A Facebook post by Lisa Duggan reminds me of the power of Michael Rogin’s book The Intellectuals and McCarthy. Though it’s less famous and influential than Rogin’s later book Ronald Reagan, The Movie, The Intellectuals and McCarthy was a formative text in my own development. It came at a critical moment in my thinking—either the year before I went to graduate school or in my first year of graduate school—and permanently left its mark. In his book on McCarthy, Rogin took aim at historians like Richard Hofstadter and social theorists like Daniel Bell who had argued that McCarthyism was essentially a form of irrational mass politics, a midcentury American populism that, though right-wing, was the inheritor of left-wing movements like the Populists or Young Bob LaFollette’s movement in the 1920s […]

As God is my witness, I swear that before I die I will teach an Intro to American Government course in which the only text is Kitty Kelly’s biography of Nancy Reagan (an unheralded masterpiece, in my opinion). At some point in the semester, we’ll screen this documentary about Joan Rivers. And at the end of the semester, we’ll offer a libation to Michael Rogin.  

For political theorists like me, Jack Schaar is one of the vital presences of the last half-century. He and his wife Hanna Pitkin—along with Sheldon Wolin, Norman Jacobson, and Michael Rogin—helped define the “Berkeley School” of political theory, which not only introduced generations of students to the western canon but also made it relevant to contemporary politics. Though I seem to know more people than I count—including my wife—who were touched by his teaching and writing, it’s a shame still more don’t know about Schaar and his work. Schaar recently died. Joshua Miller, a political theorist at Lafayette College, wrote this brief obituary, which he has not been able to place in the press. I am reprinting it here with […]

In my first year of grad school, I read Naming Names, Victor Navasky’s study of the blacklist in Hollywood. That, and Michael Rogin’s The Intellectuals and McCarthy, made me a permanent junkie for all things McCarthy. The blacklist was a shameful episode in American history, but it had its bright spots.  One of them was Kirk Douglas, who helped break it by insisting that the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo receive the screenwriting credit for Spartacus.  The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is now honoring the 94-year-old Douglas with its Freedom of Expression Award. Douglas discusses his experiences with Spartacus—as well as being Jewish in Hollywood—here.  Best quote from Douglas: “I always fasted on Yom Kippur. I still worked on the movie […]