Recent Public Affairs Commentary

2026

May

Donald Trump’s definition of “beauty”, The New Statesman, 27 May 2026

Orbán’s Fall, London Review of Books, 7 May 2026

A Hungarian Playbook for Defeating Populists?, Project Syndicate, 4 May 2026

April

Who Lost America’s Universities?, Project Syndicate, 30 April 2026

A ballroom bunker is a perfect symbol for Trump 2.0, The Guardian, 30 April 2026

A New Type of Democratic Transition, Project Syndicate, 10 April 2026

At a Budapest Scruton Café, London Review of Books, 7 April 2026

Two Trump moves last week could kill off future accountability for his deeds, The Guardian, 7 April 2026

March

Pete Hegseth is promoting a nihilist cult of death, The Guardian, 23 March 2026

The Vulnerability of Trump’s Personality Cult, Project Syndicate, 17 March 2026

What Jürgen Habermas leaves behind, The New Statesman, 16 March 2026

Christian Democracy Is Facing Regime Change, Foreign Policy, 13 March 2026

When it comes to ending elite impunity, the US could learn from the UK, The Guardian, 3 March 2026

February

Beware of ‘anti-woke’ liberals: they attacked the left and helped Trump win, The Guardian, 3 February 2026

January

The High Cost of Trump’s Amateur Diplomats, Project Syndicate, 12 January 2026

A congresswoman wants to impeach Kristi Noem. She’s right to do so, The Guardian, 11 January 2026

The Trump doctrine exposes the US as a mafia state, The Guardian, 7 January 2026

2025

December

Caesar wept, London Review of Books, 4 December 2025

November

What Rosa Parks can teach us about resistance today, The Guardian, 29 November 2025

Trump is turning the US military into a political prop, The Guardian, 17 November 2025

October

Trump’s megalomaniac White House project fits a global trend among far-right populists, The Guardian, 26 October 2025

September

US universities must reject Trump’s ‘compact’. It is full of traps, The Guardian, 7 October 2025

How the Democrats Can “Win” the US Government Shutdown, Project Syndicate, 6 October 2025

Violence As Policy in Trump’s America, Project Syndicate, 12 September 2025

August

Right-Wing Culture Warfare Comes to Germany, Project Syndicate, 13 August 2025

July

Why Trump’s political playbook is failing in the Epstein case, The Guardian, 24 July 2025

America’s famed ‘checks-and-balances’ governance system is failing, The Guardian, 16 July 2025

Trump Is Trying to Build a Far-Right International, Project Syndicate, 15 July 2025

June

How a Nazi Jurist Captured Imaginations on the U.S. Left and Right, Foreign Policy, 30 June 2025

Do protesters have a right to wear masks? Yes – despite Trump’s double standard, The Guardian, 11 June 2025

Will the Trump-Musk rift really change anything?, The Guardian, 9 June 2025

Trump's Corruption Is in a League of Its Own, Project Syndicate, 2 June 2025

May

Trump’s revenge spree on Harvard echoes well beyond education, The Guardian, 26 May 2025

On the Educational Case for Encampments, London Review of Books, 9 May 2025

April

On Francis, Vance, Rory Stewart, St. Augustine, Post-Liberalism, and Christian Democracy, The Guardian, 23 April 2025

What, if anything, makes Protests effective?, The Guardian, 22 April 2025

On Universities Resisting the Trump Administration, The Guardian, 18 April 2025

On the Le Pen verdict, Project Syndicate, April 2025

How Trump's Tariffs Fit the Autocrat's Playbook, The New Yorker, 11 April 2025

March

On defending academic freedom in the US, The Guardian, 18 March 2025

"No one is further right than me" (On Italy under Meloni), London Review of Books, March 2025

On the Dangers of Trump Concentrating Power -- and the Judges Who Might Support a Unitary Executive, The Guardian, 17 March 2025

"America's Grotesquely Mediocre Emperor" (On analogizing Trumpism and Caesarism/Bonapartism), Project Syndicate, March 2025

On Hypocrisy (and Zelenskyy and Trump), The Guardian, 4 March 2025

February

"Is Protest Dead?", Foreign Policy, February 2025

A Strategy for Pushing Back against Trump/Musk, The Guardian, 21 February 2025

"Normalizing the Normalization of the Far Right", Project Syndicate, February 2025

On Trump, Autocracy, and Education, The Guardian, 6 February 2025

January

Confronting the Pandemic's Toxic Political Legacy, Project Syndicate, January 2025

On Oligarchy, The Guardian, 22 January 2025

2024

December

Jimmy Carter's life after the presidency set a bar that few others have reached, The Guardian, 30 December 2024

Destruction Through Inclusion, The New York Review of Books, 19 December 2024

September

The US right keeps accusing Democrats of ‘communism’. What does that even mean?, The Guardian, 5 September 2024

August

Germany’s hard-right architecture, New Statesman, 31 August 2024

Make Europe Great Again, The New York Review, 20 August 2024

JD Vance is the baby of big tech and big oil. He’s no ‘working-class populist, The Guardian, 1 August 2024

July

Trump is an authoritarian who must not win. Saying that is not inciting violence, The Guardian, 16 July 2024

JD Vance is a rightwing troll disguised as a populist. He could be our next vice-president, The Guardian, 9 July 2024

Why Macronism Failed, Project Syndicate, 1 July 2024 

June

The Enduring Influence of Europe's Far Right, Project Syndicate, 7 June 2024 

May

Student emcampments have the potential to strengthen US democracy, The Guardian, 4 May 2024

Is 'the Media' Really Under Attack?, Foreignpolicy.com, 3 May 2024

April

A Tale of Two Megalopolises, Foreignpolicy.com, 20 April 2024

On the square, Sage Journals, 8 April 2024 

March

The Zombification of Political Parties, Project Syndicate, 15 March 2024 

Trump’s love for Viktor Orbán hints at what another Trump term will look like, The Guardian, 12 March 2024

February

Protest Problems, London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No.3, 8 February 2024

The Case for Banning Anti-Democratic Candidates, Project Syndicate, 1 February 2024 

January

Charismatic leaders plus hollowed-out parties are a bad recipe for democracyFinancial Times, 20 January 2024

Liberalism's Forever CrisisProject Syndicate, 5 January 2024

The Myth of Social Media and Populism, Foreignpolicy.com, 3 January 2024

2023

December

Is barring Trump from office undemocratic? Let’s assess point by point, The Guardian, 21 December 2023

Is Europe Broken?, Project Syndicate, 20 December 2023

When Election Losers Pretend to Be Winners, Project Syndicate, 13 December 2023 

A second Trump term will be far more autocratic than the first. He’s telling us, The Guardian, 4 December 2023

November

Poland after PiS, London Review of Books, Vol. 45 No.22, 16 November 2023

October

How the European Project Fell Apart, Foreignpolicy.com, 29 October 2023

Mainstreaming the Far Right, Project Syndicate, 20 October 2023

The Great Turn Inward, Foreignpolicy.com, 1 October 2023

September

Democracies Are Not Backsliding, Project Syndicate, 27 September 2023

"It's elites who turn against democracy, not the people" Talk Europe!, YouTube.com, 27 September 2023

June

Opinion: How weakened local journalism created space for the culture wars, Los Angeles Times, 18 June 2023

Trump, Johnson and the real problem with populism, Financial Times, 17 June 2023

May

Populist Architecture Is a Problem That Will Outlive Populists, Foreign Policy.com, 20 May 2023

2021

Biden is Selling Democracy Short, New York Times, 9 December 2021

Can the Center Hold Any Meaning?, Project Syndicate, November 2021

Prussian Disneyland, London Review of Books, 9 September 2021