JEFFERSON COWIE
Historian
Essays and Articles
"Defend Liberalism? Let's Fight for Democracy First" The New Republic. Part of a forum on the 110th anniversary of this classic journal of opinion
NYT: "Martin Luther King Jr.'s High-Stakes Gamble in Birmingham" a review of Paul Kix, You Have To Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live.
"The Rebuilt Heart of Jason Isbell." This is a long form, interview/profile of the Nashville singer songwriter extraordinaire for NPR Music.
"Democracy Over Freedom" Boston Review. This is part of a symposium on freedom, in which I argue that specific concerns about democracy are more important than vague concerns about freedom.
"Is Freedom White?" encapsulates some of the core arguments of the new book. It links the legacy of slavery to the development of freedom, and then explores how a racialized anti-statist politics develops to defend the freedom to dominate others from incursions of federal power.
"The ‘Hard Hat Riot’ Was a Preview of Today’s Political Divisions,"
New York Times, 11 May 2020. Mayor Lindsay saw a country “virtually on the edge of a spiritual — and perhaps even a physical — breakdown.”
"A Unity Slate to Save the Democrats--and the Republic" The Hill in December 2019. An op-ed with political scientist Mike Albertus.
"Reclaiming Patriotism for the Left," New York Times, 21 August
2018. An essay on one of the most important failures of political messaging.
This new volume, Anti-democracy in America, is a collection of short pieces by an amazing array of scholars (from Wendy Brown to Richard Sennet to Saskia Sassen to William Julius Wilson to, well, me). My piece is called "The Right Kind of Citizenship," and explores the need for a kind of civic national vision for progressive thinkers and politics.
"Red History, Blue Mood: Labor History and Solidarity in an Age of Fragmentation," came out in LABOR: Working Class Studies of the Americas. I wrote is both as a retrospective on the fortieth anniversary of the University of Illinois working-class history book series as well as broad reflection on the state of labor history and its politics since the 1970s.
This volume came out on (and sort of for) Springsteen's 70th birthday. Joel Dinerstein (Tulane) and I co-wrote a piece titled "The Role of the Popular Artist in a Democratic Society." The book is full of interesting writers and top drawer critics. It's called Long Walk Home.
"How Labor Scholars Missed the Trump Revolt," Chronicle of Higher Education,1 September 2017. A meditation on the training of labor historians alongside some autobiography.