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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]

Obama: The Farewell Address You Won’t Hear

Politics

January 11, 2017 0

What comes with a new administration is an inaugural speech and a State of the Union address, in which, relieved of the baggage of campaign promises, the new president announces what his (or, someday, her) [ Read Article ]

Tantrums from the Commander-in-Chief: Not a Good Way To Go

Politics

January 11, 2017 0

In her classic study, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of reaction in patients suddenly informed of a terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. President Barack Obama, in the lame-duck [ Read Article ]

Politics

Democracy 2016: The Circus Comes to Town

October 11, 2016 0

Donald Trump says he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and not lose any votes. I believe it, too. First of all, it’s a hypothetical—the Donald doesn’t really mean it. Secondly, if he [ Read Article ]

Politics

Hello, Tyranny: Life in the Age of Trump

February 13, 2017 0

The incessant flow of noise and static from the Trump White House—occupied territory on American soil—is designed, among other things, to conceal the fundamental new reality of our political situation: that we have an unelected [ Read Article ]

Literary

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

October 11, 2016 0

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 ]