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Democracy Seminar

A "worldwide committee of democratic correspondence," founded in 1984 at the New School for Social Research

09/17/2025

Read new contributions to the our Forum, 'Small Acts of Democratic Resistance:'

'Resisting in Washington DC: For Our Unhoused Neighbors' and '“Good Trouble:” Resisting in Florida' are now on DS!

Read at LINK in BIO!

Photo: "Photo” “Michelle Obama visits Miriam’s Kitchen” Joyce Boghosian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons"

09/10/2025

Will Trump Betray Taiwan? Time to Get Serious About Defending Democracy in the Indo-Pacific - new piece by Stephen J. Hartnett

"While Beijing seems blind to the fact that its threats only induce anger in Taiwan, Trump’s White House is equally incompetent in its treatment of Taiwan."

Read the full piece here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/will-trump-betray-taiwan-time-to-get-serious-about-defending-democracy-in-the-indo-pacific/

Photo: “From 12:00 (Beijing Time) August 4 to 12:00 (Beijing Time) August 7, 2022, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will conduct important military exercises and training activities including live-fire drills in these maritime areas and their air space bounded by lines joining. Date: 3 August 2022 Source: Data:PLA-Taiwan-202208.map.” OpenStreetMap contributors and Wikimedia maps contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PLA-Taiwan-202208.map.png

The New School for Social Research

09/06/2025

New from our Forum: "Fatigue-Resistant Resistance" by Dinah Ryan.

"Lies, the accommodation of lies, and bellicosity flood each day. Consider every instance of “sane-washing,” every attempt to explain the Trump administration’s lies and activities as “normal” or “policy-driven,” every excuse, submission, or instance of silence by an elected official, law firm, business leader, or university president, and every hysterical but action-empty fundraising text or email from the Democratic Party. These looping experiences leave the individual citizen feeling defeated, as if they can do nothing except sink into a helpless, voiceless surrender to an implacable post-totalitarian state."

Read the full piece here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/fatigue-resistant-resistance/

Check out our new forum here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/forum/

Photo: ‘Masa tacerii’ (Table of Silence, Targiu Jiu, Romania), by Danboia, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The New School for Social Research

05/29/2025

From our new FORUM: Small Acts of Democratic Resistance

A Nine Year Old’s Democratic Resistance: Korry Skipper – Miller at the Attorneys General’s Rule of Law Road Show
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Small Acts of Legal Resistance
By Jeffrey C. Isaac

Digital Christian “Small Acts of Resistance”
By Marci Shore

Pressure and Protest
By Micah L. Sifry

Read the contributions al LINK IN BIO!

Photo: Photo: Holger.Ellgaard, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protest_skulptur_2011b.jpg

05/28/2025

New FOUM: Small Acts of Democratic Resistance

We relaunched the Democracy Seminar back in 2018 as a “worldwide committee of democratic correspondence” in the hope that “democrats of the world can learn from each other as we oppose the dark forces of our times.” Unfortunately, we still have much to learn and much work to do in response to the attacks on democracy. And we have decided that one thing we can do is to share stories of the small acts of resistance that often go unnoticed. For it is through the accumulation of such acts that citizens can come together to defend themselves and thus to defend democracy. For, as Vaclav Havel once famously said, “even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”

Read the first contributions here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/forum/

03/04/2025

"Trump the brother of Putin and Orban has today brought us to an abyss. And as a result, you and yours are literally in peril, and your Eastern Europe neighbors–places where many friends live–are shaken."

Read 'Letter to a Ukrainian Friend' By Jeffrey C. Isaac on DS: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/letter-to-a-ukrainian-friend/

Photo: “President Trump clashes with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Meeting in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, 2025.” Source: The White House. From Wikimedia Commons.

12/28/2024

New Forum on Democracy Seminar, 'South Korean Students Respond to the Crisis of Their Democracy'

"The current situation in Korea is not a passing, unexpected, and temporal event. It is the continuation of the long history of state violence that has suppressed democracy and trampled on the rights of minorities. [...] But, as the history of oppression repeats itself, so does the history of resistance. Innumerable numbers of citizens including women, men, teenagers, qu**rs, people with disabilities, and laborers are calling for the impeachment of the president in South Korea."

Read the contributions, with an introduction by Jeff Isaac, here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/crisis-of-democracy-in-south-korea-december-2024/

Photo: Speaker of the National Assembly of South Korea signing resolution approving the Impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol,’ 14 December 2024. 대한민국 국회, KOGL Type 1 , via Wikimedia Commons.

12/20/2024

Read the latest piece, 'Point of No Return: Georgia’s Democratic Uprising' by Malkhaz Toria here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/point-of-no-return-georgias-democratic-uprising/

"A victorious Georgian resistance would serve as a beacon of hope for societies worldwide battling for democracy in the shadow of authoritarian power."

📸 Photo credit: Badri Okujava

11/18/2024

New in our 2024 Election Gazette: 'Why We Should Be Alarmed,' by Jeffrey Tulis.

"The election of 2024 was a regime demise election — the moment when the frailties of constitutional democracy in the United States are laid bare and exposed so clearly that the potential death of the republic comes into view."

Read the entire piece here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/why-we-should-be-alarmed/

Photo: “Supporters of former President of the United States Donald Trump at an Arizona for Trump rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona.,” Aug. 2024. Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

11/11/2024

'The Morning After' By Marci Shore - read the full piece in our 2024 Election Gazette: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/the-morning-after/.

"I had the overwhelming feeling that we Americans were like the passengers on the Titanic insisting, “Our ship can’t sink!” As a historian, I never know what will happen. What I know rather–what the past does give us a sense of–is what can happen. And I knew then–as I do now–that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink."

Photo: “Donald Trump announced the 2020 re-election campaign in Orlando, Florida, 18 June 2019.” Credit: Dan Scavino, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

11/06/2024

From our Election Gazette 2024: "Uncanny Parallels between Erdoğan and Trump"

"A second Trump administration could mirror Turkey’s recent history in alarming ways, particularly in the erosion of democratic norms and the consolidation of executive power."

Read the full article here: https://democracyseminar.newschool.org/essays/uncanny-parallels-between-erdogan-and-trump/.

Photo: “President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose for a photo with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Mrs. Emine Erdogan Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019, at the South Portico of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)” – The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

10/27/2024

Please join Democracy Seminar members from around the world as they discuss the upcoming U.S. election as seen from their respective localities, countries, and regions.
Presented by the Democracy Seminar & the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies () at The New School for Social Research (NSSR).

Register here: https://event.newschool.edu/theuselectionsfromabroad

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