Dr. Robert Zaller

Politics

Is a Two-Party Solution Possible in the U.S.?

People are talking these days about whether a two-state solution is possible between Israelis and Palestinians, as they do after each fresh outbreak of violence between them. But there is a pressing question closer to [ 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

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

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 ]
Politics

The Real Forever War: Israel and the Palestinians

Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw American soldiers from Afghanistan before September 11 is not, of course, an end to the war in Afghanistan itself, a forty-year conflict that began with the Soviet occupation of the [ 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 ]
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 ]

Pay To Play: America in the Middle East Today

Politics

June 4, 2018 0

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 ]

All Hell Breaks Loose in Brooklyn: Roman Polanski’s Carnage

Film

October 15, 2016 0

How can you be an expatriate from your adopted country? Polish-born Roman Polanksi, once married to Charles Manson victim Sharon Tate, has had a, shall we say, complex relationship to the United States, from which [ Read Article ]

Politics

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

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 ]

Literary

Dimitris Lyacos. With the People from the Bridge. Translated by Shorsha Sullivan.

October 15, 2016 0

Dimitris Lyacos’ long, tripartite poem, Poena Damni, is one of the most important and challenging literary works to come from Greece in the past generation, and it has achieved an international reputation. With the People [ Read Article ]

Politics

Free Speech, Propaganda, and the Right To Be Heard

June 12, 2017 0

Free speech is the most important right we have. The Founding Fathers, understanding it as the prime element in a free society, wrote it into several amendments of the Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees it [ Read Article ]