Dr. Robert Zaller

Politics

Daughter of the Revolution: The Conscience of Liz Cheney

The most famous newspaper headline in American history appeared in The Chicago Daily Tribune on November 3, 1948, reporting the results of the presidential election just held: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The Tribune, a devoutly Republican [ 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

Democracy and the Sixth Great Extinction

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 ]
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 ]
Academics

Outsourcing the Future: How America Has Abandoned Its Commitment to Public Education

America’s retreat from its century and a half commitment to public education has now become a rout. There has not been a greater betrayal of our country in my lifetime. There is no more disastrous [ Read Article ]
Film

You Can’t Go Home Again: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia at International House

Andrei Tarkovsky, the exact contemporary of the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut (1932-1986), made only seven feature films in his thirty-year career, but their prestige has elevated him to almost mythical status. Ingmar Bergman called him [ 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 ]

Endgame for the Grexit, or More of the Same?

Greece

October 15, 2016 0

As I write, just past the unmet deadline for the Greek payment of a scheduled 1.55 billion-euro debt service, it is impossible to say what the next week or month will bring. The past week, [ Read Article ]

Heroism, Romantic Style: The Curtis Orchestra Plays Brahms and Strauss

Music

June 12, 2017 0

The idea of the hero goes back in Western literature to Homer’s Achilles, and, in mythology, to Samson and Hercules. Alexander the Great fit the mold as a conqueror, and so did Napoleon, the original [ Read Article ]

Politics

War, Anyone? The Commander-in-Chief Wants To Pick a Card

June 12, 2017 0

It’s clear that Donald Trump’s first hundred days haven’t turned out to be the walk in the park he envisioned. The most spectacularly unqualified and intellectually disabled leader ever freely chosen by any people 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 ]

Film

You Can’t Go Home Again: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia at International House

June 12, 2017 0

Andrei Tarkovsky, the exact contemporary of the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut (1932-1986), made only seven feature films in his thirty-year career, but their prestige has elevated him to almost mythical status. Ingmar Bergman called him [ Read Article ]