Liberties Journal of Culture and Politics: Spring 2024

Liberties, a Journal of Culture and Politics, is essential reading for those engaged in the cultural and political issues of our time. Liberties, is a collection of the most significant writers today as well as launching the voices of tomorrow.

In this issue of Liberties: Cynthia Ozick on the power of Philip Roth; Linda Kinstler on the Need for Oblivion; Michael Ignatieff’s History of My Privileges; Timothy Noah offers a Prayer for the Administrative State; Sohrab Ahmari on the Poverty of Catholic Intellectual Life; Yaroslav Hrytsak on Ukraine and Liberal Nationalism; David Rieff on Populism, Peronism, and Madness in Argentina; Len Gutkin investigates if studying Humanities is Too Traumatic?; Elliot Ackerman in Mercenaries, provides a guide through history and current practice and risks of governments using private armies; the great pianist Alfred Brendel on his love of Mozart;  Arash Azizi on Persecution and the Art of Filmmaking in Iran; Michael Kimmage on Why Art Needs Impurity; Helen Vendler on Walt Whitman’s Poetic PTSD ; Celeste Marcus on Reason, Treason and Palestine; Leon Wieseltier on Giving and Forgiving; and, new poetry by Alice Gribbin and Camille Ralphs.

Published quarterly, Liberties: Culture & Politics features serious, independent, stylish, and controversial essays by significant writers and introduces the next generation of writers and poets to inspire and impact the intellectual and creative lifeblood of today’s culture and politics. Nobel Prize winners, leading op-ed writers, well-known non-fiction writers, rising talents, and poets from around the world are part of the Liberties series.

There’s a reason why engaged citizens, cultural warriors, political leaders, opinion makers, and activists from across the cultural and political spectrum read and cherish Liberties.

Cynthia Ozick is the author most recently of Antiquities and Other Stories.  

Linda Kinstler is the author of Come to This Court and Cry: How The Holocaust Ends. She was recently elected to the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.

Michael Ignatieff is the author, among many books, of On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times. 

Timothy Noah’s writes a column for The New Republic is the author of The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Criss and What We Can Do About It. 

Sohrab Ahmari is a founding editor of Compact and the author most recently of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What to do About It.

Camille Ralphs is an editor at the Times Literary Supplement. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous magazines, including the New York Review of Books, Poetry Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Yaroslav Hrytsak is a professor of history at Ukrainian Catholic University and the author of Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation.

David Rieff's Desire and Fate, a collection of his essays, will appear this year. 

Len Gutkin is an editor at the Chronicle for Higher Education.

Elliot Ackerman is the author of Halcyon, a novel, and 2054, written with Admiral James Stavridis, which will be published this year. 

Alfred Brendel, the pianist, is the author most recently of The Lady from Arezzo: My Musical Life and Other Matters. 

Arash Azizi’s book What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom was published this year.

Michael Kimmage's new book, Collision: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and The New Global Instability, has just been published. 

Alice Gribbin is completing her first book of poems.

Helen Vendler  is the A Kingsley Porter University Professor Emerita at Harvard University.

Celeste Marcus is the managing editor of Liberties. 

Leon Wieseltier is the editor of Liberties.