Dr. Robert Zaller

Politics

Where American Democracy Is Now

Thanksgiving this year included a sigh of relief that America had managed to hold a more or less normal midterm election in which the anticipated red tsunami did not materialize and voters apparently decided, Solomonically, [ Read Article ]
Art

Nancy Herman: Totems

The major part of Nancy Herman’s small but select show at her gallery in Narberth covers a single long wall, but it says a great deal about looking, and the how and why of what [ 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

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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]

Two Quintets, with Haydn in Between: The Aizuri Quartet and Pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn

Music

October 14, 2016 0

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society brought its season to a close with the Aizuri Quartet making its debut in the series with a pair of Russian piano quintets, one well-known and one obscure. The Philadelphia [ Read Article ]

How To Be a Citizen in the Age of Trump

Politics

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 ]

Music

From Vienna to Budapest: The Marlboro Musicians Perform

May 22, 2019 0

Musicians from Marlboro paid their third visit to the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Society’s penultimate concert of its 2018-19 season at the Perelman Theater. The Chamber Music Society itself was born, thirty-three years [ Read Article ]

Politics

What Should the Left Do in the Trump Era?

January 24, 2017 0

Get over it, Joe Biden was advising us the other day. It’s happened, it’s done. Well, yes. Donald Trump is our 45th president, and our cross to bear. And, okay, what next? A lot of [ Read Article ]

Politics

How It Happened: The Impossibility and Inevitability of Donald Trump

July 27, 2018 0

Maureen Dowd, The New York Times’ resident editorial wit, wrote recently that Donald Trump slipped into the presidency “through a tear in the space-continuum.” Sure feels that way. But would it were that simple. I [ Read Article ]