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obituaries

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    5/8/2023

    Ronald Steel, Biographer of Walter Lippman and RFK, Dies at 92

    A prolific public intellectual, Steel wrote influential critiques of America's cold war foreign policy, calling military buildups wasteful and counterproductive. This led him to his masterwork, a biography of the influential newspaper columnist, a major shaper of 20th century American politics. 

  • 12/4/2022

    Farewell, Brother Staughton

    by Carl Mirra

    Staughton Lynd was always in the trenches fighting for a better world, and for that he remains a “admirable radical” and, for that matter, a beautiful person.

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    10/26/2022

    Mike Davis Could See the Future

    by Hua Hsu

    Often wrongly called a "prophet of doom," Mike Davis worked to show how digging up the past could point the way to a humane future. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    10/6/2022

    H. Chandler Davis Was a Moral Touchstone for Scholars on the Left

    by Alan Wald

    Blacklisted from American academe after defying a HUAC investigation at the University of Michigan, the mathematician (and the spouse of historian Natalie Zemon Davis) continued to teach and work as an activist in Canada until his recent death at 96. 

  • SOURCE: N+1
    9/9/2022

    Barbara Ehrenreich Challenged Readers to Examine Themselves

    by Gabriel Winant

    The journalist and social theorist wrote to force her readers to examine their own positions in society's hierarchies, not to encourage cynicism of futility, but to encourage them to see change as a long haul. 

  • SOURCE: The Editorial Board
    8/30/2022

    Gorbachev Became a Hero to the West Through Massive Failure

    by Erik Loomis

    Americans need to evaluate Gorbachev outside of their own nationalist perspective, despite feeling that the end of the Cold War was a good thing. The people he affected most see him as a failure.