Dissent

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Dissent Magazine is a quarterly magazine of politics and culture edited by Michael Kazin and Michael Walzer. A magazine of the left, Dissent is also one of independent minds and strong opinions. "A pillar of leftist intellectual provocation," writes the New York Times, Dissent is "devoted to slaying orthodoxies on the right and on the left." Adds historian John Patrick Diggins, "Dissent is kind of an anomaly...a magazine that's all heart and good hope."[1]

History

Founded in 1954 by a group of "independent-minded radicals", the magazine set out to "dissent from the bleak atmosphere of conformism that pervades the political and intellectual life of the United States ...The accent of Dissent will be radical. Its tradition will be the tradition of democratic socialism." Inspired by their opposition to both McCarthyism and communism, its early editors "wanted to speak for the spirit of democratic utopianism that runs like a bright thread through America's intellectual life."

Quickly establishing itself as one of America's leading intellectual journals, it published articles by Hannah Arendt, Erich Fromm, Paul Goodman, Günter Grass, Michael Harrington, Dwight MacDonald, C. Wright Mills, Czeslaw Milosz, Norman Mailer, Amos Oz, Richard Rorty, Ignazio Silone, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cornel West, Ellen Willis, Richard Wright, and many other prominent writers.

Edited by Irving Howe until his death in 1993, the magazine has continued to uphold the banner of critical independence he set forth in his 1954 Partisan Review essay, "This Age of Conformity": "The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have."[2]

Personnel

1954 founding personnel

Dissent Magazine was founded in 1954. Early personnel included[3];

Editorial Board:

1954 Contributing Editors:

'Rockville Resistance'

From Stephen Melkisethian on Flickr:[4]

Rockville Maryland, the evening of July 10, 2017. A packed house of over 150 local activists and supporters gathered at Johns Hopkins Gilchrist Hall Auditorium for a panel symposium titled "The For-Profit Presidency: Ethical Issues In The Trump Administration And What We Can Do About Them." The ethics outrages of the Trump regime are numerous, egregious and well known to all, even Republicans. The solutions proposed involve using every one of the institutions of our Democracy from the highest courts to your local street protest. Inside/Outside, long game. The event was organized by the social justice group Rockville Resistance that sprung up, like so many others, in the wake of the election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States Of America. The distinguished panel included Georgetown history professor and Dissent magazine editor Michael Kazin, Public Citizen Director Robert Weissman, Executive Branch Ethics Counsel and CREW* stalwart Virginia Cantor and Stephen Spaulding from the venerable good government advocacy group Common Cause. Our House Representative Jamie Raskin cancelled due to illness and was backed up very ably by Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. Hats off to all at Rockville Resistance for staging this important event. We fight on.

2009 Masthead

The 2009 Dissent Magazine masthead[5] included;

Editorial board:

Affliliations

Democratic Socialists of America

On June 13, 2002 Boston Democratic Socialists of America presented its 25th Annual Debs–Thomas–Bernstein Awards to "leaders who fight for democracy, here at home and around the world". State Representatives Pat Jehlen and Anne Paulsen, Co-Chairs of the Progressive Legislators Group received the award. Ellen Feingold, the earliest known recipient (1979) spoke on the history of the organization. David Knuttunen and Susan Davidoff were benefactors of the reception. Dissent was a patron of the reception.[6]

Writers

1990 "European Revolutions" issue

Special issue of Dissent on The European Revolutions with contributions by Daniel Bell, James Tobin, Jerzy Surdykowski, Mitchell Cohen, Bogdan Denitch, Robert Dahl, Vladimir Tismaneanu, Paul Joseph, Gordon Haskell, Josephine Woll, Lewis Coser.[7]

1994 40th Anniversary issue

Joanne Barkan, Paul Berman, Lewis Coser, Todd Gitlin, Martin Kilson, Ann Snitow, Cornel West, Sean Wilentz, Marshall Berman, Bogdan Denitch, Jonathan Frankel, Erazim Kohak, Tadeusz Kowalik, Tom Nairn, Anna Coote, David Brody, Rashi Fein, Agnes Heller, Paul Hirst, and Deborah Meier.[8]

Winter 1995

Summer 1995

References

  1. ↑ http://www.dissentmagazine.org/display.php?id=about About Dissent, Dissent website, accessed may 18, 2010
  2. ↑ http://www.dissentmagazine.org/display.php?id=about About Dissent, Dissent website, accessed may 18, 2010
  3. ↑ http://dissentmagazine.org/files/winter1954.pdf
  4. ↑ 7/10/2017 Rockville Resistance 6 (Accessed April 7, 2023)
  5. ↑ http://www.dissentmagazine.org/display.php?id=masthead
  6. ↑ The Yankee Radical, Sep./Oct. 2002
  7. ↑ DEMOCRATIC LEFT MARCH- APRIL 1990, page 13
  8. ↑ Dem. Left, Nov./Dec. 1993, page 8
  9. ↑ Dem. Left Jan./Feb. 1995, page 21
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