Self-Rule Front: Graduate Students and Themes Democracy

self-rule front: The Socialist Network Inside DSA's struggle to move into the political mainstream The audience was mainly academics and graduate students, with a few journalists thrown in for good measure; the atmosphere decidedly more rarefied than rabble-rousing, according to Rabble. The two-day confab had opened with a screening of my new film, What Is Democracy a philosophical documentary that put one of the conference's main themes democracy understood as collective self-rule front and center. We had all made our way to the New School for the closing panel of Liberalism and Democracy Past, Present, Prospects, a conference organized by professors James Miller and Helena Rosenblatt, authors of two recently published books, Can Democracy Work and The Lost History of Liberalism, respectively. But where the film makes the case for democracy's deepening and expansion beyond electoral politics into areas such as workplaces, schools, the health sector, the economy, and the home, the majority of the event's presenters went on to emphasize the mandate to contain democracy's growth within the bounds circumscribed by the conference's other organizing idea, liberalism. Elegantly breaking down the distinction between the two intertwined terms, he paraphrased Alexis de Tocqueville a democratic people rule as God reigns in the universe. After the credits rolled, the esteemed historian Ira Katznelson took the podium. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.