of the most productive sites for intellectual growth at NSSR. They are where the students begin to make their mark as active scholars in their field.

To support students in these important efforts, Dean William Milberg offers funding for student run-conferences and workshops each academic year via the Dean’s Conference Fund. In Spring 2019, the Dean’s Conference Fund is supporting the following conferences:

April 4-5 – Paranoid Encounters (Philosophy) engages with a perspective often disregarded, even rejected by philosophy — that of paranoia — in order to understand and gauge whether philosophy offer anything with respect to the contemporary intellectual and political climate of post-truths, surveillance, xenophobia, and ecological disaster.

April 8-9 – What is to be Done in Brazil? (Multiple Departments) is a conference organized by The Reconvexo Collective at NSSR dedicated to explore and investigate new avenues for social, economic, cultural and political transformations in Brazil in the wake of the far-right’s rise in Brazil.

April 27 – Theft (Anthropology) gathers scholars, activists, and authors together to discuss the uncanny pervasiveness of theft that shapes the contemporary moment — gentrification, the trafficking of bodies, fast-fashion, and the housing of stolen objects in museums — in order to ask whether subversion or subterfuge is possible in overturning the present conditions.

May 3-4 – Kierkegaard as Educator: Paideia, Seduction and the Ways of the Negative (Philosophy) represents a collective inquiry by philosophers and readers of Kierkegaard at different stages on life’s way into how Kierkegaard conceives, enacts and transforms philosophy as paideia (education, a person’s intellectual and moral formation) through techniques of communication, eroticization and seduction

While the summaries above only briefly capture the intellectual depth, critical tensions, and political urgency that motivate the students’ organizational efforts, it should be clear that NSSR’s commitment to socially engaged and meaningful research — research that isn’t afraid of challenging intellectual orthodoxies and academic norms — is in good hands.

Supporting Women in Philosophy

Philosophy takes the most fundamental and universal problems of humanity quite seriously. Yet, as a discipline, it continues to face its own fundamental problem: As of 2016, only 30 percent of undergraduate students, 30 percent of graduate students, and nearly 21 percent of professors in Philosophy are women. Those numbers are even lower for women of color and queer and trans women. Many women who do pursue advanced study in philosophy speak of a serious climate problem, and of informal barriers that keep them from fully flourishing in the discipline.

In 2001, students at The New School for Social Research organized People in Support of Women in Philosophy (PSWIP), a local branch of a widespread network of loosely affiliated Women in Philosophy groups that support and foster scholarship by women in philosophy, and bring attention to some of the most difficult barriers women in a field dominated by men.

Among the most successful and enduring student-organized groups at NSSR, PSWIP has evolved since its founding 18 years ago. What began as a supportive place to share and discuss feminist philosophy has expanded to focus on supporting women in the department with varying research interests. Recent Philosophy doctoral graduate and longtime PSWIP member Juniper Alcorn recalls the shift: “First it was workshopping papers, but eventually it was also about advancing the work of women in the department as well as creating opportunities for them to make connections and other professional development initiatives.”

This year’s PSWIP facilitators, Philosophy MA students Katie Gruszecki and Tara Mastrelli, have continued that tradition. Describing PSWIP as a “research and publications support group,” the group’s main focus is its weekly meetings in which members workshop a variety of research, from papers and abstracts to oral presentations and exams. During a recent session, Gruszecki presented a paper on Hegel and bodily harm. “I show the difficulty in accepting Hegel’s argument for denying one the right to die with dignity,” she summarizes. “I argue for the right to die with dignity due to the necessity to abstain from violence involved in staying alive under certain conditions.”

Discussion facilitation during PSWIP meetings reflects the group’s mission and members’ concerns about climate in the field. Once limited to women in the department, PSWIP is now open to philosophers of all genders. Male allies are regular contributors and group discussions run on the “progressive stack” technique; as moderators make a list of who would like to speak, women and gender minorities are given priority.

While typical philosophical discussions can often take on a rather antagonistic tone, PSWIP cultivates an atmosphere that is more constructive. “Here, people who’d feel reticent to speak in class can have a more inviting space in which to share their ideas,” Gruszecki says. Members accomplish this by placing greater emphasis on providing a charitable interpretation of others’ work, and by being aware of unhelpful interpersonal dynamics. “This means that we try to give the most generous interpretation of other people’s positions, as well as providing each other the benefit of the doubt,” Mastrelli adds.

“I always think of PSWIP as a platform to not only have these discussions about the state of the field that makes it necessary for this kind of group to exist, but to also create a platform for people to succeed in philosophy,” says Alcorn. Informal networks of peer mentorship have formed through PSWIP outside the classroom, and the group has supported initiatives including a dissertation support group and alumni network.

One of PSWIP’s major initiatives this academic year is the relaunch of their annual journal, which had been on hiatus since 2014. The journal showcases papers that have been workshopped in PSWIP throughout the year, providing readers with a view into the type of rigorous work that can be created and celebrated through a supportive scholarly environment. It also provides members with an opportunity to gain editorial experience and have their work published. Past journal editors have gone on to hold faculty positions and attend doctoral programs at Stony Brook University, University of Texas at Austin, and Emory University, among others. And through a new agreement with the Philosophy Documentation Center, the journal will now also reach readers beyond NSSR.

While all of these efforts serve to lift up marginalized voices, PSWIP is also working to change ongoing gender, sexual, and racial dynamics in the field. The group is challenging NSSR’s Philosophy Department to explicitly address some of the most pressing issues concerning marginalizing gender dynamics within the discipline: implicit bias, stereotype threat, and a general sense that women, queer, and trans students’ contributions are less valued. “We want to support philosophy students, graduate or undergraduate, who face oppression on the basis of their gender,” says Gruszecki. Reflecting that commitment, this year’s PSWIP Colloquium speaker is writer and critic Andrea Long Chu, who will discuss her forthcoming book, Females: A Concern (Verso, 2019), on March 14, 2019.

In previous years, PSWIP members conducted student surveys that showed considerable differences between the classroom experiences of men and people of other genders. These differences reflected a sense that men tend to dominate not just readings, but also in-class discussions as well as more informal departmental social dynamics. This survey led to many important conversations, calls for more attentive practices on the part of administration and faculty around class management, event planning, and even hiring and admissions practices.

The current PSWIP leadership looks to build on this legacy. “This year we’ve launched a gender dynamics share space, which is a Google Form that people can use to anonymously collect testimony to discuss internally or bring up at the yearly departmental town hall,” Mastrelli explains. “Perhaps this is something that doesn’t require action now, but will allow students to feel heard today and perhaps someone to feel they are not alone tomorrow.” By building this database of shared experiences, current members seek to support their fellow students of today as well as build a stronger foundation and brighter future for future Philosophy scholars.

Lucas Ballestin is a PhD candidate in Philosophy. He specializes in political philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. His dissertation is on psychoanalytic theories of political ideology in the 20th and 21st Centuries.