Dr. Robert Zaller

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

How Has Donald Trump Affected Your Writing and Life?

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 ]
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 ]
Art

Shafts of Light, Slants of Dark: Nancy Herman Paintings at the Cosmopolitan Club

Nancy Clearwater Herman is perhaps best known for her large, richly complex quilts and hangings. The present exhibit at the Cosmopolitan Club shows another aspect of her art. The mostly small oil paintings on display [ 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 ]
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

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

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 ]

F for Fake: The Alternative Presidency of Donald Trump

Politics

June 12, 2017 0

Orson Welles, the great American filmmaker, loved a good joke. He began his career with a radio broadcast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey that threw the whole country into a panic, and ended [ Read Article ]

Assassination Spring: 1968 and Now

Politics

April 4, 2018 0

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee. King is now a national martyr, his birthday a public holiday and his statue, a towering figure that has [ Read Article ]

Politics

How Long Must the Charade Go On?

June 30, 2017 0

Five months into the Trump presidency—or five hours, for that matter—it was clear that the White House had been occupied by a charlatan, somewhere between a buffoon and a demagogue and competent in neither role. [ 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

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 ]