Politics

Democracy v. the Constitution

An interview with Osita Nwanevu about his new book, The Right of the People, and why defeating authoritarianism requires going back to democratic basics.

Osita Nwanevu
Jake Grumbach

Creatures Apart

Shulamith Firestone’s portraits of madness reveal a condition afflicting us all.

Vivian Gornick

Philosophy Politics

Could Ditching Elections Save Democracy?

A new book makes the case for replacing them with a system of government based on random selection.

Niko Kolodny

From the Editors: The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide

Introducing our Summer 2025 issue, which marks our 50th anniversary.

Boston Review

Politics

Israel’s War on Journalists

Anas al-Sharif delivered what Edward Said expected from intellectuals.

Jennifer Zacharia

Politics

Our Man for Tehran

The U.S.- and Israel-backed campaign positioning Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah, for regime change in Iran.

Alex Shams

Politics

How to Hide a Famine

Israel’s deliberate campaign to deny the crisis in Gaza.

Alex de Waal

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Celebrating 50 years of Boston Review

“

I’ve probably sent this essay to everyone I know. Robin Kelley admonishes us to tighten up our thinking and our practice, to pay careful attention to the capitalist and militarist underpinnings of university life, and to make sure that our work illuminates, evades, and even resists them.

—Walter Johnson, historian, on “Black Study, Black Struggle” (2016)

The Right to Be Hostile

Crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protest force a reckoning with inflated definitions of harm and harassment.

Alex Gourevitch

with responses from

Robin Marie Averbeck
Nicole Hemmer
Diane Klein Kemker
David S. Busch
Louis P. M. Römer
Tabatha Abu El-Haj
Chase Madar

Politics Science

How Did We Fare on COVID-19?

To restore public trust and prepare for the next pandemic, we need a reckoning with the U.S. experience—what worked, and what didn’t.

Stephen Macedo
Frances Lee

with responses from

Adam Gaffney
Jonathan White
Cailin O’Connor & James Owen Weatherall
Adam Kucharski

Law Politics

The Dead End of Checks and Balances

Far from the cure to Trumpian authoritarianism, the U.S. constitutional system is driving our democratic decline.

Lisa L. Miller

with responses from

Eric Blanc
Marcus Gadson
Gianpaolo Baiocchi
Samuel Moyn
Aziz Z. Huq
Kelly Hayes & Maya Schenwar
Lily Geismer

Current issue

Our 50th anniversary issue, on the responsibility of intellectuals, journalists, and all of us in the age of fascism and genocide.

Robin D. G. Kelley leads a special section with David Waldstreicher, Jennifer Zacharia, and Martin O’Neill. Plus Vivian Gornick on Shulamith Firestone, Elaine Scarry on Plato and the poets, Joelle M. Abi-Rached on Gaza, and more.

event series

Don’t miss our free events with leading scholars, writers, and activists.

Learn more

Israel and Palestine

Politics

Israel’s War on Journalists

Anas al-Sharif delivered what Edward Said expected from intellectuals.

Jennifer Zacharia

Politics

How to Hide a Famine

Israel’s deliberate campaign to deny the crisis in Gaza.

Alex de Waal

Politics

Gaza and the End of History

The apocalyptic scale of death and destruction lays bare the contradictions at the heart of the liberal international order.

Joelle M. Abi-Rached

“The War on Terror expanded presidential authority, severely curtailed civil rights, and made a mockery of the Constitution. Today we are living out the latest chapter of this story.”

—Noura Erakat, “The Boomerang Comes Back”

“A much more promising path to abundance is to embrace a twenty-first-century New Deal. That is the tried-and-true model for a ‘liberalism that builds’ in the United States.”

—Sandeep Vaheesan, “The Real Path to Abundance”

“When Edward Said wrote of the ‘vocation for the art of representing,’ he could have been speaking about Palestinian journalists.”

—Jennifer Zacharia, “Israel’s War on Journalists”

“Self-professed defenders of free speech have become the most fervent advocates and agents of government censorship in the twenty-first century.”

—Nicole Hemmer responds to Alex Gourevitch’s “The Right to Be Hostile”

“Hardly anything could be more damaging to Iran’s pro-democracy movements than making this unpopular, deposed monarch with ties to Israel and U.S. neocons the face of opposition.”

—Alex Shams, “Our Man for Tehran”

the campus in crisis

Class & Inequality Politics

The New Politics of Higher Education

The right’s fantasy of left power on campus has never been accurate.

Marshall Steinbaum

Politics

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.

Erik Baker

Class & Inequality

An Open Letter from Faculty at West Virginia University

The crisis here spells disaster for the future of public education.

Rose Casey
Jessica Wilkerson
Johanna Winant

From the Archive

Politics Race

When W. E. B. Du Bois Was “Un-American”

At the height of the McCarthy era, he was punished for trying to keep alive a free and open debate about U.S. military, economic, and foreign policy.

Andrew Lanham

Reading Lists

Reading List

Lessons from the March on Washington

The long arc of movements for social justice

Reading List

Eighty Years after Hiroshima

Eight decades of the contradictions of “nuclear democracy”

Reading List

Before Alligator Alcatraz

The sordid history of U.S. immigration detention

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Democracy v. the Constitution

The Latest

Creatures Apart

Could Ditching Elections Save Democracy?

From the Editors: The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide

Israel’s War on Journalists

Our Man for Tehran

How to Hide a Famine

Sign up for our newsletter

Celebrating 50 years of Boston Review

“

I’ve probably sent this essay to everyone I know. Robin Kelley admonishes us to tighten up our thinking and our practice, to pay careful attention to the capitalist and militarist underpinnings of university life, and to make sure that our work illuminates, evades, and even resists them.

Forums

The Right to Be Hostile

How Did We Fare on COVID-19?

The Dead End of Checks and Balances

Current issue

event series

Don’t miss our free events with leading scholars, writers, and activists.

Israel and Palestine

Israel’s War on Journalists

How to Hide a Famine

Gaza and the End of History

“The War on Terror expanded presidential authority, severely curtailed civil rights, and made a mockery of the Constitution. Today we are living out the latest chapter of this story.”

“A much more promising path to abundance is to embrace a twenty-first-century New Deal. That is the tried-and-true model for a ‘liberalism that builds’ in the United States.”

“When Edward Said wrote of the ‘vocation for the art of representing,’ he could have been speaking about Palestinian journalists.”

“Self-professed defenders of free speech have become the most fervent advocates and agents of government censorship in the twenty-first century.”

“Hardly anything could be more damaging to Iran’s pro-democracy movements than making this unpopular, deposed monarch with ties to Israel and U.S. neocons the face of opposition.”

the campus in crisis

The New Politics of Higher Education

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

An Open Letter from Faculty at West Virginia University

From the Archive

When W. E. B. Du Bois Was “Un-American”

Reading Lists

Lessons from the March on Washington

Eighty Years after Hiroshima

Before Alligator Alcatraz

Get our newsletter