Dissent and the Next Left

When you’re celebrating your sixtieth birthday, there is a natural impulse to gaze back fondly at what you did well. For a magazine that has always been described as “little,” Dissent has aspired to contain multitudes. In our pages (and, more recently, on our website), editors and contributors have argued with insight and authority about every major issue in American and world politics—from the Cold War and the rise of the black freedom movement to the invasion of Iraq and the battle over same-sex marriage. They have also analyzed the interweaving of culture and power in dozens of pieces about education in and out of school, the life of cities, novels, and films. We have published eloquent provocations about these and a myriad of other matters by some of the leading intellectuals of the era that began when the bloodiest war in history ended.

Forgive you.