Dr. Robert Zaller

Literary

Towards the Post-Modern Novel: The Polyphonic Consciousness of György Sebestyén

The defining works of the Modernist novel, Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past, Joyce’s Ulysses, and Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, all worked to dethrone the presuppositions of bourgeois consciousness, with its assumption of fixed [ Read Article ]
Politics

The Imploding Presidency of Donald Trump

Donald Trump has been telling us about the Deep State for the past three years. It’s not a new idea. The Deep State, some say, was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or at [ Read Article ]
Politics

Will America Have an Election in 2020?

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore conceded a disputed presidential election to George W. Bush after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended his legal challenge to the Florida vote by the Republican State Secretary who [ Read Article ]
Politics

What Does a Fair Trial Cost?

What do Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Leslie Moonves, Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, Peter Martins, John Conyers, and Al Franken have in common? They are all prominent males [ Read Article ]
Music

Early and Late Beethoven, with Fauré

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, winding down its current season, has saved some of its best for last. The Ébène Quartet, beginning a year-long worldwide tour, plans to record all of Beethoven’s quartets in live [ Read Article ]
Politics

Is Humanity a Lost Cause?

Sometimes it takes a deeply conservative intelligence to get to the heart of the matter. Such an intelligence was that of William Butler Yeats, who wrote nearly a century ago that things, not men, were [ Read Article ]
Politics

How To Be a Citizen in the Age of Trump

“Hey, I’m President! I’m President! Can you believe it?!” That’s what Donald Trump said in celebrating the passage of the American Health Kill bill through the House of Representatives at a beer party on the [ Read Article ]

What Should We Do About an “Election from Hell”?

Politics

October 11, 2016 0

Recently, I received an invitation to participate in a discussion about the election this week at Drexel. The objective was to consider the candidates and the issues, and to urge Drexel students to vote. I [ Read Article ]

Going Crazy Over Terrorism

Politics

October 13, 2016 0

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got a phone call from my son. He told me to turn on the TV, and I saw the World Trade Center towers burning. Ash, some of [ Read Article ]

Politics

How To Be a Citizen in the Age of Trump

May 9, 2017 0

“Hey, I’m President! I’m President! Can you believe it?!” That’s what Donald Trump said in celebrating the passage of the American Health Kill bill through the House of Representatives at a beer party on the [ Read Article ]

Politics

Is Donald Trump an “Extinction-Level Event”?

October 11, 2016 0

Andrew Sullivan, writing in the current issue of New York Magazine, calls the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency “an extinction-level event,” the life-form under threat being American democracy. That’s a pretty severe threat level [ Read Article ]

Politics

What Does a Fair Trial Cost?

May 22, 2019 0

What do Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Leslie Moonves, Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, Peter Martins, John Conyers, and Al Franken have in common? They are all prominent males [ Read Article ]