New Books in Politics and Polemics

The United States takes pride in its democratic model and the idea that citizens deliberate in a process to form political opinions. However, in recent years, division and partisanship have increased while deliberation and the actual discussion of competing ideas have decreased. More and more, citizens are siloed, interacting only with those with whom they agree, and there is more negative animus directed at the opposition. In his new book, A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America (Oxford University Press, 2020), Political Scientist Brian F. Harrison critiques many of the current methods of communicating and explores the growing divide within political discourse. He demonstrates how, in our contemporary environment, political debate includes more name-calling and far less of a desire to understand political opponents. But hope is not lost. Looking at recent history, Harrison argues that conversations about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights successfully changed public opinion in a civil manner and did so rather quickly. Drawing on this example, Harrison proposes a model for how the citizens in the United States can overcome increased partisanship and dissent in favor of more civil and productive conversation. A Change is Gonna Come contextualizes both the advice and suggestions provided in the book by tracing out a great deal of the literature about political psychology and identity politics, since Harrison argues that part of the difficulty is the way that partisanship has become more of an identity marker for many voters.Harrison offers the discourse about LGBTQ+ rights as a model for how engagement should occur. This is also an area of research that Harrison has previously explored in other works, specifically his co-authored book with Melissa Michelson, Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Changes Attitudes about LGBT Rights. He notes that change in public opinion typically takes a long time. But in the last 15 years alone, public opinion around LGBTQ+ rights has significantly shifted. Harrison contends that change in public opinion regarding LGBTQ+ rights was supported by people of differing backgrounds engaging in uncomfortable conversations about the issue. He extrapolates that by talking to people with whom we disagree, we develop a dialogue which helps people on all sides of the issue to understand other viewpoints. In A Change is Gonna Come, Harrison outlines how to approach these conversations, including how to avoid a combative approach and how to engage, respectfully, across political and cultural divides. Combining social psychology, communication studies, and political science, Harrison concludes that if citizens in the United States wants to regain a sense of civility in politics, they should follow the model presented by LGBTQ+ discussions and encourage people to have difficult conversations across policy and partisan lines.Adam Liebell-McLean assisted with this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

For the second time, Nick Estes has been gracious enough to participate in a New Books Network podcast to discuss his book Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019). (Listen to Ryan Tate’s interview for New Books in the American West here).This second interview focuses more on a genocide studies reading of Dr. Estes’ book, raising questions about the history of genocide against Indigenous peoples, as well as Indigenous resistance and survival. It also seeks to connect Dr. Estes’ book to subsequent events in the United States and around the world, including the pandemic and protest movements.Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.Jeff Bachman is a Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC. He is the author of The United States and Genocide: (Re)Defining the Relationship and editor of the volume Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations. He is currently working on a new book, The Politics of Genocide: From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect, contracted by Rutgers University Press for its Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

If we want girls to succeed, we need to teach them the audacity to transgress. Through the lives of students at three very different schools, Sally Nuamah, an award-winning scholar-activist, makes the case for “feminist schools” that orient girls toward a lifetime of achievement in How Girls Achieve (Harvard University Press).This bold and necessary book points out a simple and overlooked truth: most schools never had girls in mind to begin with. That is why the world needs what Sally Nuamah calls “feminist schools,” deliberately designed to provide girls with achievement-oriented identities. And she shows how these schools would help all students, regardless of their gender.Educated women raise healthier families, build stronger communities, and generate economic opportunities for themselves and their children. Yet millions of disadvantaged girls never make it to school―and too many others drop out or fail. Upending decades of advice and billions of dollars in aid, Nuamah argues that this happens because so many challenges girls confront―from sexual abuse to unequal access to materials and opportunities―go unaddressed. But it isn’t enough just to go to school. What you learn there has to prepare you for the world where you’ll put that knowledge to work.A compelling and inspiring scholar who has founded a nonprofit to test her ideas, Nuamah reveals that developing resilience is not a gender-neutral undertaking. Preaching grit doesn’t help girls; it actively harms them. Drawing on her deep immersion in classrooms in the United States, Ghana, and South Africa, Nuamah calls for a new approach: creating feminist schools that will actively teach girls how and when to challenge society’s norms, and allow them to carve out their own paths to success.Sally A. Nuamah is a scholar, activist, and filmmaker. She has received numerous awards, including the Gates Millennium scholarship and the Black Women Organized for Political Action’s Under 40 Award in Education, and was selected a Change-Maker by the White House. “HerStory,” her award-winning documentary on girls and education in Ghana, has been screened across the world and is accessible through Discovery Education.Dr. Christina Gessler’s background is in women’s history, literature and anthropology. She studies the diaries and personal writings of 19th-century American women, and works as a historian and photographer. In seeking the extraordinary in the ordinary, Gessler writes the histories of largely unknown women, and takes many, many photos in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Is there a link between the colonization of Palestinian lands and the enclosing of Palestinian minds? The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Temple University Press, 2019) argues that it is precisely through film and media that hope can occasionally emerge amidst hopelessness, emancipation amidst oppression, freedom amidst apartheid.Greg Burris employs the work of Edward W. Said, Jacques Rancière, and Cedric J. Robinson in order to locate Palestinian utopia in the heart of the Zionist present.He analyzes the films of prominent directors Annemarie Jacir (Salt of This Sea, When I Saw You) and Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) to investigate the emergence and formation of Palestinian identity. Looking at Mais Darwazah’s documentary My Love Awaits Me By the Sea, Burris considers the counterhistories that make up the Palestinian experience— stories and memories that have otherwise been obscured or denied.He also examines Palestinian (in)visibility in the global media landscape, and how issues of Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity are illustrated through social media, staged news spectacles, and hip hop music.Greg Burris is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech (Routledge, 2020) is the first to outline the history of the tactic of ‘no platforming’ at British universities since the 1970s, looking at more than four decades of student protest against racist and fascist figures on campus.The tactic of ‘no platforming’ has been used at British universities and colleges since the National Union of Students adopted the policy in the mid-1970s. The author traces the origins of the tactic from the militant anti-fascism of the 1930s–1940s and looks at how it has developed since the 1970s, being applied to various targets over the last 40 years, including sexists, homophobes, right-wing politicians and Islamic fundamentalists.This book provides a historical intervention in the current debates over the alleged free speech ‘crisis’ perceived to be plaguing universities in Britain, as well as North America and Australasia.No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech is for academics and students, as well as the general reader, interested in modern British history, politics and higher education. Readers interested in contemporary debates over freedom of speech and academic freedom will also have much to discover in this book.Evan Smith is a research fellow in history at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in South Australia.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.In her deeply reported investigation, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power.She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today’s Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America’s past.It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart’s probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.Katherine Stewart writes about politics, policy, and religion for The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, and The New Republic. Her previous book, The Good News Club, was an examination of the religious right and public education.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

College courses in Ethics tend to focus on theories of the moral rightness or wrongness of actions. This emphasis sometimes obscures the fact that morality is a social project: part of what makes a decent and stable society possible is that we uphold standards of conduct. We call out bad behavior, blame wrongdoers, and praise those who do the right things. We apologize and forgive in public ways. In short, we hold one another responsible.  Again, this is all necessary. However, we are all familiar with the ways in which the acts associated with upholding morality can go wrong. For instance, blame can be excessive, apologies can be patronizing, and so on. Another way in which things can go wrong is when people wield morality opportunistically – for self-aggrandizement, or to elevate themselves in the eyes of others.In Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk (Oxford University Press, 2020), Brandon Warmke and Justin Tosi call this broad type of moral breakdown grandstanding. Their book examines the different kinds of grandstanding, demonstrates why grandstanding is morally bad, and proposes some tips for avoiding it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Should we understand the conservative elites of #Never Trump as homogeneous and united? Failed renegades? Moral guardians of republicanism and values?In their new book Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites (Oxford University Press, 2020), Robert P. Saldin (Professor of Political Science at the University of Montana) and Steven M. Teles (Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University) analyze the strategies and motivations of the Never Trump conservatives to paint a vivid picture of the movement that Liz Mair called “the political equivalent of a doomed species.” Their nuanced analysis of the professional and intellectual circles of the extended Republican party network who made up the Never Trump movement, concludes that conservative elites who opposed Trump did so for varying reasons, using disparate methods.Based on interviews with 62 elites (and provided emails and other communications), Saldin and Seles portray the foreign policy elites as a professional class -- zealous moderates and reluctant partisans -- who nevertheless stepped forward to isolate “crazies.” They objected not only to the issues but Trump’s temperament: the lying, cruelty, narcissism, and flagrant norm-violations. On the other hand, political operatives -- the pollsters, campaign consultants, fundraisers, and media experts -- were far less willing to publicly take a stand given their self-interest in employment with Republican campaigns. But Saldin and Teles’s analysis demonstrates that even within this self-interested group, renegades pursued actions that would make them outcasts such as Joel Searby and William Kristol’s attempt to woe an independent candidate such as Jim Mattis or Mitt Romney. Chapters include an analysis of the institutional and material factors that influenced conservative public intellectuals, how identity -- especially being Jewish or Mormon -- factored into the level of fear of authoritarianism, the quid pro quo that made lawyers more likely to look the other way, and what Saldin and Teles call the “marginal value” of economists who showed little attempt to organize collectively against the nomination and election of Donald Trump.Benjamin Warren assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

One of the most enduring ideas in economics is that unemployment is both unavoidable and necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy. This assumption has provided cover for the devastating social and economic costs of job insecurity. It is also false.In this The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity, 2020), Pavlina R. Tcherneva challenges us to imagine a world where the phantom of unemployment is banished and anyone who seeks decent, living-wage work can find it - guaranteed.This is the aim of the Job Guarantee proposal: to provide a voluntary employment opportunity in public service to anyone who needs it. Tcherneva enumerates the many advantages of the Job Guarantee over the status quo and proposes a blueprint for its implementation within the wider context of the need for a Green New Deal.Pavlina Tcherneva is Associate Professor at Bard College and Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute.Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

The far-right has been coming after democracy for decades and we may be just one election away from a total takeover. Join NBN host and rhetorical scholar Lee Pierce (she/they) for a robust discussion of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (Viking, 2017) with award-winning historian Nancy MacLean and attorney Mary Whiteside. Get ready for an explosive expose of the right’s relentless campaign to undermine civil rights and alter the Constitution forever.Democracy in Chains tracks the development of a secretive political establishment—the capitalist radical right or “property supremacists”—working to alter the rules of democratic governance. Behind their advance is James McGill Buchanan, a Nobel Prize-winning political economist who developed a diabolical plan to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. Using the language of economics and recruiting corporate billionaires and academics alike, Buchanan has systematically undermined the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.Joining forces with billionaire Charles Koch, Buchanan and his steal group of radical libertarians have broken ranks with conservatives (while co-opting their values and catchphrases) and now have one of their own, Mike Pence, in the White House. Democracy in Chains draws on a decade of research to tell a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok.This revelatory work of scholarship is a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government; this episode is one that you don’t want to miss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics