I have been developing DC for the last 6 months or so, at first, mostly, just thinking about it, but more recently, intensively working on it, trying to figure out exactly what the project will be, working with Lauren Denigan, managing editor, to give the blog precise shape, and writing posts that respond to the events of the day, trying to utilize my full intellectual range, establishing a pattern of what I hope DeliberatelyConsidered.com will become.
This Tuesday, we went a step further. I introduced the project to some dear friends and colleagues at the annual opening party of the New School’s Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. The party was a pleasure, as it always is. I was especially pleased by the response to my developing blog, and the prospect that this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between TCDS and DC, a variation on an old theme.
TCDS and Me
The story of TCDS and my story are intimately connected. It’s an example of the politics of small things, in which I am one of the central actors. There is a long version and a short version. I’ll start the long by highlighting the short with some quick headlines, and hope that we can continue the story’s themes in this new setting.
Elzbieta Matynia (who is the TCDS director) and I each worked on the sociology of theater in Poland, meeting there. More details about this time later, for now just note that a deep friendship between Elzbieta and my wife, Naomi, and me developed and has endured, through major international and personal crises, martial law in Poland, changes in our social and political circumstances. We developed parallel careers which met at the New School. When martial law was declared in Poland in 1981, Elzbieta’s one-year scholarship to study at our university became a lifetime relationship: first as a visiting scholar, then as an adjunct instructor, now as the Director of the Transregional Center and senior member of our Department of Sociology and Committee on Liberal Studies.
The seeds of TCDS were planted when she and I met in Poland. It was firmly rooted in the mid . . .