All posts tagged: first conversation

The War at Stanford – The Atlantic

The War at Stanford – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

O ne of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year-old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated in the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).” El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he …

The Atlantic publishes “The Great American Novels”

The Atlantic publishes “The Great American Novels”

Published by skeptic

The list launches with events at the New Orleans Book Festival and on April 3 at the Strand, in New York Illustration by Sarah Schulte March 14, 2024, 7:17 AM ET Today The Atlantic launches “The Great American Novels,” an ambitious new project that brings together the most consequential novels of the past 100 years. Focusing on 1924 to 2023––a period that began as literary modernism was cresting and includes all manner of literary possibility, including the experimentations of postmodernism and the narrative satisfactions of genre fiction––the 136 novels on the list include 45 debut novels, nine winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and three children’s books. Twelve were published before the introduction of the mass-market paperback to America, and 24 after the release of the Kindle. At least 60 have been banned by schools or libraries. In an introduction to the list, The Atlantic’s editors write that, together, the books selected represent the best of what novels can do: “challenge us, delight us, pull us in and then release us, a little smarter …

William Whitworth’s Legacy – The Atlantic

William Whitworth’s Legacy – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

William Whitworth, the editor of The Atlantic from 1980 to 1999, had a soft-spoken voice and an Arkansas accent that 50 years of living in New York and New England never much eroded. It was as much a part of him as his love of jazz, his understated sartorial consistency, and his deep dismay when encountering the misuse of “lie”and “lay,” a battle he knew he had lost but continued to fight. Bill, who led this magazine during a period of creative evolution, died last week in Conway, Arkansas, near his hometown of Little Rock, at the age of 87. He is survived by his daughter, Katherine W. Stewart, and by a half brother, F. Brooks Whitworth. Bill was a mentor to two generations of writers—writers of narrative reporting, primarily, but also novelists, biographers, intellectuals, essayists, and humorists. He expanded The Atlantic’s topical range and its cultural presence. His editorial instincts were penetrating, but couched in a manner that was calm and grounded. James Fallows, a long-time contributor who came to The Atlantic a few …

How Humanism Can Save the World

How Humanism Can Save the World

Published by skeptic

One evening not long ago, I was doomscrolling on social media, wading through the detritus of our present moment: Videos of terrorists in Israel decapitating a man with a garden hoe. A clip of Donald Trump being cruel and narcissistic. Footage of mobs physically assaulting some lone stranger they disagree with, pummeling him as he lies prone on the ground. These are all products of the rising tide of dehumanization that has swept across the world. The famous dates of our century point to this great unfolding of barbarism—September 11, 2001; January 6, 2021; October 7, 2023. The causes of this rising culture of dehumanization are almost too many to count: tribalism, racism, ideological dogmatism, social media. All this amounts to the steady evisceration of the moral norms that can make our planet a decent place to live—and their gradual substitution with distrust, aggression, and rage. Dehumanization is any way of seeing and acting that covers the human face, that refuses to recognize and respect the full dignity of each person. Then, as I was …