J. Hoberman Framing Babyn Yar Sergei Loznitsa’s documentaries, sourced from archival propaganda, have drawn criticism for what they do not show. March 29, 2022
David S. Reynolds In the Shadow of Slavery Merging memoir, travelogue, and history, Clint Smith evokes the horrors of slavery. February 24, 2022 issue
Kwame Anthony Appiah Liberation Psychology How Frantz Fanon came to view violence as therapy. February 24, 2022 issue
photographs by Louis Witter Exodus from Ukraine Scenes at the Polish border, which is seeing part of the largest, most sudden displacement of population since the period after World War II. March 5, 2022
Russian Congress of Intellectuals An Open Letter to the Russian Leadership Our position is simple: Russia does not need a war with Ukraine and the West. Such a war is devoid of legitimacy and has no moral basis. February 4, 2022
Tim Judah Kyiv Under Siege As I write, the siren begins to sound again and the app on my phone sends me a red alert. March 3, 2022
Gal Beckerman Samizdat and the Moral Collapse of the USSR For all its sacrifices, Natalya Gorbanevskaya’s life is emblematic of what a network of poets, thinkers, and activists achieved by daring to defy a totalitarian state. February 13, 2022
Jill Filipovic, an interview with Rebecca Gomperts Choice by Mail With Roe v. Wade under threat, abortion rights in the US are facing their greatest challenge yet. Enter the Dutch doctor who has opened a new front with safe medication on demand. January 11, 2022
Vicente L. Rafael The Return of the Marcoses The level of support in the Philippines for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. cannot be explained by social media disinformation or sheer coercion alone. July 21, 2022
Ursula Lindsey A Painful In-Betweenness Syrian novelists attempt to balance the obligation to not let the world forget what happened in their country with their doubts that telling stories of the war will make a difference to its victims. July 21, 2022 issue
Annie Sparrow Health Care Under Fire The fight to protect medical and humanitarian workers is not new, but we are running out of time before it becomes futile. June 23, 2022 issue
Scott W. Stern Dire Straits Toxic Debt, Josiah Rector’s history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water, argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe. June 23, 2022 issue
Paisley Currah What Sex Does For transgender people in the United States, the sheer number of institutions with discrete authority to define sex ensnares us in Kafkaesque contradictions. May 27, 2022
Rahmane Idrissa Potent Policies of Empire The contest in Mali between the West and Russia is not a front in a new cold war but rather part of a scramble for Africa’s resources. May 25, 2022
Melissa Gira Grant Policing Womanhood For groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the erosion of abortion rights and trans rights are complementary pathways to building a Christian nation. May 15, 2022
Elizabeth A. Reese Unsteady Ground Native people have known for a long time that in this country, rights—whether to remain, to pray, to vote, or even to live—are impermanent and fickle things, subject to revision by those in power. May 14, 2022
Catherine Coleman Flowers Our Lives in Their Hands If state governments truly cared about the lives of poor women or our children, they wouldn’t poison our water and pollute our air. They can’t be trusted with our bodies. May 13, 2022
Sherrilyn Ifill Stealing the Crown Jewels Justice Alito purports to place the future of abortion in the hands of women voters—despite abetting the disenfranchisement of Black and Latina women. May 12, 2022