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Black Lives Matter! Robin D. G. Kelley leads this issue's forum by suggesting that grassroots political education would strengthen the black student movement, while also questioning the movement's reliance on the language of personal trauma. Michael Eric Dyson, Randall L. Kennedy, Christopher Lebron, Aaron Bady, and others respond. Major Jackson offers a surreal, arresting take on police violence in his new poem, "Ferguson." Anne Fausto-Sterling notes how racist stereotypes are embedded in medical school curricula, and Peter James Hudson critiques recent books on slavery and capitalism for overlooking the vital contributions of radical black scholarship. Joy James reviews a long-lost nineteenth-century memoir that reveals the roots of black incarceration, and Carina del Valle Schorske notes the importance of the historical archive (or lack thereof) to black American poets. Plus, Sarah Hill offers a tribute to her teacher, Sidney Mintz, who made vital contributions to scholarship on the black Atlantic; Stephen Kinzer interviews Andrew J. Bacevich about how we will lose the war for control of the Greater Middle East; Jonathan Kirshner skewers Niall Ferguson's voluminous new book on Kissinger; and erica kaufman celebrates Eileen Myles's skill as a poet.
Lynne Procope introduced by Ross Gay
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