Dr. Robert Zaller

Music

In Memoriam: Michael Tilson Thomas Conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra

Memory and mourning was the theme of Michael Tilson Thomas’ concerts this weekend with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The long-time conductor of the San Francisco Orchestra has had a continuing relationship with the Orchestra, and his [ Read Article ]
Music

To Fugue Or Not To Fugue: PCMS Presents the Juilliard Quartet

Long-lived chamber ensembles are like fine wines: the vintage keeps coming back, sometimes with the flavor slightly altered, but the bottles occasionally need changing. The Juilliard Quartet is seventy years old, and its cellist of [ Read Article ]
Academics

When a University Loses Its Soul

More than six decades ago, the sociologist C. Wright Mills warned of a “new universe of management and manipulation” that had entered American life, and that threatened to fundamentally alter its character and undermine its [ 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 ]
Uncategorized

What’s a Girl Alone To Do? Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In

Finding romance as one gets older doesn’t come easily. Such is the plight of Isabelle, the heroine of Claire Denis’ Un Beau soleil intérieur, wretchedly mistranslated as Let the Sunshine In in its American release. [ Read Article ]
Politics

Pay To Play: America in the Middle East Today

Modern American foreign policy in the Middle East was formed by three pivotal events: the determination to control the region’s oil resources through public policy and oil corporations after World War I; the decision by [ 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 ]

When a Liar Speaks the Truth: Why Donald Trump Discomfits Us

Politics

March 13, 2017 0

In writing about Donald Trump in these pages last spring, I pointed out that part of his appeal—and his value—lay in his willingness to drive sacred cows out of the barn. Trump, and no one [ Read Article ]

The Death Penalty: Abolition’s New Cause

Politics

October 11, 2016 0

A century and a half ago, America came out of slavery. It was perhaps not literally true, as Abraham Lincoln said, that every drop drawn by the lash would be paid for by one drawn [ Read Article ]

Politics

How Has Donald Trump Affected Your Writing and Life?

June 25, 2018 0

I have been writing occasional opinion pieces about Donald Trump since his presidential run began three years ago. Like most commentators, I assumed it to be a vanity candidacy, and saw it as part of [ Read Article ]

Art

Poor Richard, Poor Donald: Philip Guston’s Timely Show at Hauser & Wirth

January 11, 2017 0

There isn’t a timelier art exhibit anywhere at the moment than the show of Philip Guston’s suite of drawings about Richard Nixon and his era now on display at Hauser & Wirth’s new gallery on [ Read Article ]

Politics

Democracy and the Sixth Great Extinction

May 22, 2019 0

Is the fate of the planet—that is, of our fate on it—tied to the fate of democracy? I think there are grounds for suggesting it. You could make a negative case for the proposition. Democracy, [ Read Article ]