New Books in Politics and Polemics

The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. But why should scientists simply “stick to the facts” and leave politics to the politicians when the world seems to be falling down around us?Drawing on his experience as both a research scientist and an expert advisor at the centre of government, Ian Boyd takes an empirical approach to examining the current state of the relationship between science and politics. He argues that the way politicians and scientists work together today results in a science that is on tap for ideological (mis)use, and governance that fails to serve humanity’s most fundamental needs. Justice is unlikely―perhaps impossible―while science is not a fully integrated part of the systems for collective decision-making across society.In Science and Politics (Polity, 2024), Boyd presents an impassioned argument for a series of conceptual and structural innovations that could resolve this fundamental tension, revealing how a radical intermingling of these (apparently contradictory) professions might provide the world with better politics and better science.Professor Sir Ian Boyd is currently a professor at the University of St Andrews and Chair of the UK Research Integrity Office. He was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on Food and the Environment (2012-2019). He is a marine and polar scientist and previously served as the first Director of the Scottish Oceans Institute at St AndrewsMorteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author of Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (U California Press, 2025). Chan is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as the author of a prior book Networking Peripheries on tech movements among craftwork communities in Peru. In her current book, Chan documents how the Big Data on which AI are trained are based on long-standing data infrastructures—sets of practices, policies, and logics—that remove, imperil, devalue, and actively harm people who refuse to conform to racialized patriarchal power structures and the priorities of surveillance capitalism—most pointedly immigrant, feminist, and low-income communities.Centered mostly in the United States as well as Latin America, Predatory Data shows how the eugenicist data practices of the past now shape our present. But her approach is fundamentally a politics of pluralism. Chan dedicates half of the book to amplifying and praising the small-scale, community-led projects of the past and present—from the legendary Hull House’s data visualizations to community data initiatives in Champaign, Illinois. There is much fuel for political outrage in this book and also fodder for solidarity and hope.This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “The Politics of AI.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu .Student collaborators on this interview were Emma Bufkin, Keyonté Doughty, Natalie Dumm, Karim Elmehdawi, Lauren Garza, Eden Kim, Michelle Kugel, Kai Lee, Sam Mitike, Hadassah Nehikhuere, Shalini Thinakaran, Logan Walsh, and Wesley Williams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, writes Neil Kraus in his urgent call to action, The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement (Temple UP, 2023).Kraus claims the idea that both the education system and labor force are chronically deficient was aggressively and incorrectly promoted starting in the Reagan era, when corporate interests and education reformers emphasized education as the exclusive mechanism providing the citizenry with economic opportunity. However, as this critical book reveals, that is a misleading articulation of the economy and education system rooted in the economic self-interests of corporations and the wealthy.The Fantasy Economy challenges the basic assumptions of the education reform movement of the last few decades. Kraus insists that education cannot control the labor market and unreliable corporate narratives fuel this misinformation. Moreover, misguided public policies, such as accountability and school choice, along with an emphasis on workforce development and STEM over broad-based liberal arts education, have only produced greater inequality.Ultimately, The Fantasy Economy argues that education should be understood as a social necessity, not an engine of the neoliberal agenda. Kraus' book advocates for a change in conventional thinking about economic opportunity and the purpose of education in a democracy.Neil Kraus is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. He is the author of Majoritarian Cities: Policy Making and Inequality in Urban Politics and Race, Neighborhoods, and Community Power: Buffalo Politics, 1934-1997. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Every year, millions of public school students are suspended. This overused punishment removes students from the classroom, but it does not improve their behavior. Instead, suspension disrupts their education, harming the students, their families, and their schools. Black students suffer most within this broken system, experiencing a far greater risk of school punishment and the significant harms that accompany it. Many activists and scholars have considered how school punishment increases racial inequity, but few have thought to ask why. Why do we punish students the way we do, and why have we allowed this harmful practice to impact the lives of our nation’s children?In Suspended Education: School Punishment and the Legacy of Racial Injustice (NYU Press, 2025), Aaron Kupchik takes readers to the root of the issue. Suspensions were not intended as a behavior management tool. Instead, they were designed to remove unwanted students from the classroom. Through statistical analysis and in-depth case studies of schools in Massachusetts and Delaware, Kupchik reveals how suspension rates skyrocketed after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, serving as an unofficial means of removing Black children from newly desegregated schools. His groundbreaking research traces the legacy of these segregationist movements, demonstrating that school districts with more desegregation-related legal battles from the 1950s onward suspend more Black students today. Combining expert analysis with compelling, accessible prose, Kupchik makes a powerful case for the end of suspension and other exclusionary punishments. The result is a revelatory explanation of a pressing problem facing all children, parents, and educators today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Live from the Frontline Club in London, Ctrl Alt Deceit is back for its second season. Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones host a fascinating discussion on the myriad threats to democracy, particularly in light of Trump's re-election. Joined by Gabriel Gatehouse is an award-winning BBC journalist and broadcaster, formerly International Editor of Newsnight and host of the award winning podcast The Coming Storm.And Connor Tomlinson is a commentator and writer, contributing to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Courage Media and presenting the Deprogrammed podcast at the New Culture Forum. He previously hosted Tomlinson Talks on LotusEaters.comIn this provocative and timely discussion, big ideas collide as our panel tackles the fault lines shaking the foundations of the democratic world.As power shifts, authoritarianism rises, and ideological battles intensify, is liberal democracy collapsing under its own contradictions—or is it still the best system we’ve got?From Silicon Valley’s techno-libertarian ambitions to the push for a return to a more rigidly defined Western identity, our panel will explore the competing visions for the future. Has democracy been hijacked by global institutions that sideline voters? Was the dream of a liberal world order always doomed to fail? And if democracy is in decline—what comes next?Producer: Pearse LynchExec Producer: Lucinda Knight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Muriel Blaive to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique. In the podcast we talked about the (failure of the) pandemic response, the necessity of critique, being shadowbanned on Facebook, censorship, and about liberal intellectuals abandoning their core values.Pandemic Power is available in Open Access, thanks to the support of the Austrian Science Fund. You can download a PDF copy here.You can purchase a physical copy here.During the podcast, we discussed the following article: Laura Spinney, “Five years on, the right’s Covid narrative has been turbo-charged into the mainstream”, The Observer, 9 March 2025.Muriel frequently posts on X.The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books.Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more: https://ceupress.com/Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava.Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World (Verso, 2024), Ståle Holgersen develops a conceptualization of 'crisis' that moves beyond simplistic understandings of societal turbulence or even disaster, arguing that crises have come to mean something very specific. Where previous analyses have treated economic and ecological crises as separate phenomena, Holgersen reveals their profound interconnection within capitalism's contradictions. Central to the book is the idea that both economic and climate crises are crises of capitalism specifically, and the powers that be are not willing to acknowledge it. Holgersen delves into today’s economic and ecological crises to demonstrate that they are not exceptions to an otherwise functioning system but integral to its operation. It is naive to see these upheavals as opportunities for reform or revolution. They are the bedrock of the status quo. Fortunately, the vicious circle sustaining capitalism is not founded on an iron law. Our historical mission in the face of the climate crisis is to create a historical exception to the rule. It is time for ecosocialism against crisis.About the Author: Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. He is a member of two research collectives: the Zetkin Collective (ecosocialist group working on political ecologies of the far right) published White Skin, Black Fuel on Verso in 2021 and Fundament (a housing research collective) published Kris i Bostadsfrågan on Daidalos in 2023. This is his first monograph in English.About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. She has a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

What does the history of Liverpool tell us about the future of Britain? In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025), Sam Wetherall, a Senior Lecturer in the History of Britain and the World at the University of York, tells the story of the city through the lens of ‘obsolesce’. This powerful framework structures a narrative that sees the story of Liverpool as both one of state ineffectiveness, indifference, and brutality, and one of solidarity and alternative forms of community and organising. The analysis is rich with details, ranging widely across the city’s rich social, cultural and economic story. Offering Liverpool as a blueprint for pessimism and optimism, the book is essential reading across the humanities, social scientists, and anyone interested in politics, culture and society today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Amid the fanfare around AI and autonomous weapons, decision-makers - both military and political - are imagining an augmented future for warfare that minimises human influence and connection. But in their rush for speed and lethality, leaders have failed to understand the behavioural and technical challenges that accompany these new weapon types, as well as the detail of their operation and the practicalities involved in deploying these assets on tomorrow's battlefields. Indeed, as autonomy starts to flood fighting practices, the classical concepts of combat, tactics and strategy may no longer be fit for task. We are not ready and, as Paddy Walker makes clear in War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield (Howgate Publishing Limited, 2025), human oversight over lethal engagement is critical if we are to do more than suffer defeats faster.Formerly commissioned into the Fifth Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, Dr Paddy Walker is Managing Director of the Leon Group. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and an Associate at the Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict at the Imperial War Museum. Previously London chair of NGO Human Rights Watch, Paddy is a Board Member of NGO Article 36 and co-authored War's Changed Landscape, also published by Howgate, with Professor Peter Roberts in 2023. Check out the New Books Network episode on that book here.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics