Lapham's Quarterly Announces New Stewardship
6 comments
·March 31, 2025janandonly
ergsef
> I feel that today having a nuanced view, is itself a rebellious act.
So brave. Enjoy making six figures sitting behind a keyboard, acting like other people's rights are a sport not tied to any material consequences.
ggm
The only immediate fear would be if Bard is the recipient of federal or other funds, which will make another arc of their administration walk away from this association when the inevitable hot-take on a Laphams article causes rage in the house.
I can believe a college prepared to name a division after Hannah Arendt is not shy of the public gaze. She had a more nuanced view of Zionism than the current polity in Israel will tolerate, and that is unfortunate in current political times in the USA: nuance is often lost.
wvh
Opposing views are a primary tool in building deeper understanding of any topic – as long as those views have some honest meat on the bone. It's worrisome to notice true neutrality is so rare these days both on the internet and in funding.
locusofself
Several years ago I really tried to enjoy this magazine and had 6 or so volumes. It's beautifully printed and seems wonderfully curated. I just can't seem to enjoy jumping into the middle of a book, and so many of the pages of it are 'excerpts' of one type or another.
jeffbee
Incredibly ironic. The infamous "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" that appeared in Harper's in 2020 proved that a huge, vocal cohort of the academic left had failed to learn anything from Arendt's work and were dedicated to ignoring the rise of totalitarianism in America. Now the intellectual assets of Lapham will be divided between the Arendt Center and Columbia University, the epicenter of capitulation to Trump.
This was posted a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43455553
I feel that today having a nuanced view, is itself a rebellious act.