As Opposed to What? Creating a Real Opposition Force in American Politics
What will really change after the midterm elections? While electing Democrats is the establishment's solution to counteract six years of Republican control in Washington, few people have any illusions that the Democratic party represents a true opposition force in American politics. Two of the country's favorite columnists, Gary Younge, the Guardian newspaper's U.S. correspondent and author of "Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States," and Lewis Lapham, longtime editor and now editor emeritus of Harper's magazine, and author of "Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration," discuss what it will take to create a real opposition movement in America today. Co-sponsored by The New School and The New Press- The New School
The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 as a center for "discussion, instruction, and counseling for mature men and women." It became America's first university for adults. Over the years, it grew into a major urban university made up of eight schools, and in 2005, it was officially renamed The New School. The university currently enrolls more than 25,000 students annually. Their diversity of ages, aspirations, and social backgrounds enriches the institution with a wide variety of cultures, perspectives, priorities, interests, and talents.
Bio
Linda Dunne
Linda Dunne, PhD, CUNY Graduate School; dean; previously associate dean for academic affairs; former director, New School Bachelor's Program; former administrator at CUNY and Antioch Univ.; scholarly work has focused on American literature of the late-19th and early-20th centuries with special attention to ideas of normalcy and deviance.
Lewis Lapham
Lewis H. Lapham is an American writer. He was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and from 1983 until 2006. He also is the founder of a publication about history and literature entitled Lapham's Quarterly. He has written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
Gary Younge
Gary Younge is a columnist and feature writer for The Guardian who has written extensively from the United States, Southern Africa and throughout Europe as well as the UK since he joined the paper in 1994. Born and raised in Stevenage near London, he left school at 17 to teach English to refugees in Sudan before going on to study French and Russian at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. He was awarded a bursary to study newspaper journalism for The Guardian at City University in London in 1992.
In 1996 he was seconded to the Washington Post after being awarded the Lawrence Stern Fellowship. His first book, No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South, was published in 1999 by Picador and was released in the United States in 2002. He was awarded newspaper journalist of the year for the Ethnic Minority Media Awards for three straight years 2002 to 2004 and in 2000 was nominated for foreign journalist of the year for his reporting from Zimbabwe.