In sex as elsewhere, consent is asked to do a lot. It is a kind of moral magic, legal theorist Heidi Hurd has suggested, that makes all kinds of unthinkable incursions permissible, from fondling and penetration to degradation and physical violence.  On the other hand, consent is notoriously fickle. Are words necessary for consent, or are glances enough? Which acts one is consenting to, what happens if consent is withdrawn in media res— such questions might suggest that consent is being asked to do too much. It may be clarifying, too, to separate out two types of consent—on the one hand is ..read more

Fady Joudah’s poems are exquisite yet ungovernable, rebelliously innovative yet attuned to a broad range of traditions. They spoke to me long before I had the pleasure of meeting their author or the honor to call him a friend. I have worked with Fady as an editor on several occasions, saving our exchanges—both in my files and in my mind—as private lessons not only in the verbal arts he and I both practice, but also in the art of conducting oneself in the world with uncompromising dignity. His latest collection, […], was composed over three brutal months of Israel’s war on the Palestinian ..read more

A revolution in education! A resuscitation of the university mission! To happen in, of all places, not the pompous old northeast or the debauched West Coast, not New York or California but the country’s southern reaches—in the Texas Hill Country, in the city of Austin, where already technologists and venture capitalists had swarmed, drawn by the absence of income tax and the looseness of labor regulations, pulled by the mild zoning laws and the natural beauty and the food trucks and the good vibes. Austin, because it was “a hub for builders, mavericks, and creators.” Here a new university: the ..read more

In the series’ penultimate episode, Mad Men’s depressive hausfrau Betty Draper trips in a  stairwell on the Fairfield University campus and discovers she’s  dying.  Lung cancer at thirty-eight: unusual in a woman her age but not, perhaps, inconceivable. Is the metaphor obvious? Subjected to the “non-existence” of the housewife (to crib a different Betty–Friedan), the structural suppression of her personhood has generated in Mad Men’s Betty a metastasizing interior rot. But before this, Betty is  a cigarette adman’s celluloid dream: a Hitchcock blonde gone trad, nearly never ..read more

  In South Dekalb County, Georgia, the South River forest forms a canopy so lush and life-giving that it is referred to as one of the “four lungs of Atlanta.” This sprawl of green space was known as “Welaunee” by the native Muscogee people, who were forcibly displaced in the 1830’s. Swaths of Welaunee Forest were settled and cleared to make way for a cotton plantation. This history encapsulates the twinned imperatives of the American colonial project: the displacement and genocide of indigenous populations and the stolen labor of enslaved Africans. Today, the Welaunee forest is once agai ..read more

Indigenous Justice on Movement Memos On November 23, thousands of Indigenous people and allies participated in the annual Indigenous Peoples’ Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island organized by the International Indian Treaty Council. These gatherings began in 1975, first to honor the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island by Native activists, and, later, to counter popular narratives of Thanksgiving as a peaceful convening of native people and colonizers. This year’s assembly had another function, too: solidarity with Palestine. In a new episode of Kelly Hayes ..read more

Protean Mag: Letters From Gaza In collaboration with The Institute for Palestine Studies, Protean magazine has been publishing translated messages from Gaza sent amid the current bombing campaign. An excerpt from Reema Saleh, a student awaiting updates from her family in Gaza: At noon, the sound of an F-16 bomb interrupted a phone call with my mother. I couldn’t remember what she was even telling me. I knew exactly what that sound was from experience. I was cut off from my family for the rest of that day. My neighbor’s house was bombed and collapsed on its residents. “They bombed Ala ..read more

When sharing information online, please keep in mind that both Instagram and Facebook have policies suppressing information regarding the occupation of Palestine. For more on that suppression, please read: Facebook Report Concludes That Company Censorship Violated Palestinian Human Rights  Tech Platforms’ Treatment of Pro-Palestinian Content Raises Bias Allegations Israel/Palestine: Facebook Censors Discussion of Rights Issues On Instagram Shadow Banning Palestinian Posts  To continue countering the prevailing Western media narrative which justifies the extermination of Palestin ..read more

In Fresno, Sikhs and Oaxacans unite to pass caste discrimination ban This week, Fresno became the first city in California to ban discrimination based on caste or Indigenous heritage; the state senate passed a similar bill, which is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. The bill protects South Asian immigrants from the caste discrimination imported to the US by the upper caste professional diaspora, and also applies to indigenous Mexican immigrants. The movement against caste based oppression has gained ground here in the US, where it can be safer to advocate for as opposed to in India, wher ..read more

If I must die, you must live  to tell my story  to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth  and some strings, (make it white with a long tail)  so that a child, somewhere in Gaza  while looking heaven in the eye  awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell  not even to his flesh  not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there  bringing back love If I must die  let it bring hope  let it be a tale —Dr. Refaat Alareer In Gaza, we have evidence of the functionin ..read more