By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 7th, 2014 
Deliberately Considered has suspended the publication of new posts. I am now turning my full attention to a new project, Public Seminar. I thought I might be able to work on both DC and PS, but alas it is not possible. The new project is a seminar that has its roots in my intellectual home, The New School for Social Research, and in my experience here at Deliberately Considered.
The mission statement of the new project:
P.S.
“Confronting fundamental problems of the human condition and pressing problems of the day, using the broad resources of social research, we seek to provoke critical and informed discussion by any means necessary.
We use short form posts and long form essays, audio and video reports and discussions, and links to provocative materials of critical public interest anywhere we can find them. We are committed to creating a distinctive intellectual community, suspicious of clichés, informed by diverse experiences, theoretically heterodox, politically plural, worldly.
We work in the tradition of critical scholarship and public engagement of the original New School for Social Research (1919) and its University in Exile (1933). We seek to open the discussion of experts to broader publics, in the United States, and crucially far beyond, in the tradition of Charles Beard, John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Emil Lederer, Max Wertheimer, Frieda Wunderlich, Hans Speier, Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt.
Public Seminar is an extension of The New School’s legendary ‘General Seminar,’ founded by the original exile scholars. Through it, we are constituting a public seminar for the 21st century.”
It is my hope that Public Seminar will continue and extend the work of Deliberately Considered. I developed Deliberately Considered with an understanding that more and more political, cultural and private life was developing in and through new media, and with a sense that this presented both great opportunities and great dangers. It opened public expression and discussion. More people could express themselves and a broader range of perspectives are expressed. Global conversations now occur. It is possible for the politics of small things to become . . .
Read more: Deliberately Considered: 2010 – 2013
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 5th, 2013 
Goin’ Fishing? Not quite, but things here at Deliberately Considered are slowing down for the summer, as I go to teach in the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, and then to take part in a research project on Regime and Society in Eastern Europe (1956 – 1989) in Sofia, Bulgaria. After three years of regular, often daily, publishing, posts will be less frequent until September. At that time, we will be presenting Deliberately Considered in a new form.
Here some quick thoughts on topics I would like to write about now, but don’t have the time or energy to do so thoroughly.
On Egypt: I am fascinated by the grayness of it all: the unbearable grayness of being? I don’t see heroic figures or villains. Rather I see mortals, tragic figures, facing huge challenges, beyond their capacity to address.
Most objective observers are labeling the latest turn of events as a coup, but that seems to me to be too simple. Equally simplistic is the view of those who see the events as a clear political advance. A democratically elected leader, President Morsi, was overthrown by the military, not a good thing. But there was a significant popular movement, perhaps representing more than fifty per cent of the public, demanding the resignation of Morsi and new elections, and a resetting of the political order, which didn’t include them and their opinions, and didn’t provide the mechanisms for recalling the President. Yet, a legitimate President, from the point of view of many of the over fifty percent that voted for him, has been removed by the military. While I am no fan of military interventions in politics, I know that there is a real danger when a party confuses its particular interests with the common good. Yet, while lack of inclusion was a key problem in the Muslim Brotherhood led regime, it continues to be a problem as reports today indicate a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
On Obama, the NSA and Snowden: I am disappointed, dismayed and irritated. National security is the one arena in which I have been least . . .
Read more: Summertime and the Posting is Slowing: Notes on Egypt, and on Obama, the NSA and Snowden, and the Social Condition and the Ironies of Consequence
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 2nd, 2011 
I probably got carried away describing President Obama’s Libya policy as a “self-limiting revolutionary solidarity approach.” I know I should be careful in applying my formative political experience to unrelated circumstances. False analogies are often foolish. They can even be dangerous. But, I drew upon my experience to express my admiration for the precision and cogency of Obama’s approach, concerned that many observers, especially my friends on the left, didn’t understand the significance of what the President is trying to accomplish. Things are very different now, and we should face these differences. But even so, the combination of realism and idealism, balancing insights into capacity and aspiration, reminded me of things past, from Gdansk, not Baghdad.
The President sought to highlight the humanitarian justification of our military involvement in Libya. He also emphasized that the involvement had to be limited. Surely, this had something to do with cold calculation about the overextension of the American military, but principle was also involved. For Libyans, Obama attempted to express support for the principle that it was for them and not for us to determine their future. And for Americans and for the rest of the world, Obama tried to make clear that in order for an international military effort to be truly international, it can’t have an American face. The U.S. not only cannot afford to be the world’s policeman. It should not be. If the world needs policing, then the world should do it, or more precisely a coalition of countries, not led by the United States. Yet what seemed clear to me was not clear to everyone, despite the President’s widely recognized eloquence. And this wasn’t only true on the left, as was demonstrated here by Gary Alan Fine in his post on Friday.
I agree with Felipe Pait’s reply to Fine’s post. I too think that Fine exaggerates. “From observing the fact that the Obama administration has cautiously decided to use limited military force in Libya to worrying about the danger of invading a dozen countries is a long jump,” Pait wrote.
![]( "Multinational group of fighter jets during Operation </i></strong></em></b>. . .
<p>Read more: <a href=") DC Week in Review: Libya and Emotional Politics
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 26th, 2011 
This week Hannah Arendt’s notion of “past and future” has been revealed at DC. We have addressed a variety of different issues, trying to orient our future action, by thinking about our experiences. We have looked at the headlines, but also looked elsewhere and thought about different experiences to support the imagination.
I was particularly happy to receive Sergio Tavolaro’s post on President Obama’s visit to Brazil. Following cable news logic, it was a big mistake for the President to go to Brazil, given the pressing problems at home, centered on the impending budget crisis and the great debate about jobs and the deficit, and the military engagement in Libya and the growing uncertainties in North Africa and the Middle East. Yet beyond news sensation, there are important ongoing developments in the Americas, with very significant changes and challenges. Paying attention to Latin America, not only connected to drug and immigration issues, is a necessity especially when there are problems elsewhere.
Brazil is an emerging global power. Brazil and the United States have a long, sad history, marked by domination and political repression. As Brazil has emerged politically and economically, it often has defined its independence against the United States. Obama’s trip worked to change this. The highlight: the historic appreciation of the first African American President of the United States meeting the first woman President of Brazil. Tavolaro reports that there is a fascination with a shared progressive heritage, working against racism and sexism. And he notes that Obama embodied the declaration of equal partnership between nations: the President of the United States visited Brazil before he had an audience with the Brazilian leader in Washington, reversing the usual order. Using a sad past, the Brazilian population could and did imagine a hopeful future with the great American superpower to the north. This is important news for them and for us.
Karl Marx famously said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Gary Alan Fine shows how sometimes it works the other . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Between Past and Future
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 12th, 2011
Responding to the disaster in Japan, Elzbieta Matynia reminded us that our politics and our conflicts all are overshadowed by our need for human solidarity in supporting our common world, which crucially includes our natural environment. Yet, this doesn’t mean turning away from politics. It’s through politics that such solidarity, rather than enforced unity, is constituted. It is through deliberate discussion, informed intelligent talk, that such politics becomes successful. Difficult issues must be discussed and acted upon. Action without discussion results in tyranny, with or without good intentions. DC is dedicated to informed discussion about exactly this issue, which we have considered from a number of different concerns and viewpoints this week.
Andrew Arato’s analysis of the democratic prospects in Egypt involved careful examination of the prospects for revolutionary change. His is a sober account, drawing upon years of research and political experience. When he notes that under dictatorship “revolutions rarely can bring about a democratic transformation,” yielding either mere coups or new forms of authoritarian rule, he is underscoring the dangers of monologic action. When he argues that “it is negotiated transitions based on compromise among many actors” that most likely will yield a constitutional democratic government, pointing to the successful endings of dictatorships of our recent past, he is showing how central deliberate discussion is. “It is very important that in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the East Germany and South Africa oppositions demanded not the fall of a government, but comprehensive negotiations concerning regime change: its timing, rules, procedures, and guarantees.”
As he did last week, Gary Alan Fine again provoked an interesting discussion, showing how humor can be a very serious matter. Drawing upon the insights of Pope Benedict XVI and Lenny Bruce, considering the cases of the Jewish complicity of the murder of Christ, Jared Lee Loughner, James Earl Ray and this week’s House investigation of American Muslim radicalization, he examines the relationship between collective guilt and individual responsibility, showing that this is not an easy issue. I found his argument both interesting and . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Talk is Not Cheap
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 4th, 2011
Hypocrisy and human rights, hate speech, and the surprising role of young people and their social media in the world historic changes occurring in North Africa and the Middle East have been our issues of the week at DC. While I know, from my ability to track levels of readership, each of the posts attracted more or less an equal degree of our readers’ attention, it was hate speech that stimulated an interesting discussion, interesting on its own terms, but also in the way it sheds light on the other posts of the week.
Gary Alan Fine is not worried about hate speech. Most of us are. He thinks it excites and draws attention, and that its negative effects are overdrawn. Iris “hates hate speech,” but thinks that we have to learn to live with it. It is the price we pay for living in a democracy. Rafael offers a comparative cultural approach, agreeing that in English hate speech may not be as pernicious as it may first seem. But he, nonetheless, reminds us that sometimes hate and its speech have horrific consequences, citing the case of a local preacher “insisting on an idea of building a memorial reminding folk that Mathew Sheppard is now in hell.” Rafael underscores that sometimes hate speech and aggressive actions are intimately connected, sometimes, even, hate speech functions as an action. Esther looks at the problem from a slightly different angle. She thinks that concern about civil discourse is a good idea, but asks: “shouldn’t we be thinking, talking and doing some more about cause and prevention of violent outbursts by lost individuals?” While, Michael is more directly concerned with hate speech and action, maintaining that it undermines democratic culture. “Hate frequently destroys the cultural underpinnings needed for democratic processes to emerge and thrive.” He then expresses his concern about the hate speech in Madison, echoing those who were most concerned with the relationship between hate speech and the massacre in Tucson.
© Akiramenai | Wikimedia Commons
And then, in a sense, the Supreme Court joined our discussion, supporting . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Civility Matters
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 25th, 2011 
For the first time since we have been operating, I felt like the discussions on the blog were getting away from my editorial control. I take this to be a good sign. While there were interesting posts on the economy and economic theory, and on media and media theory, as well as on revolutionary hopes in Egypt, the focus of our discussion this week was on the issues surrounding the events in Madison, Wisconsin, moving in interesting and somewhat unexpected directions.
Anna Paretskaya opened our deliberations, with her “Cairo on the Isthmus.” She presented a bird’s eye view, including some telling photos. I actually found some of the details of her post more interesting than the elements that stimulated heated discussion. Particularly fascinating was how she understood the beginning of the movement as she reported in the opening of her piece:
“What started as a stunt by a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students to deliver a few hundred “Valentine’s Day” cards from students, staff, and faculty to Governor Scott Walker asking him not to slash the university budget has now become national news: close to 100,000 Wisconsinites have come to the State Capitol in Madison over the past four days to protest the so-called “budget repair” bill…”
This made clear to me Madison, Wisconsin’s connection to Cairo, and Cairo’s connection to the movement I observed around the old bloc, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and to the Obama campaign and the Tea Party movement. People meet with each other, speak to each other, develop a capacity to act together, create a power that hitherto did not exist. They may or may not reach their political goal, but they change the political landscape as they act. This is what I see as being the most significant consequence of “the politics of small things.” Not only has there been regime change in Egypt and Tunisia, but the Arab world will never be the same after the wave of protests we have observed. And the Republicans may or may not succeed in their battle against public employee unions and the . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: The Wisconsin Events
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 14th, 2011 
I had the good fortune of being an eye witness to one of the major changes in the geopolitical world of my life time. I observed the Soviet Empire collapsing, chronicled it at the front lines, even before many saw the collapse coming. I don’t have such a privileged seat as we observe the transformations of in Egypt and Tunisia, but my intuition tells me that these may be every bit as significant as the ones I saw in their infancy thirty years ago. We can’t be sure that the changes begun this past month will reach a fully successful conclusion: fully? probably not. But there is no doubt that the world has changed, not only there, but also here.
A big change: the idea of the clash of civilizations has been defeated. It turns out, and should be clear to all, that Muslims are quite capable of initiating a genuine democratic movement. It may or may not prevail, but it is certainly an important strain in Egyptian and Tunisian political culture.
Another big change: I suspect that the commitment to democracy is now “in,” more appealing than radical jihad, even for the disaffected in the Muslim world. How long this lasts and with what effect will depend on the continuing success of the transformation begun last month. I believe this is the first major victory in the so called “war on terrorism.”
A little change, close to home: in everyday life, Islamophobia may be in retreat. After seeing the images from Cairo, why should Juan Williams wonder about that person in Muslim garb on an airplane? It may never have been particularly rational, but especially not now. There are crazy people of all sorts of cultural and religious persuasions, and also admirable ones. Now the admirable of the Arab and Muslim world are front stage. Now they are most visible. Only the most close-minded will refuse to see them, i.e. over at Fox,  Glenn Beck but, I suspect, not Juan Williams.
And now the “only democracy in . . .
Read more: The Week in Pre and Re-view: Revolution in Egypt and Beyond
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 7th, 2011 
This has been another eventful week, and for another week I am a bit late in posting the review. Thinking about the “news,” thinking about what is new in our world, I have been mesmerized by the remarkable drama in Egypt, the conclusion of which is far from certain. At DC, we have been trying to make sense of this, with side glances at related problems. I think in fact that the standard ways of understanding these revolutionary times require such glances, because conventional ways of thinking mislead. I am going to address this with a couple of short posts, the first today, the second tomorrow, thinking about the revolutionary moment by reviewing the posts of my colleagues. I will start by reflecting on an apparent comedy and move toward an examination of potential tragedy.
Some of the conventional responses to the events in Egypt would be funny, if they weren’t so serious. The prime example is that of Glenn Beck: “Islam wants a caliphate. Communists want a Communist, new world order. They’ll work together, and they’ll destabilize, because they both want chaos, period.” That this is what he gets out of the complex events in Egypt reveals the power of ideological thinking.
Beck, ever on the lookout for conspiracies and frightening analogies, normally distills a powerful brew. But it seems a bit weak when it comes to a major foreign affair, indeed quite foreign for him and his audience. I suspect that even the confirmed Fox News viewer is put off by Beck’s week long attempt to demonize the obviously well meaning Egyptian activists, who have appeared on our television, computer and mobile screens.
In fact, I wonder what Gary Alan Fine thinks. In his appreciation of Beck, he makes two strong observations, leading to a provocative conclusion: Beck is a talented communicator, expressing popular skepticism about elites who purport to know what is best for the people, better than the people. And he pays intellectuals the complement of taking them seriously. Therefore: “Glenn Beck is an endowed professor for the aggrieved, presenting . . .
Read more: Week in Review: Egypt, Glenn Beck and Democratic Transition
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 31st, 2011 
 It’s been a busy week at DC and in the world, thus a slight delay in this post.
Indeed, last week has been “restlessly eventful,” as Robin Wagner Pacifici might put it. The main event has been in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. But closer to home, President Obama gave an important State of the Union address. In both cases, we can see that something new is emerging, that tomorrow will be strikingly different from what yesterday was. Change rather than continuity is the storyline.
Obviously, Egypt appears to be more consequential. It would seem that there is real democratic promise and a promise of an end to stagnation, in a country and region with a history of great cultural and political achievements, mostly frustrated in the recent past. The outcome is uncertain, who wins and who loses is unknown, but clearly a page has been turned.
Less dramatically, President Obama for the first time seems to have been understood on his own terms, as a creative centrist, making advances in changing the nature of the center in the United States. Given the power of the United States, this may indeed be eventful.
Egypt and Beyond
I particularly appreciate the post by Hazem Kandil. He points out how conventional ways of understanding politics and history, not only in the media but also in academia, did not anticipate what is now happening before our eyes. I would underscore two aspects of this, which in fact coincide with my last two book projects, The Politics of Small Things and the forthcoming Reinventing Political Culture.
Kandil illuminates the gap between past and future, as Arendt depicted this. All the studies of Egypt as “thoroughly Islamized,” with powerful “mosque networks,” “social welfare circles,” mired by “identity politics,” and informed by and organized around symbols and rituals, suggested that the culture of political culture points in the direction of authoritarian continuity. His note demonstrates how we must consider cultural creativity, along with cultural continuity in political and not only in artistic matters.
Now, look again at the Muslim Brotherhood. Note . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Egypt, The State of the Union, Between Past and Future
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DC Week in Review: Libya and Emotional Politics
