Global Thought
A Legacy of Contradictions
Saad Eddin Ibrahim spent his life and career speaking up for civil society and democratization in the Arab world, building bridges between his work in academic sociology and his political advocacy. Then he abruptly degenerated into an apologist for authoritarian counterrevolution.
A Global Thinker in Power
The student protesters who toppled the Bangladeshi government chose Muhammad Yunus, “banker to the poor” and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to lead the country’s transitional government. Yet it remains to be seen how the vision and experience he brings from outside politics might shape the nation’s future.
The Remarkable Overlaps in the Lives of Two Poets: One Chronicled the Nakba, the Other the Holocaust
Mahmoud Darwish and Avrom Sutzkever wrote sophisticated, modernist lyrical and prose poetry about the great 20th-century traumas of their peoples, the Nakba and the Holocaust, which they respectively survived. Their lives and the themes they explored in their poetry overlapped in extraordinary ways.
Gaza and the End of the Culture War as We Know It
Wasn’t it the left that pushed for speech codes, deplatforming speakers and canceling events deemed potentially offensive to some groups before the tables turned on Oct. 7? Did they really think that no one would notice the irony?
A Historical Novel Charts the Inner Life of the Philosopher al-Ghazali
Ahmed Vall Dine’s novel “Danishmand” (“The Wise Master”) is not simply a work of historical fiction. By imaginatively documenting the life story of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, one of the most prominent figures in the Islamic intellectual tradition, it allows us to join him on his spiritual quest.
How America’s Philosopher of Democracy Influenced India’s Leading Caste Reformer
Bhimrao Ambedkar helped write the Indian Constitution, campaigned against caste oppression, and remains a household name for many in the country. His democratic vision combined the pragmatist ideas of the American philosopher John Dewey with his novel Navayana or “new vehicle” form of Buddhism.
How Two 19th-Century Books Paved the Way for Modernism
The common concerns of two 1855 works, Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and Shidyaq’s “Leg Over Leg” — in particular, language, equality, freedom, paradox and multiplicity — illustrate the international nature of how the 19th century wrestled with modernity.