On 7 May 2018, Kim Kardashian made her annual appearance at the Met Gala. During the evening she posed for a photograph next to one of the museum’s newest acquisitions, a gold Egyptian coffin dated to the 1st century BC. …
The grizzly truth about the West
The past month of American politics have been utter chaos. Former president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt by a matter of millimetres. Joe Biden went to Las Vegas, reportedly got Covid, and disappeared completely from public view. A day …
The barbarians are laughing at us
There are many contenders to be the world’s predominant civilisation in the remainder of the 21st century. In Moscow in March, a group of top clergy and pious entrepreneurs from the Kremlin’s inner circle lauded their country’s role as creators …
Violence stalks Gaza through history
Where does the story of Gaza begin? In this region, history — or histories, given that here there is no such thing as a singular history — is serially and violently contested. “Anyone who tells a story knows that most …
George Osborne’s sordid Elgin plan
From the very beginning, Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon’s statues and friezes caused something of a discursive British civil war. On one side were humanists, like Lord Byron; on the other were Empire apologists, who defend Elgin’s actions and support …
How universities entered Cloud Cuckoo Land
What explains the recent, alarmingly broad and rapid capture of cultural, political, and economic institutions by neo-Marxist identity politics and liberation ideologies? Writing in Tablet, Russell Jacoby argues that the end of the rapid expansion of universities in the late …