Articles by Robert Jensen

Some of the things I’ve learned in four decades of academic and activist work, and the books that were important to me at the beginning of that education.

A sustainable future requires “fewer (people) and less (consumption),” along with more humility.

Remembering the power of Wendell Berry’s writing.

This essay is adapted from This I Don’t Believe: A Fulfilling Life without Meaning, which will be published in September. https://blueearbooks.com/this-i-dont-believe/

My work experience—spanning six decades and a wide variety of jobs—illustrates why the claims of working-class authenticity that are prized in today’s politics are so fraught.

I want to speak in favor of intellectual diversity for individuals (because we all need to remember to keep an open mind). In my three decades in academia, I saw too many professors hang on too tightly to the conventional wisdom of their intellectual gang rather than entertain new ways of thinking.

Cornelia Gipson is trying to understand the hold that whiteness has on white people.

Architect/farmer Caitlin Taylor said that one problem in today’s food system is “the missing middle.” Between a globalized corporate industry on one end of the spectrum and local farmers markets on the other, there is not enough regional storage and processing infrastructure, either for small farmers who need to sell crops or for businesses that make and bake food products.

Members of dominant classes have uneasy standing in movements that challenge their class power and privilege. Can we contribute to intellectual debates and political change without replicating a dominance dynamic? Why should anyone trust us? Should we trust ourselves?

Profile of ecologist Bill Rees and the origins of ecological footprint analysis.

“Prairie Prophecy,” a film about the work of ecologist Wes Jackson, is now available through PBS.

Bajaj was born in India in 1981 and has lived in Canada since 1998. In 2021, she took the leadership job at Population Balance, a small U.S.-based nonprofit that is growing in influence through its two podcasts (“Overshoot” and “Beyond Pronatalism”), research reports, media articles, guest presentations, and Bajaj’s debating skills. She also is a senior lecturer at Antioch University, where she teaches graduate courses about the links between pronatalism and human supremacy.

Wes Jackson—who was one of the first people to use the term “sustainable agriculture” in print—loves to tell the story of almost getting a D in a botany course and describes himself as a misfit.

Robert Jensen considers how educators should handle contentious politics in the classroom, from the Iraq War to more recent U.S. actions involving Venezuela. He argues that honest disclosure of one’s interpretive framework is essential to teaching students to think critically.

If you want to be a good man, do your best to be a good person.

Nearly four decades ago, when I stumbled into graduate school after an early midlife crisis, I was introduced to radical feminism, critical race theory, and left critiques of wealth and power at the same time. The three approaches seemed politically necessary and intellectually compatible. Naïvely, I assumed others saw the same connections.

Our species seems unable to maintain large-scale societies that are consistent with basic human dignity and a sustainable human presence on the planet. Robert Jensen suggests that our best hope at managing the fraying of social and ecological systems is not only to engage in political action to challenge abuses of wealth and power but also to face the impediments to living within ecological limits. That requires us to engage in critical self-reflection, individually and collectively, while taking seriously the biological and historical forces outside anyone’s control.

The debate over transgender identity and ideology would make a great lesson in covering controversial social issues, an important part of the job of journalism instructors. Such teaching wouldn’t be advocacy, except perhaps advocacy for the clear thinking necessary for good journalism.

I wonder what my fate would be if I were in the classroom in the era of Trump’s targeting of higher education.

A version of this essay was presented to the National Organization for Men Against Sexism’s 50th anniversary conference on July 17, 2025.

This essay is adapted from his book It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics from Olive Branch Press.

The foundational problem is overshoot: There are too many people consuming too much in the aggregate.

Accepting the realities of the biology of sex is not essentialist.

A version of this essay was presented in the “Pornography and Society” lecture series at RheinMain University in Wiesbaden, Germany, on November 21, 202

In this interview, Jensen reflects on tensions in contemporary intellectual and political life in the United States.

A realistic assessment of race, sex/gender, and ecological crises are not attractive campaign positions.

This essay is adapted from the book Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, about the political/intellectual life of my late friend Jim Koplin. For more information on him, go to https://rjnew.lunadomo.com/category/jim-koplin/.

This essay is adapted from the book Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, about the political/intellectual life of my late friend Jim Koplin. For more information on him, go to https://rjnew.lunadomo.com/category/jim-koplin/.

This essay is adapted from It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, published by Olive Branch Press. https://rjnew.lunadomo.com/books/its-debatable/

I have started describing myself as an “intellectual hick.” I have no problem defending my intellectual contributions but also am happy to be living at a healthy distance from official intellectual spaces. Even with neighbors who don’t agree with my politics, our shared interest in caring for the land and water creates deep bonds.

This essay is adapted from It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, published by Olive Branch Press.

There are personal consequences from taking intellectual/political positions that generate criticism not only from political opponents but also from friends/allies.

Here’s a question almost no one wants to talk about: What is the sustainable size of the human population, at what level of aggregate consumption?

The ongoing debate about “cancel culture” provides a glimpse into the scope of political polarization in the United States. Opposing sides can’t agree about what it is, who’s doing it to whom, or even whether it exists.

Since I retired from teaching in 2018, political polarization in the US has only increased. But I still believe, perhaps naively, that reasonable people not only can disagree but also maintain respectful relationships, and that exploring differences can deepen everyone’s understanding.

Every society draws a line between the stories one can tell freely, without risk of punishment, and the stories that might get you in trouble. The line will be different from society to society, and different in a single society over time. But every society distinguishes between permitted and prohibited speech.

In my new book, It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, I argue that the ideology of the transgender movement is intellectually incoherent and inconsistent with an ecological worldview, and that radical feminism offers a more accurate account of history and a more useful framework for dealing with sex/gender issues.

Many people like to joke about the expanding acronym for what began as the lesbian/gay movement and has grown to LGBTQIA+ (for the time being, at least).

In one of his Sabbath poems, Wendell Berry offers this advice for responding to the young when they ask the old about hope: “What will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself.”

This is an edited version of a presentation to a forum on “The Left and Machismo” sponsored by Hombres por la Equidad in Mexico City on May 18, 2024.

Five important books on feminism.

This essay is adapted from his book An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, co-authored with Wes Jackson.

A reflection on teaching that I wrote in 2012, one of several “statement of teaching philosophy” essays I had to write over the years for performance reviews. Rather than pontificate on academic freedom, important though it is right now, I want to reflect on academic joy, about what can be so exciting about the life of the mind—even in the modern university.

This is an edited version of a presentation to the Hombres por la Equidad (Men for Equality) conference in Mexico City on November 7, 2023. It draws on material from Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (Spinifex Press, 2017); and the forthcoming “Dead Dogma”: Thinking Freely, Speaking Responsibly, Living Authentically (Interlink Publishing, 2024).]

Is pornography sabotaging men’s emotional connections and ability to experience authentic intimacy? These emotional consequences are often overlooked in mainstream discussions.

The controversy over the public display of Confederate symbols seems to be a permanent part of American politics and culture. As we come to know more about the morally repulsive aspects of our national history—and, more importantly, face those realities—removing symbols of our collective failure in the past is not an attempt to deny our history. Rather, it is a sign of growth, a willingness to face our history. Such work is not mere political correctness or wokeness but a sign of maturity, intellectual and moral. It is nothing more than common decency.

A review of P. Sainath’s 2023 book, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom.

A radical analysis of power and a robust defense of freedom of expression is crucial for a radical feminist critique.

An analysis of the controversy over Drag Story Hour, from a radical feminist perspective.

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

A version of this essay was presented to the “Students for sale: Tools for resistance” conference sponsored by Nordic Model Now!, October 15, 2022, in London. The video is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk3Xcuds6X0 , from 1:19:30-1:33:50.

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An excerpt from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268203665/an-inconvenient-apocalypse/

An edited transcript of Episode 5 of “Podcast from the Prairie.” https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/

Offering men arguments from justice and self-interest for embracing feminism.

It’s time to talk honestly about “fewer and less”: fewer people consuming less energy and materials.

An edited transcript of Episode 4 of “Podcast from the Prairie.” https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/

An edited transcript of Episode 3 of “Podcast from the Prairie.” https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/

In this essay I want to present a case for a practical radical politics—holding onto radical analyses while making decisions based on our best reading of the threats and opportunities in the moment. This requires consistency in analysis (which is always a good thing) while being wary of dogmatism in strategy (which is almost always a bad thing).

My plan is to articulate the values on which my worldview is based; identify the hierarchical systems within the human family that undermine those values; and describe the history of the ecological break between the human family and the larger living world. From the analytical, I will offer thoughts on coping with the specific political moment of 2022 in the United States and with long-term global ecological realities. I have no grand strategy to propose, but instead will try to face my fears about the tenuous nature of life today politically and the even more tenuous nature of what lies ahead ecologically.

Working for what is possible requires commitment. Recognizing what is not possible requires humility. All of it requires us to embrace the anguish that is inevitable if we face the future without illusions.

My review of Janice Raymond’s book, Doublethink: A Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism.

An edited transcript of Episode 1 of “Podcast from the Prairie.” https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/

A version of this essay was presented to the Engage Conference: Masculinity, Patriarchy, Feminism on November 19, 2021.]

The expanded public space for conversation about racial justice in recent years has not always led to greater precision in how we use words. More clarity in definitions of systemic, structural, and institutional racism would help sharpen analysis and guide policy choices. This essay offers one way to make sense of individual versus institutional forms of white supremacy while distinguishing between systemic and structural factors. In addition to critiquing the dominant culture, I also point to failures of analysis on the left. My goal is to go beyond jargon and dogma that fosters in-group solidarity, in the hopes of contributing to a truly intersectional analysis.

This is an expanded version of testimony delivered to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, November 2, 2021.

Reasonable people can disagree, and a university should be a place where those disagreements are celebrated. That would be a good starting point for a Liberty Institute.

A version of this essay was presented to an online Diversity & Inclusion gathering on August 12, 2021.

Looking back at dissenters’ reaction to 9-11.

The stability of the Earth’s ecosystems, and hence the future of the human species, depends on people recognizing and responding to multiple, cascading social and ecological crises that can easily overwhelm our imaginations. We need to cultivate restless and relentless minds to deal with unprecedented analytical questions and moral challenges if we are to go beyond the failed approaches of our current politics. This requires a sense of history deeper than we typically see in current debates. Since the advent of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, humans have been a “species out of context.” That awareness will help us formulate “questions that go beyond the available answers,” which are necessary if we are to fashion effective responses to the crises. In this presentation, Robert Jensen highlights a half-century of work by one of his elders, Wes Jackson of The Land Institute in Kansas (USA), to suggest approaches to analyzing the threats at this moment in history. This lecture draws on Jensen’s 2021 book, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability (University Press of Kansas) and a forthcoming book co-written with Jackson.

A review of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock.

This essay is an expanded version of my review of Ijeoma Oluo’s book _Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America_ that appeared in the magazine’s print edition.

A review of Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

In a democratic society that respects individual rights, conflict is inevitable when rights collide. Such conflict is playing out in a Maine homeless shelter, where women are expected to endure abusive behavior in the name of inclusivity. Women assert their right to seek safety from men’s violence. The transgender movement asserts the right of anyone to self-identify with any gender. We side with women.

“Pornographic distortions,” refers both to the ways in which pornography distorts human sexuality, and the way in which pornography’s defenders distort the views of critics.

The sexual-exploitation industries, including prostitution and pornography, are patriarchal institutions that are inconsistent with dignity, solidarity, and equality. Radical feminism offers a compelling analysis not only for women but also for men striving to be fully human.

An edited transcript of Episode 2 of “Podcast from the Prairie.” https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/

When a European graduate student emailed to ask if I would participate in an assignment to “do an interview with one of my favourite authors,” I said yes. My books have not exactly been best-sellers, and so I was an easy target for anyone describing me as a “favourite author.”

“At the core of this analysis is a claim that, at first glance, may seem to be a stretch: The erosion of human dignity in our broken world starts with the erosion of the planet’s soils.”

It’s getting harder for people in the United States to turn away from the sexism, racism, and inequality that is woven into the fabric of society. From the women’s march of 2017, to the ongoing protests against white supremacy in policing and other institutions, to the wider attention being paid to extreme disparities in wealth—the demand for justice intensifies.

Glaring inequality, both between and within societies, makes it difficult to talk about ‘we’ – a collective human project of understanding and responding to multiple, cascading ecological crises. Assigning responsibility for today’s social injustice and ecological unsustainability, and levels of obligations to repair the damage, is required, but that is only a first step. A decent human future also requires us to understand human–carbon nature and face the reasons it will be difficult to move from 8 billion people in a high-energy global society to a smaller population in a low-energy world. No existing ideology or culture is going to provide us with a template for dealing with what lies ahead, and the sooner we confront the magnitude of the challenge, the better for everyone.

Living resourcefully, in good humor, and not worried about badges

The political left, and much of mainstream feminism, is characterized by an analysis of how systems and institutions shape our choices, a critique of capitalist media, and a commitment to a scientific/materialist worldview. But when faced with radical feminism’s compelling critiques of patriarchy, leftists and many feminists routinely abandon those principles. Radical feminist critiques of prostitution, pornography, and transgender ideology should be part of a consistent, coherent left analysis.

In the current squabble on the liberal/progressive/left side of the fence over so-called “cancel culture,” in which one open letter in favor of freedom of expression led to a rebuttal open letter in favor of a different approach to freedom of expression, I can offer a report on the experience of being canceled.

When it comes to a just transition, it’s going to take a radical reimagining not only of our economy but also of our culture and the shape of our social structures. YES! co-hosted a conversation with experts from the nonprofit The Land Institute to discuss policy proposals and new ways to rebuild our sense of self and community from the bottom up.

And why radical feminism helps us find a path to real intimacy.

COVID-19 already has sparked thoughts of long-term economic hardship, with a recession unavoidable and a depression possible. Only a few weeks into the pandemic, countless citizens are struggling to make ends meet. And this acute crisis doesn’t change the need to reduce our use of fossil fuels if we are to head-off the more serious ecological and health consequences of greenhouse gas accumulations. If we are to meet a zero-fossil carbon target by 2050, economic hardship will be part of the equation.

Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back is a thoughtful, engaging book that ends in failure. But Mark O’Connell shouldn’t take that assessment too personally. His book fails in the way that his culture—the modern, cosmopolitan, left/liberal, individualist culture—routinely fails in the face of multiple, cascading ecological crises.

Peggy Orenstein insists that we not flinch in uncomfortable conversations with boys and men about the dark side of sexuality. In her new book, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity, she reports on her refreshingly honest interviews with guys about how they understand what it means to “be a man” in the sexual arena.

[An edited version of this essay appeared in the Houston Chronicle.]

The #MeToo movement fights back against sexual harassment and assault, rejecting the idea that women exist for men’s sexual pleasure.

But alongside the growing success of that movement, the pornography industry continues to thrive by presenting explicit images that sexualize exactly this idea — that women exist to serve men’s desires, whatever those desires might be, no matter how much humiliation and suffering they impose on women.

Increased attention on men’s violence against women has focused attention on not only rape and sexual harassment but also on the cultural support system for such behavior. While only a small fraction of men violate the law, lots of men engage in less blatant forms of aggressive and coercive behavior that injure and undermine women, and even more men are bystanders who fail to challenge other men’s abuse.

We face what I call “the paradox of pornography.” In the past three decades, the period in which I’ve been studying the issue, two trends are undoubtedly clear. First, the content of commercial heterosexual pornography has become more overtly cruel and degrading to women, and more overtly racist. Second, pornography has become more mainstream and acceptable in the culture. In a civilized society, how can a media genre move closer to the center of popular culture, and be more sexist and racist at the same time? The painful answer is that we may not be as civilized as we like to think.

In my last couple years of university teaching before retiring, I repeated two catch phrases as often as possible—“reasonable people can disagree” and “if two things are both true, then both are relevant.”

I spent the first half of my life trying to be a “normal” guy. That project didn’t go so well. The good news is that in the second half of my life I gave up trying, and things got better.

What led me to change course? An unexpected interaction with radical feminist writings that offered a critique of patriarchy, followed by the opportunity to meet radical feminists living in a patriarchal society who were working to advance the radical feminist critique of pornography and of men’s sexual exploitation of women in patriarchy.

Naomi Klein’s new book is essential reading, but does it go far enough in confronting the grim realities we truly face?

The royal, prophetic, and apocalyptic traditions in the Hebrew and Christian bibles provide a compelling framework for understanding progressive intellectual and political work today, as we face the task not only of struggling to create a just and sustainable world but also imagining a saving remnant that will negotiate a radically different future in which both new and old skills, stories, and spaces will be necessary.

No farmer has ever gone out to the barn to start the day and discovered that a baby tractor had been born overnight. For farmers who work with horses, the birth of a foal would not be surprising.

That observation may seem silly, but it highlights an important contrast: Machines cannot reproduce or maintain themselves. Creatures can.

The tractor comes out of the industrial mind, while the horse is creaturely. The tractor is the product of an energy-intensive human-designed system, while the horse is the product of an information-intensive biological process that emerges from earth and sun.

Propelled by the energy of progressive legislators elected in the 2018 midterms elections, a “Green New Deal” has become part of the political conversation in the United States, culminating in a resolution in the U.S. House with 67 cosponsors and a number of prominent senators lining up to join them. Decades of activism by groups working on climate change and other ecological crises, along with a surge of support in recent years for democratic socialism, has opened up new political opportunities for serious discussion of the intersection of social justice and sustainability.

As sex and gender issues simmer — and routinely boil over — at every level of government, now more than ever we need clear definitions of terms used in the transgender debate.

Since publishing my first essay challenging the ideology of the transgender movement four years ago, I have often found myself in settings where liberal allies of that movement try to divert a difficult discussion by claiming the moral high ground of compassion. With each of these encounters, I become increasingly frustrated at this “compassion-as-cover” dodge that seems designed to give liberals a way to avoid accountability.

How the IPCC’s solutions for reversing the Earth’s warming encourage business as usual.

A week after anonymous charges of sexual harassment against sociologist Michael Kimmel surfaced, I suggested that his half-hearted “apology” was unacceptable and that the pro-feminist men’s movement’s response was inadequate. With two more weeks now past, a follow-up challenge to Kimmel—a leading figure in the feminist-influenced study of men and masculinities—is appropriate.

Mohsen Abdelmoumen interviews Robert Jensen

The irony of one of the leading pro-feminist male scholars being accused of sexual harassment is painfully obvious. The accusations against sociologist Michael Kimmel have been anonymous so far and investigations are just beginning, but we need not wait to take seriously Kimmel’s own advice to men who find themselves in this position.

The development of agriculture is one of the key fault lines in human history, the starting point for the human project of dominating the planet. As the catastrophic consequences of that domination become undeniable, an ecospheric framework that recognizes the problem of agriculture should be at the centre of an analysis and critique of the ecological and social failures of the industrial worldview that shapes today’s world.

Since it’s becoming more common for people to “self-identify” in terms of sex/gender, I want to do the same, by challenging two ways I have been inaccurately labeled.

“Let me define the terms, and I’ll win any debate,” a friend told me years ago, an insight I’ve seen confirmed many times in intellectual and political arenas.

But after reading Jack Halberstam’s new book, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, I would amend that observation: Debates also can be won by making sure a term is never clearly defined.

Reading Renate Klein’s elegantly argued Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation, it’s difficult not to keep repeating to oneself, “How did we get here?”, all the while trying to keep at bay a sense of despair.

Men have long claimed to own, control, or have the right to exploit women’s reproductive power and sexuality. Those claims are deeply embedded in contemporary culture—so deeply that the resulting practices are routinely taken to be “just the way things are”—but the practices also are inconsistent with widely shared moral values of liberty, equality, and solidarity.

In a routinely delusional world, what is the most dangerous delusion?

Living in the United States, I’m tempted to focus on the delusion that the United States is the greatest nation in the history of the world – a claim repeated robotically by politicians of both parties.

Tanya Berry challenges our assumptions about women’s work and small-town living.

“I’m not surprised,” women say, in response to the flood of revelations of sexual “misconduct” by men, especially men in positions of power.

But none of us — women or men — should be surprised, because the United States is a patriarchal society and in patriarchy men routinely claim the right to own or control women’s bodies for reproduction and sexual pleasure. Men — liberal and conservative — know that just as well as women.

I am not as abusive as Harvey Weinstein, nor as narcissistic as Bill O’Reilly. I’m more respectful to women than Donald Trump, and not as sleazy as Anthony Weiner.

Judged by the standards set by these public reprobates, most of the rest of us men appear almost saintly, and therein lies a danger. The public disclosure of these men’s behavior — from the routinely offensive to the occasionally criminal — is a good thing, and all those who have been harassed and raped should continue to speak out.

Now that the “bathroom bill” has died in the Texas Legislature and the political fireworks are over — for the moment — we should step back and consider what makes the transgender issue so vexing.

Now that the violence in Charlottesville has forced “white supremacy” into our political vocabulary, let’s ask an uncomfortable question: “When will the United States transcend white supremacy?”

A young friend recently stopped by my house as I was cooking dinner—a favorite rice-and-greens dish that is simple, cheap, tasty and nutritious. I’d just started sautéing the onions and garlic in some olive oil. My friend watched for a moment then said, with inappropriate reverence, “I don’t know how you do that.” “How I do what?” I thought. Cut up an onion, slice a clove of garlic, pour some oil and turn on a burner? It’s not exactly painting a masterpiece or performing brain surgery. I likely would have made fun of my friend if not for the fact that, at one point in my life, I would have found sautéing onions and garlic exotic, as well.

Students will sometimes ask me — often hesitantly, out of fear of offending — if it’s true what they’ve heard, that I’m a liberal.

“Don’t you ever call me a liberal again,” I tell them, feigning outrage. “I’m a leftist and a radical feminist.” Once they realize I’m not angry, I explain the important differences between left and liberal.

In her new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, Klein reminds us to pay attention not only to the style in which Trump governs (a multi-ring circus so routinely corrupt and corrosive that anti-democratic practices seem normal) but in whose interests he governs (the wealthy, those he believes to be the rightful winners in the capitalist cage match), while recognizing the historical forces that make his administration possible (decades of market-fundamentalist/neoliberal rejection of the idea of a collective good).

Why We Are Driven to Search for the Truth

It’s something we struggle to see more clearly, to realize day to day, to make more real in our lives. And that’s always messy business.

“There’s a disagreement in the planning group, about inviting you,” an organizer told me, hesitantly, during a phone call this spring to finalize the details of my speaking slot in a “diversity-and-inclusion” event.

I sighed and prepared to respond, knowing that the objection to my participation likely had to do either with my writing after September 11, 2001, that was critical of the U.S. empire or more recent essays challenging the ideology of the transgender movement from a radical feminist position.

As radical feminists/male allies/men we need to take control of the conversation on issues like prostitution, pornography and toxic masculinity.

Many liberals and leftists criticized the New York Times last month for giving right-wing ideologue Bret Stephens a piece of the most valuable real estate in U.S. journalism, a regular spot on its op-ed page.

Although the most compelling critiques of pornography over the past four decades have been articulated by radical feminists, many young people—including women—assume that challenges to the pornographic culture come only from conservative and/or religious perspectives. As a result, secular and liberal folks often assume that they must endorse porn to be cool.

The terms to describe the buying and selling of bodies for sex in the modern world convey much about the underlying ideological debate going on in the culture, and within feminism.

Donald Trump comments caught on tape reveal underpinnings of inequality in our society.

On the eve of the inauguration, we asked writers and journalists to share short essays of strength, hope, reflection, and resistance. These essays are part of a series that demonstrates PEN Center USA’s continued efforts to defend freedom of expression.

Trump articulates ideas that are closer to what is considered “normal” in the United States than many of us are willing to acknowledge.

Most public discussions assume that liberals will support and conservatives will reject the transgender movement’s claims. A more radical feminism — one that doesn’t shy away from challenging male dominance — offers a different approach.

From a “critique” of my work on the recently launched website Professor Watchlist, I learned that I’m a threat to my students for contending that we won’t end men’s violence against women “if we do not address the toxic notions about masculinity in patriarchy … rooted in control, conquest, aggression.”

Our task is to reject men’s claim to control women’s reproductive power and sexuality, while calling out White supremacy and a widening equality gap.

Experts agree—this isn’t just a moral issue, it’s a serious health concern that affects us all.

What are the big questions that religion answers?

Facing what seems like an endless stream of news about racialized conflicts and violence, many people call for us to get beyond our history and find solutions for today, concrete actions we can take immediately, ways of expressing love right now to help us cope with the pain.

Most people involved in feminist movements know how bitter the trans debate has become, and those of us who identify with radical feminist principles are used to being labeled transphobic TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), sometimes even accused of supporting a climate of violence against trans people. My goal here is not to assign responsibility for the breakdown of dialogue, but to point out one consequence of this state of affairs: Many people are afraid not only to disagree with the trans movement’s policy positions but even to ask questions about the underlying claims.

Last year in my University of Texas office, after I had summarized for a group of young women the feminist critique of pornography (which they had never heard of), one of the students in her early 20s suggested that older people (such as myself, age 57) are out of step with young people, including young women. Yes, some pornography is nasty, she said, but she and her friends don’t get all worked up — it’s just porn.

Revelations about the widespread use of shell companies and offshore banking by politicians and business figures has challenged the traditional model of investigative reporting. It could be the new way investigative reporting is done.

In the conflict over the land of Palestine, Israel’s overpowering military superiority has produced decisive battlefield victories. But just as crucial to Israeli dominance in that region is its supremacy in the U.S. news media, which is captured in the title of an important new film from the Media Education Foundation, “The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States.”

To avoid being conned, politically and intellectually, it’s important to examine how a debate is framed and what ideology is advanced by that framing. What is the scope of the question? How was the direction of the inquiry decided? Who set the boundaries of the conversation?

When conventional politics has failed to deal with pressing problems, we have no choice but to think beyond the conventions, sometimes in ways that may seem extreme. The question is not whether one is extremist, but whether one’s ideas make sense.

There’s an important item missing from world leaders’ agenda for the climate change summit underway in Paris: Grieving.

This article also appeared as:

“What’s missing from Paris climate talks: Grieving,” Houston Chronicle, December 6, 2015.

“A key missing item on the climate agenda – grieving,” Austin American-Statesman, December 1, 2015, p. A-10.

“A Missing Item on the COP21 Climate Agenda: Grieving,” http://www.telesurtv.net/.

 

Bill McRaven is a highly respected retired admiral and popular chancellor of the University of Texas System. But his remarks at a recent conference on national security left me doubting his intellectual and moral fitness to lead institutions of higher education.

A new documentary shows planning options to mitigate a new climate, but questions about the global South are largely ignored.

“Can Porn Be Good for Us?” Debate, The Economist, November 17-27, 2015.

http://debates.economist.com/debate/online-pornography?state=decision (subscription required)

This is an excerpt from the new book Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull, which tells the story of Robert Jensen’s intellectual and political collaboration with teacher/activist Jim Koplin.

Although the movement to stop honoring Christopher Columbus with a holiday is gaining support, most of white America would prefer to avoid the subject.

This is an excerpt from the new book Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull, which tells the story of Robert Jensen’s intellectual and political collaboration with teacher/activist Jim Koplin.

Whatever the source of an individual’s climate denial, the question is how those of us who aren’t experts can engage in constructive dialogue with deniers.

Jim Koplin, who developed the most comprehensive and consistent radical left/feminist/anti-racist/ecological politics of anyone I have ever known, talked with great affection about his time as a bank teller.

Whatever the fate of Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, his current popularity provides an opportunity to clarify the various political labels attached to him: liberal, progressive, socialist, democratic socialist, social democratic, leftist, radical.

I am white, and the woman I’m meeting is black. I have lived in Austin, Texas, for more than two decades, and she recently moved here. We bumped into each other at an event and learned we have similar political interests. I invited her to coffee to talk about local organizing, and after introductions the first thing I say is, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to join a nonprofit board.”

This memo is my response to an editor at a U.S. news organization who was soliciting feedback for a review of the organization’s coverage of environmental news. From a conservative point of view, this newsroom is part of the “liberal media.” My goal in the memo was to step back from that superficial, diversionary label and evaluate the deeper ideological commitments that shape mainstream news.

The surge of discussion about transgenderism — and growing support for policy goals of the transgender movement, such as public funding for sex-reassignment surgery — leaves many liberal/progressive people conflicted.

Resilience Reflections asks Robert Jensen what it is that inspires his work, and what keeps him going.

What do patriarchy and feminism have to do with the University of Virginia story, and why should journalists care?

We humans are an epic fail.

In internet-speak, that term can be used derisively or sympathetically. A failure of grand proportions can be labeled “epic” either to mock or to offer condolences to someone who fails so completely. However, given the speed at which pop-culture fads come and go, I’m told by younger informants that the term is already long out of date and that to invoke it is a sign of irrelevance.

P. Sainath started building the People’s Archive of Rural India only a couple of years ago. But the passion behind the innovative online project that mixes journalism and oral history, which was launched last month to overwhelming acclaim, goes back more than two decades.

For the past year, the media have been full of discussions of the endemic sexual violence in the contemporary United States, while at the same time pop culture has been celebrating the new visibility of the transgender movement. Both of these cases — which many take to be feminist successes — actually highlight patriarchy’s ability to adapt to challenges and undermine a radical critique of the domination/subordination dynamic at the heart of institutionalized male dominance.

Naomi Klein has written a brave book that not only confronts the calamity of climate destabilization but also examines the deep roots of the crisis in the perverse logic of capitalism and the dehumanizing values of the “extractivist” high-energy/high-technology world.

We are biological creatures, part of an ecosphere, living in communities. Like any other organism, our genetic code sets parameters within which we live. The ecosphere is governed by laws of physics and chemistry that set the parameters within which all organisms exist. And we encounter the world not as isolated, independent individuals but through social systems that affect how we understand ourselves and the possibilities for our lives.

We must face what is beyond our capacity to bear and we must do so without giving into despair or turning away from the demands that ecological crises place on us.

Within feminism there has been for decades an often divisive debate about transgenderism. With increasing mainstream news media and pop culture attention focused on the issue, understanding that feminist debate is more important than ever.

To confront the reality of rape and rape culture is to realize that vigorous prosecution of the small number of men who rape doesn’t solve the larger problem.

Thomas Patterson’s new book on the current crises in journalism is organized around six specific problems, starting with “The Information Problem” and moving through Source, Knowledge, Education, Audience, and Democracy problems.

Review: The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism by Dean Starkman

I’m fond of books that don’t claim to have The Answer but instead are useful guides in our search for answers.

Such a volume is Cynthia Kaufman’s Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope, which expresses in clear, concise language thoughts that likely have been bumping around in the minds of many of us who reject capitalism. The book is particularly powerful because of its modesty; Kaufman promises no new grand theory and instead offers insights that we all can use in our daily lives.

Hero worship is politically debilitating, undermining grassroots organizing and impeding honest intellectual practice. A good example is the case of John F. Kennedy. A political assassination is both a personal tragedy for loved ones and an attack on democracy, and the anniversary of JFK’s assassination is a time for reflection on that brutality. But it should not be a time to revive the myth of Kennedy’s “Camelot,” nor to indulge the historical distortions necessary for such hero worship.

The future of the human species – if there is to be a future – must be radically green, red, black and female.

It’s not easy being a human in the 21st century, knowing so much. The more we learn about how the world works, the more we realize how many ways we are destroying that world. Despite all that knowledge piling up, humans continue to treat the only home we have like a mine from which we can endlessly extract and a landfill into which we can endlessly dump.

More than ever we need a university that refuses to serve power and instead focuses its resources on the compelling questions of social justice and ecological sustainability.

The issue-packed title of this event—“Our Democracy in Crisis: The Rise of the Total Surveillance State and the War on a Free Press”—offers a panelist a number of potential targets. Given the expertise of other panelists on the specifics of surveillance and journalism, I want to focus on what may seem like the least controversial part of the title, “Our Democracy,” to which I would add a question mark.

New negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians may begin next week, with much talk of a “new chapter” in the seemingly intractable conflict. A new chapter, perhaps, but who is writing the book?

Edited version of a talk at the National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education in New Orleans on June 1, 2013

Feeling anxious about life in a broken-down society on a stressed-out planet? That’s hardly surprising: Life as we know it is almost over. While the dominant culture encourages dysfunctional denial—pop a pill, go shopping, find your bliss—there’s a more sensible approach: Accept the anxiety, embrace the deeper anguish—and then get apocalyptic.

TEOA asked Robert Jensen, “How does a rapidly changing city avoid losing its soul?” Here is his response: The question presumes that Austin has a soul. I’m skeptical, for several reasons.

An adapted excerpt from the book Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue, by Robert Jensen, published by City Lights Books.

An excerpt from Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialog.

Underneath the complex relationships and shifting strategies, the obvious question lingers: If the Middle East were not home to the largest reserves of the most easily accessible oil in the world, would we have gone to war in Iraq?

If we are rational and consider objective scientific evidence of environmental collapse including groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, ocean dead zones, species extinction, bio-diversity reduction and climate disruption, we need to be apocalypticists, argues Robert Jensen.

The focus on torture in “Zero Dark Thirty” ignores more significant US policies of dubious legality.

Here’s an interesting question for historians: Why do ideologues never seem to be aware of their own ideology?

Such is the case with the recent report from the Texas Association of Scholars and the National Association of Scholars’ Center for the Study of the Curriculum, “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?”

The United States is the most affluent and powerful nation in history.
Despite our worldly riches, Americans are facing a sort of existential crisis.
Thoughtful discussion of contentious issues offers a way for us to learn, grow and come together.

Assessing the effects of mass media is never simple, but the important questions about pornography are obvious: What happens when a culture is saturated with sexually explicit images eroticizing male domination and female subordination? When those images become increasingly cruel and degrading to women and increasingly racist? When pornography becomes the de facto sex education for most boys and an increasing number of girls?

We may not be driving ourselves into extinction, but we are creating conditions that make our future frightening.

In the 2007 book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, author Raj Patel describes how an indefensible corporate global food system—focused on producing products for profit, not food for people—leaves a billion people overweight and nearly a billion starving.

The opener of the 2012 Longhorn football season is Saturday, Sept. 1. In this essay, a University of Texas at Austin professor reflects on the downside of the team that is so beloved in Austin and around the state.

In 2005, I preached on the ecological crisis in a sermon I titled “Hope is for the Weak: The Challenge of a Broken World.” Looking back, I realize that I had been far too upbeat and optimistic, probably trying too hard to be liked. Today I want to correct that.

Economist Prabhat Patnaik says moving back to an economic ‘golden age’ is impossible, so we must invent new solutions.

These days, there’s one political point on which one can usually get consensus: Mainstream journalists are failing. In common parlance, most everyone “hates the media.” But there is little agreement on why journalism might be inadequate to the task of engaging the public in a democratic society. More than ever, it’s important to understand the forces that constrain good journalism.

Does God take sides in the elections? Is there a voters’ guide hiding in our holy books? Should we pray for electoral inspiration?

A central doctrine of evangelicals for the “free market” is its capacity for innovation: New ideas, new technologies, new gadgets – all flow not from governments, but from individuals and businesses, allowed to flourish in the market, we are told.

I am a tenured professor in a relatively stable university, which is quite possibly the best job in the world. I get paid well to read, think, talk, and write, and I have more job security than almost anyone I know.

Like many professors, I am critical of the increasingly corporate nature of universities. The conservative/neoliberal project of turning public schools into educational factories is also gathering steam in higher education, and there is much organizing work necessary just to protect what little space for critical thinking still exists.

Norman Solomon, who is campaigning for Congress, believes that it’s possible to be an activist and a politician.

Conventional politics in the United States focuses on elections, while leftist activists typically argue that political change comes not from electing better politicians but building movements strong enough to force politicians to accept progressive change.

Angus Wright has a way of saying things we may not want to hear in a way that’s hard to ignore.

The crisis we face is caused by failed systems – replacing leaders while keeping the old system intact will not help.

Ten years ago, critics of America’s mad rush to war were right, but it didn’t matter.

Within hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was clear that political leaders were going to use the attacks to justify war in Central Asia and the Middle East. And within hours, those of us critical of that policy began to offer principled and practical arguments against aggressive war as a response to the crimes.

Ten years ago, within hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, it was clear that the architects of US foreign policy were going to use the events to justify war in Central Asia and the Middle East. And within hours, those of us critical of those policies began to articulate principled and practical arguments against the mad rush to war.

My title is ambitious and ambiguous: revolution and resistance (which tend to be associated with left politics), revelation and redemption (typically associated with right-wing religion), all framed by a warning about ecological collapse. My goal is to connect these concepts to support an argument for a radical political theology — let me add to the ambiguity here — that can help us claim our power at the moment when we are more powerless than ever, and identify the sources of hope when there is no hope.

First, I realize that the term “radical political theology” may be annoying. Some people will dislike “radical” and prefer a more pragmatic approach. Others will argue that theology shouldn’t be political. Still others will want nothing to do with theology of any kind. At various times in my life, I would have offered all of those objections. Today, I think a politics without a theology is dangerous, a theology without a politics is irrelevant, and radical is realistic.

For centuries, the arbitrary use of power by the state against dissidents has been a key threat to freedom. More recently, the concentrated wealth of corporations has emerged as a major impediment to democracy. When those two centers of power decide to come after people, not only do the individuals suffer, but freedom and democracy take a beating.

In his debut book, Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement under Siege, independent journalist Will Potter details one such assault on freedom and democracy: the targeting of environmental and animal rights activists.

Dissidents not only have to be willing to tell the truth about the delusions of the dominant culture, but make sure we don’t fall into delusions of our own.

In the cafeteria-turned-classroom at UT Elementary School, Toni Tipton-Martin struggles to keep six restless boys focused on hot cocoa, the day’s nutrition lesson. She starts with a store-bought cocoa mix, guiding the students through the list of “all those crazy ingredients”—the tongue-twisting list of scary-sounding additives and preservatives—before explaining how they will use four simple ingredients to make their own.

Hi, I’m Robert Jensen, a provider of educational products to consumers at the University of Texas at Austin.

I used to introduce myself as a UT professor, but that was before I attended a Texas Public Policy Foundation session last week offering more exciting “breakthrough solutions” to the problems of higher education.

Greek journalist CJ Polychroniou interviewed Robert Jensen about recent trends in media and politics. The interview appeared in Epsilon, the Sunday magazine of Eleftherotypia, Greece’s premier progressive newspaper.

People of conscience face two crucial challenges today: (1) Telling the truth about the dire state of the ecosphere that makes our lives possible, no matter how grim that reality, and (2) remaining committed to collective action to create a more just and sustainable world, no matter how daunting that task. It’s not an easy balancing act, as we struggle to understand the scope of the crisis without giving into a sense of hopelessness.

Our stories of awakenings — whether moral, intellectual, religious, artistic, or sexual — are tricky. Honest self-reflection doesn’t come easy, and self-satisfied accounts are the norm; we love to be the heroes of our own epics.

If humans were smart, we would bet on our ignorance.

That advice comes early in the Hebrew Bible. Adam and Eve’s banishment in chapters two and three of Genesis can be read as a warning that hubris is our tragic flaw. In the garden, God told them they could eat freely of every tree but the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This need not be understood as a command that people must stay stupid, but only that we resist the temptation to believe that we are godlike and can competently manipulate the complexity of the world.

My greatness as a writer is simply a fact.

You don’t agree? Well, then obviously you are churlish or malevolent.

If I were serious about such a claim of superiority, now would be the time to stop reading — on the reasonable assumption that I’m a dull-witted bore with no capacity for critical self-reflection. What applies to individual declarations is also true of nations, yet in the United States such statements about our greatness are common.

Robert Jensen wrote a review of a new book on “the commons” that sparked an exchange with the book’s editor, Jay Walljasper. Jensen’s previously unpublished review of All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons/How to Save the Economy, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, Our Communities, and Everything Else That Belongs to All of Us (The New Press, 288 pages, $18.95) is below, followed by comments.

Robert Jensen joins Kourosh Ziabari in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, the prospect of Iran-U.S. relations, the ongoing military campaign of the Israeli regime in Palestine, the biased coverage of the Middle East affairs by the mainstream media and the failure of President Obama in repairing the damaged picture of the United States in the global stage.

I want to speak tonight in the language of spirit, but about subjects that transcend religion. I want to discuss politics, but in a way that transcends parties. I want to struggle with crises we have created out of ignorance and inattention; face up to problems that have no simple solutions; deal with the depths of human destructiveness and despair.

This will lead us, of course, to George W. Bush and his administration’s contribution to this mess.

Because crucial questions are not on the agenda for the two dominant parties battling on Nov. 2, we have to commit to a radical citizens’ agenda on Nov. 3.

In the search for alternatives to our dead-end industrial agriculture system, Land Institute researchers are pursuing plant breeding programs that just may be the key to post-oil farming. But beyond the science, “The Land” — that’s how everyone there refers to the Institute in conversation — provides a fertile space for mixing the ideas of people as well as the genes of plants. In both cases, the hybrid vigor — the superior qualities that result from crossbreeding — is exciting.

There’s no shortage of political blather in this year’s mid-term election campaigns, but most of us yearn for substantive discussion of the serious problems we face. What should the politicians be discussing? The University of Texas at Austin asked faculty members who teach about politics “to analyze, examine and provide their perspectives” on key political issues for the university’s web site. Below are my contributions, three short essays that raise critical questions about economics, empire, and energy that are routinely ignored by most politicians.

Prof. Jensen talks to True Feminism about the pornographic war on women.

When the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division rolled out of Iraq last week, the colonel commanding the brigade told a reporter that his soldiers were “leaving as heroes.”

While we can understand the pride of professional soldiers and the emotion behind that statement, it’s time for Americans — military and civilian — to face a difficult reality: In seven years of the deceptively named “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and nine years of “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, no member of the U.S. has been a hero.

To make significant progress in the struggle for social justice in the United States, we have to get beyond race, gender, and class.

At first glance, that may seem an odd claim to anyone who has studied political and economic realities in the United States and the larger world: injustice in contemporary society is clearly connected to the categories of race, gender, and class. In fact, virtually all the systematic injustices that humans impose on one another in our society are related to these categories, and the resulting injuries are serious and demand attention.

Let’s approach the question “Why am I here?” at two different levels.

The first is the question of the ages, which we all have asked at some point: Why is any one of us here? Why are we humans here, with this vexing consciousness and frustrating capacity for self-reflection? Are we the product of some larger plan beyond our understanding? Do humans have a purpose? Are we special?

The answer to that is easy: No. We are not special. We are an organism like all others, the product of an evolutionary process in a very big universe in which we are, as individuals, insignificant. But don’t fret about that; we are also insignificant as a species, and the collection of entities on Earth that we call “life” is insignificant, as is the planetary ecosystem in which we live and our solar system and our galaxy. We are, in the big picture, insignificant beings floating in insignificance in a universe that is vast beyond human comprehension.

“I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said many times over the centuries.”

That may have been the most insightful response to my essay asking people to report on how they cope with the anguish of living in a world in collapse.

We live amidst multiple crises — economic and political, cultural and ecological — that pose a significant threat to human life as we understand it.

There is no way to be awake to the depth of these crises without an emotional reaction. There is no way to be aware of the pain caused by these systemic failures without some experience of dread, depression, distress.

After a recent talk on racism and other illegitimate hierarchies at a diversity conference in Dallas, I received a letter from one of the people who had attended that asked “why you feel it necessary to perpetuate and even exacerbate the divisiveness of language when addressing a group of people assembled to learn how to live better together and be more accepting of differences?” He suggested that by being so sharply critical, I was part of the problem not the solution.

There is considerable attention paid in the United States to the collapse of journalism — both in terms of the demise of the business model for corporate commercial news media, and the evermore superficial, shallow, and senseless content that is inadequate for citizens concerned with self-governance. This collapse is part of larger crises in the political and economic spheres, crises rooted in the incompatibility of democracy and capitalism. New journalistic vehicles for storytelling are desperately needed.

There has been far less discussion of the need for a journalism of collapse — the challenge to tell the story of a world facing multiple crises in the realms of social justice and sustainability. This collapse of the basic political and economic systems of the modern world, with dramatic consequences on the human and ecological fronts, demands not only new storytelling vehicles but a new story.

In the struggle for racial justice, it’s time to pay more attention to the fears of white people.

In a white-dominated world, that may seem counterintuitive. In the racial arena, what do we white people have to be afraid of?

After a recent talk about the struggle for social justice and the threats to the ecosystem, a student lingered, waiting to talk to me alone, as if he had something to confess.

“I feel so overwhelmed,” he finally said, wondering aloud if political organizing could really make a difference. The young man said he often felt depressed, not about the circumstances of his own life but about the possibilities for change. Finally, he looked at me and asked, “Once you see what’s happening — I mean really see it — how are you supposed to act like everything is going to be OK?”

The New York Times’ public editor wrestled this week with conflict-of-interest charges sparked by the revelation that Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner’s son had joined the Israeli army. The executive editor of the paper responded with a defense of the paper’s decision to keep Bronner in that position.

CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera (but still being filmed by another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and lifts him over a barricade to safety, we hope.

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s because we face an overwhelming situation.

For months, leftists have been pointing out the absurdity of the claim that Barack Obama is a socialist. But no matter how laughable, the claim keeps popping up, most recently in the form of the Republican Party chairman’s warning of “a socialist power grab” by Democrats.

Honoring President Obama’s request that the controversy involving a black Harvard University professor and a white Cambridge police officer become “a teachable moment,” here’s my contribution to an old lesson that we white people tend to be slow to learn.

Becoming a radical: The grief and the joy
Becoming radicalized politically allowed me to see that I was suffering because I didn’t want to fit into a world shaped by unjust systems; the problem wasn’t my values and desires but the pathology of those systems.

Conversations about race in places like Cape Town sound eerily similar to those happening in the United States.

“What is the most important challenge facing women in the 21st century, and why?”

That one isn’t easy for anyone to answer, especially in 300 words or less. But that was the assignment from editors of the University of Texas’ web site for faculty members contributing to the “Many Voices of Feminism” collection

My book All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009) offers a radical approach to Christian theology. Because the book is currently not in stock, the publisher has given me permission to make available a free PDF of the book.

Expressions of hope are only as truly hopeful as the honesty of the assessment of reality from which they emerge. Conjuring up hope rooted in a denial of reality can only deepen despair in the long run.

Interview with Ruth Anne Koenick.

I met Ruth Anne Koenick at a dinner before my talk on the feminist critique of pornography at Rutgers University in 1997. I had been doing public presentations on that issue for several years, but that was the first time an institution had paid my plane fare to give a lecture. As a young professor, I was a bit nervous but also was feeling pretty self-important.

Given the disastrous decisions made by U.S. officials in the seven long years since September 11, 2001, it would be easy tonight simply to catalog those many mistakes and condemn the bipartisan depravity of the Republican and Democratic politicians who — starting almost immediately after the towers fell — manipulated people’s anger and fear to build support for illegal and immoral wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Islamabad, Pakistan — Some lessons learned while spending time in a different culture come from paying attention to the wide diversity in how we humans arrange ourselves socially. Equally crucial lessons come from seeing patterns in how people behave similarly in similar situations, even in very different cultural contexts.

In a guest lecture about masculinity to a college class, I ask the students to generate two lists that might help clarify the concept.

For the first, I tell them to imagine themselves as parents whose 12-year-old son asks, “Mommy/daddy, what does is mean to be a man?” The list I write on the board as they respond is not hard to predict: To be a man is to be strong, responsible, loving. Men provide for those around them and care for others. A man weathers tough times and doesn’t give up.

This is an edited version of a sermon delivered May 4, 2008, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

The last time I was in this pulpit to deliver a guest sermon, I spoke of the need for each of us to take up the role of prophet, to not be afraid of speaking in the prophetic voice, even when doing so involves risk.

Today I want to talk about the other kind of profit, the allure of which can so often quiet the prophetic voice within us.

It may seem odd to talk of sorrows around race and gender in politics when we are a few months away from being able to vote for a white woman or a black man for president of the United States. When I was born in 1958, any suggestion that such an election was on the horizon would have been laughed off as crazy. In the first presidential campaign I paid attention to as an eighth-grader in 1972, Shirley Chisholm — who four years earlier had become the first black woman to win a seat in Congress — was to most Americans a curiosity not a serious contender. Today, things are different.

As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.”

That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home.

Osheroff is remembered most for his rich life of political activism. From the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War to streets all across the United States, he was a master strategist, energetic organizer, and courageous fighter.

It has long been a staple of the antiwar movement that there can be no meaningful peace without justice on a global scale. Those of us living in the First World, especially in the United States, cannot pretend to be working for peace unless we also are working for a more just and equitable distribution of the world’s resources.

Pro Publica, an initiative launched last month in the United States to help revitalize investigative journalism, is a great idea trapped by the worst aspects of the best instincts in contemporary corporate commercial journalism. The project reminds us of important values at the core of the craft of journalism, but also exposes the common political confusions of mainstream journalists that so often undermine their best efforts.

After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

I am having dinner on a Thursday night in a restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village with two friends I’m working with on a documentary on pornography. We’ve had a long day and are happy to unwind. Near the end of our meal, I’m increasingly aware of the rising volume from a nearby table, where three college-age men and a woman are talking and laughing just a bit too loudly. As it becomes harder to shut out their conversation, it becomes clear that much of the talk is about sex. The alpha male of the group (who is the boyfriend of the woman) is holding forth to the other two men about how to maneuver women into bed, including tips on the use of alcohol and a little bit of force when necessary.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For my first three days in Pakistan, no conversation could go more than a few minutes without a reference to the crisis at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) compound. I had landed in Islamabad on July 8, and by then it seemed clear that government forces would eventually storm the mosque and the attached women’s seminary to end the confrontation with fundamentalist clerics and their supporters.

When I read Steven Weinberg’s assertion that those supporting a boycott of Israel suffer from a “moral blindness” that could only be explained by anti-Semitism, I wondered how he squared that claim to the moral high ground with a comment he once made to me that smacked of anti-Palestinian bigotry.

For two years I have served at the University of Texas at Austin on the faculty committee on “academic freedom and responsibility,” a pairing of concepts that is common in higher education. While there is a fairly broad consensus on what “freedom” means, competing conceptions of “responsibility” lead to two very different ideas about the appropriate role for professors in public life.

As Congress sends its bill requiring partial troop withdrawals from Iraq to the White House for a certain veto, it has never been clearer that mobilizing against this war is necessary, but not enough.

Whether one believes the impeachment of George W. Bush is a realistic possibility or is simply a vehicle for expressing outrage and educating the public about the crimes of the powerful, any such talk starts with the U.S. Constitution and Article II, Section 4, which speaks of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

After the initial “Last Sunday” gathering in November, many people made the observation that it was a mostly white audience, and then asked the question, “How can we attract more people of color to the event?”

I’ve been assigned to talk about solutions to the pressing problems we face, but I’ve never been very good at following orders. So, instead I’m going to talk about the problem with solutions.

Ever since the movie Fargo came out a decade ago, my ability to mimic the Scandinavian-inflected accent of my hometown and home state of North Dakota has been a guaranteed way to elicit laughter during my public speaking.

That joking ended earlier this month, when I realized — in a painfully public manner — that my use of that North Dakota accent was in a small but undeniable way supportive of a white-supremacist account of the history of this country. The story of that episode illustrates not just the depth of the pathology of white America but also a way we white folks can — with self-reflection and help from others — start to transform ourselves.

All the conversations that Eliza, Jim, and I had in planning this gathering eventually came back to a core point: Hard times are on the way, coming sooner than most of us expected, and we’re not ready for them.

We started with the recognition that for all its affluence and military power, the United States is in many ways a society in collapse. On all fronts — politically, economically, culturally and most important, ecologically — we are in trouble. We live in an increasingly callous culture that exploits sexuality and glorifies violence; embedded in a house-of-cards economy built on orgiastic consumption, deepening personal and collective debt, and an artificially inflated dollar; at the end of an imperial era that is grinding to a disastrous demise — and, as if that weren’t enough, looming behind all those crises is the recognition of the consequences of humans too-long ignoring the unraveling ecological fabric that makes life possible.

In a world of spin, no one expects truth from corporate executives or the politicians who serve them, but many of us hold out hope that in the classroom and sanctuary we can engage one another honestly in the struggle to understand the world and our place in it. So, while I’ve had my share of squabbles with schools and churches over the years, I remain committed to them as important truth-seeking institutions.

Is the sexual practice in which two men penetrate a woman anally and vaginally at the same time — a “DP,” or double penetration in the vernacular of the pornography industry — inherently sexist?

When I first got into academic life, I couldn’t have predicted some of the questions that would come my way. But after nearly two decades of writing and speaking about the contemporary pornography industry, not much surprises me.

On Election Day 2006, the U.S. public didn’t switch trains but simply ratified a different group of conductors. It’s the same old train, on the same tracks, heading in the same direction.

Threats to academic freedom — direct and indirect, subtle and not so subtle — come from a variety of sources: Politicians, the general public, news media, administrators, corporations, and students. In my academic career, I have been criticized from all of those quarters. Though these attacks have been relatively easy to fend off in my particular case, the threats are real and should trouble us; they require of us sharper analysis and a strategic plan to fend off attempts to constrain inquiry. But, even with that understanding of the seriousness of these external threats, I will argue that the most important aspect of the current controversies is how they mark the complacency and timidity of faculty members themselves.

When one of the first-year University of Texas law students who participated in a “ghetto fabulous” party posted pictures on the web, we saw the ugly face of white privilege and the racism in which it is rooted. But the depth of the problem of white supremacy at the university — and in mainstream institutions more generally — is also evident in the polite way in which the university administration chastised the students.

This past year, after decades of steadfastly avoiding churches of all kinds, I returned to church. Ironically, and completely by coincidence, I returned to a Presbyterian church, the denomination in which I was raised and to which I swore — in both senses of the term — I would never return. But return I have, prodigally perhaps, depending on one’s position on various doctrinal issues, which we will get to tonight in due time.

We all remember where we were and what we felt on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I also have a clear recollection of the morning of Sept. 14, 2001.

I got to my office early, and the red message light on my phone was already blinking. My voice-mailbox was full of angry condemnations of an essay that had run in the Houston Chronicle that morning (“U.S. just as guilty of committing own violent acts,” Outlook), in which I sharply criticized past U.S. policy and warned that a vengeful response to the terrorist attacks would be disastrous.

When I published an article this summer that condemned the past six decades of U.S. policy toward Iran, and the Middle East more generally, as a strategy of “domination-through-violence,” one critic emailed to suggest that if I was so unhappy with the United States, “why don’t you and all the other liberal professors just pack up and move to Iran and see how you like it there.”

One of George Lakoff’s key observations in his work on contemporary political discourse is that “frames trump facts” — when facts are inconsistent with the frames and metaphors that structure a person’s worldview, the facts will likely be ignored.

Ironically, Lakoff’s new book — Whose Freedom? The Battle over America’s Most Important Idea — demonstrates that problem all too well. His worldview seems to keep him from the very critical self-reflection that he counsels for liberal/progressive people.

Will the United States attack Iran?

That was the question on everyone’s mind at a recent political talk I gave in a small college town in Texas. I ran through some of the many reasons such an attack would be ill-advised, bordering on insane…

The most important words anyone said to me in the weeks immediately after September 11, 2001, came from my friend James Koplin. While acknowledging the significance of that day, he said, simply: “I was in a profound state of grief about the world before 9/11, and nothing that happened on that day has significantly changed what the world looks like to me.”

For very different reasons, personal and political, Kenji Yoshino’s beautiful book on a new approach to civil rights is painful and important to read.

Some of my best friends are liberals. Really. But I have found it is best not to rely on them politically.

Hugh Hefner is 80 today. America, say happy birthday to our most influential pimp.

“Crash” is a white-supremacist movie.

The Oscar-winning best picture — widely heralded, especially by white liberals, for advancing an honest discussion of race in the United States — is, in fact, a setback in the crucial project of forcing white America to come to terms the reality of race and racism, white supremacy and white privilege.

If we transcend the sad, desperate triumphalist rhetoric of an empire in decline — that is, if we break from the conventional platitudes about the inherent benevolence and superiority of the United States that underlie the politics of both major parties — we can see clearly the breadth and depth of the problems we face.

uther King Jr’s most famous speech, he had a dream.

But in another of King’s important addresses, he faced the depth of our nightmare.

Money and lives have been invested in making Iraq a platform from which the U.S. can project power; a move that requires not the liberation of Iraq, but its subordination, says ROBERT JENSEN. But most Iraqis don’t want to be subordinated, which is why the U.S. in some sense lost the war on the day of invasion, he adds.

Neither the Republicans nor the mainstream Democrats in the U.S.’ political system seem capable of admitting that the invasion of Iraq was never about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or creating democracy, comments ROBERT JENSEN.

Bush would do well to listen to his own words, such as this comment on “Meet the Press” last weekend: “See, free societies are societies that don’t develop weapons of mass terror and don’t blackmail the world.”

Not quite in the sense Bushies would have you believe, though. The Democrats could contest the Bush propaganda but they seem to be suffering from an intelligence failure of their own.

Saddam Hussein’s capture and the hope he will be held accountable for crimes against the people of Iraq and neighboring states is welcome news, no matter what one’s position on the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But this doesn’t vindicate the U.S. invasion.

President Bush has told the Iraqi people: ‘We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave’. The US must get out first.

George Bush says he wants to use war to help create democracy in Iraq? As a step toward bolstering his credibility, Bush might start taking democracy seriously in the rest of the world, and at home.

George Bush HAS misled the American public. He IS misleading the American public, and we can assume he WILL continue to mislead the public.

The `war on terrorism’ is only marginally about fighting terrorism. Instead, it is mostly a cover for a largely pre-existing agenda of extending the American empire into central Asia, with its implications felt globally and domestically, say RAHUL MAHAJAN and ROBERT JENSEN.

My political life for the past dozen years has been anchored in resistance to the pornography of men and the wars of the United States, the struggle against patriarchy and empire. That means my life has been saturated with images of cruelty, from the intimate to the global. To be effective, contemporary mass-marketed pornography and modern war both require cruelty and contempt. Pornography and the wars of the U.S. empire both depend for their success on the process of rendering human beings less-than-fully-human so they can be hurt. This paper examines the connections between pornography and war, and between feminism and a movement to resist U.S. militarism and imperialism.

The Orwellian use of the term “diplomacy” to describe the consistent U.S. policy of no negotiations helps to mask the fact that the administration always intended to launch this war.

Nearly three weeks have passed since Sept. 11, and the United States has yet to launch a military offensive in the new unlimited global war on terrorism that President Bush declared on Sept. 20.

Combined with news reports that Secretary of State Colin Powell is battling within the Administration for a more diplomatic approach, this period of “calm” has many — including some in the antiwar movement — talking as if a full-scale war has been averted. No news of war, they say, is good news.

Several considerations suggest the opposite: no news is most likely bad news.

The first, and most obvious, point is that military operations on the scale that the Bush administration has discussed cannot be implemented overnight. Troops and materiel take time to move into place, especially when delicate negotiations are needed to establish bases in countries where such a move can have domestic political costs. Few countries are eager to become part of the American military machine; on Sunday, a Saudi Arabian official said no attacks on Afghanistan would be launched from his nation, an indication of the political touchiness of this endeavor.

Remember that the buildup to the Gulf War lasted five months. No matter how tough the talk in the first weeks after the terror attacks, Pentagon planners and their civilian chiefs do not make large-scale plans for military operations based on rhetoric. Words of war are spoken for public relations, not planning purposes.

In short: The antiwar movement should not get taken in by a diplomatic and media shell-game.

Again, the Gulf War is the perfect example. From the August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait up until days before the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, officials from the first Bush administration talked about their commitment to exploring a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. At the time, it was clear they weren’t serious, since they said publicly many times that there would be no negotiations; Iraq had to either accept U.S. conditions or face an attack (that’s what passes for diplomacy in the United States). This was widely acknowledged; early on, for example, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that the “diplomatic track” should be avoided because it might “defuse the crisis.”

In his book Shadow, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported that the Bush administration was afraid Saddam Hussein might pull his forces out of Kuwait before the U.S. could strike. If that happened, it would be hard to justify keeping U.S. military forces in the region, leading then-President Bush to tell his national security team, “We have to have a war,” according to the book.

In an interview for a PBS Frontline documentary on the Gulf War, then-Secretary of State James Baker conceded that his January 9, 1991, meeting with Iraq’s foreign minister was mostly for appearances, to help to secure the congressional vote for war three days later.

In fact, the whole saga, while billed as a question of whether Saddam Hussein would come to his senses and negotiate, was anything but. The numerous plans presented to give him a face-saving formula, to retreat with the most minor of gains, were serially shot down by an administration bent on war.

As we hear talk about the United States engaging in diplomacy, we must remember this:. the U.S. conception of diplomacy does not mean seeking to avoid war, as the U.N. charter requires. It means coupling a “principled” refusal to negotiate with threats and verbal provocations designed to stiffen the spine of an enemy, so that situations cannot be resolved peacefully. It means lining up allies — sometimes by naked coercion, sometimes by bribes of debt-restructuring or trade favors — so that military actions can begin.

We see the same thing in the current situation no negotiations with the Taliban, no attempt to offer evidence linking bin Laden to the crime against humanity of September 11, but many peremptory demands, not just to turn over bin Laden but to effectively cede sovereignty to the United States by opening up training camps and other sensitive areas to American scrutiny. Plus ca change

Recent history offers another reason to expect that plans for war have not been shelved: An empire’s need to maintain “credibility.”

Credibility in this sense means the notion that anyone who challenges U.S. domination will pay the price. The destruction of one country keeps others from rising up. All empires must maintain this credibility, or they cease to be empires.

The major conflict of the American empire in the post-World War II era — the wars against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — was motivated by a central U.S. doctrine: Any attempt at independent development in the Third World had to be destroyed. But by 1967, at the absolute latest, it was clear to everyone — including U.S. planners — that a military victory was out of reach. From that point on, the war was continued in large part to further destroy Indochina, so that the United States was not seen to withdraw in defeat. The million tons of bombs dropped since that time were done to maintain credibility.

The war planners are going about the business of planning war. Still, the fact that one of the Gulf War planners, Colin Powell, now sits as secretary of state and is arguing for what seems to be a less aggressive posture has led many to be hopeful that a split in the administration could derail war. While we can only speculate on discussions going on inside the White House, again history and common sense can guide us.

First, the stories in the mainstream media about the rift between Powell and Rumsfeld, the doves and the hawks, may or may not have any connection to what is really happening. Internal policy disputes do break out in any administration. But just as often officials manipulate the press to float trial balloons and distract the public (even conservative columnist George Will has suggested news of this disagreement might just be “disinformation to confound our enemies”). Even if such a rift exists, it appears that the question for the Administration isn’t whether or not to go to war, but merely when, where and with what force.

Before we put our hopes in Powell-the-peacemaker, let us recall that he is the man who put forth the Powell Doctrine, which he summarized in the Frontline documentary as: “If this is important enough to go to war for, we’re going to do it in a way that there’s no question what the outcome will be and we’re going to do it by putting the force necessary to take the initiative away from your enemy and impose your will upon him.”

Again, remember that marshaling the forces to “impose your will” upon an enemy is not an easy process.

At this point we have little choice but to base our antiwar work on informed speculation; it would be foolish to think the administration is going to tell us forthrightly what it has in store for the world. A reasonable assumption at this point is that whatever instinct there might have been for an immediate demonstration bombing to signal the world that the United States has a “spine of steel” has been reined in, and that a more careful planning process is underway.

While this process continues, a severe human toll is already being exacted.

The administration’s bellicose posture has sparked such fear in Afghanistan that the flight of refugees has begun, with the accompanying likelihood of mass starvation. The United States is pressing to ensure that any food distribution plan is carried out ”in a manner that does not allow this food to fall into the hands of the Taliban,” according to deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Since the Taliban itself, like most ruling elites, remains well-fed, this is plainly doublespeak for a plan to selectively starve the roughly 90% of the country controlled by them.

Translated: The war on the civilian population of Afghanistan using fear, flight and food is underway.

Beyond these basic observations, there is little we can know about what is in the minds of people gathered in the White House, the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom.

But we can and must use the time they have given us to step up our organizing and education efforts, not slow them down.

The polls, like the minds of most Americans, are full of contradiction. Although over 90% supposedly favor going to war, 63% think that strikes on Afghanistan make future terrorist attacks more, not less, likely. Simultaneously, the natural sympathies of Americans have been touched, resulting in a spontaneous upwelling of concern for the already starved, bombed, and brutalized Afghan people a concern that has already forced a change in rhetoric from the halls of power. Perhaps most important, people who are normally apolitical are paying attention to this issue.

Put together, it represents a mix with heady possibilities. The chance to build a genuine antiwar movement is greater than it has been in a very long time as long as, to take a leaf from George W. Bush, we do not tire and we do not falter.