THE RESUMPTION of settlement construction last Monday has threatened to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to an end. Gadi Taub writes that settlers must be opposed not only because they preclude Palestinian self-determination, but because of the threat they pose to Israel. "If they have their way, Zionism's great achievement, one place under the sun where the Jews are not a minority, would be lost." (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/2007).

TOO MANY students now believe that a middle-class life is impossible without a bachelor's degree. Yet the "college for all" philosophy is misguided, writes Ilana Garon: "[N]ot only does it fail to address the need for a workforce with specialized technical skills, but it has spawned a steep decline of vocational programs at the high school level, which should ideally be the training ground for work in twenty-first-century industries." (Photo: Mouleesha/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

THE COMING Insurrection attempted to revive the political pamphlet at a moment when the Left could have benefited from a renewed political orientation. But, as Robert Zwarg writes, the book can only offer "politics reduced to empty gestures of militancy....The Coming Insurrection is just a symptom of...crisis, rather than its remedy." (Photo: Francois Schnell/2005)

From the Fall 2010 issue of Dissent: Christopher Hitchens is a man without "lasting works of reportage, criticism, philosophy, or, dare I say it, literature," writes Eric Alterman. How, then, has he achieved celebrity status among English-speaking belletrists? There is at least one important reason: "Hitchens's genius undoubtedly lies in the art of the argument." (Photo: Stepher/2009/Wikimedia Commons)

WHEN FEISAL Mohamed hears President Obama called a "Muslim socialist," he doesn't feel fear, but "what you might call an audacious hope." "[M]y heart races with the glimpse of a glorious possibility. It is too satisfying an idea to abandon and so I refuse to do so, especially on al'Eid, the last day of Ramadan. A beer-drinking apostate Muslim like me-well, that's just really much too good a prospect to let go of." (Photo: Chuck Kennedy/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

Conor Williams defends the progressive tradition against its contemporary detractors: "[P]rogressives are waiting for their more organized opponents to define the debate, its terms, and their role in it. They...have been reduced to dismissing their opponents as unfair, as unenlightened, as racists, or as politically incorrect. This needn't happen." (Photo: Wikimedia/Eva Watson Schütze/1902)

Todd Gitlin on the "Ground Zero Mosque": "Let's be plain: the atmosphere has been overheated by one, and one only, source of cultural climate change. The inflammatory polluters are Manicheans who have found in Islam the (im)moral equivalent of Communism, and who, like McCarthyites of yore, are not into fine distinctions."

A BRIDGE over the Ibar River "both spans and symbolizes the divide" between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs in the city of Mitrovica, Gabriel O'Malley reports. "Had walls and barbed wire blocked access, the vision would have been stark, but here, with nothing but an open road before me, it was clear that something even more powerful than con- crete or steel was working to keep the bridge empty: fear." (Photo: Vedat Xhymshiti, 2010)

"THE HUMANITIES are designed to propagate the principles of the tolerant generalist," writes Akiva Gottlieb, "[but] cultural conservatives contend that the liberal arts nurture a cabal of conflict-averse weaklings, whose self-satisfied enlightenment will inevitably find itself mugged by various realities. Yet it might be worthwhile to consider how often the best novels--themselves acts of imaginative empathy--replicate this process." J-PG /2008 / Wikimedia Commons

THE EUROPEAN Left has been wringing its hands over recent electoral failures. Such "worry and self-pity" has obscured the similarly worrying crisis facing Europe's conservatives, writes Yascha Mounk. "The ideological disorientation of the Right--coming as it does on top of the...ideological disorientation of the Left--suggests that all parts of Europe's political spectrum are unsure how to rescue what they value." Berlusconi, Cameron, Merkeln, and Sarkozy (Wikimedia Commons)

WHILE MANY Republicans decry the level of federal spending, state governments run by the GOP have already begun to implement drastic budget cuts. Asks Daniel Denvir: "[Will] voters like Republican political rhetoric as much once they've experienced it as policy that affects their lives?" NJ Governor Chris Christie (Walter Burns / 2007 / Wikimedia)

HISTORIAN AND social democratic lodestar Tony Judt died on Friday, August 6. As David A. Bell writes, Judt composed works "with brio, eloquence, and...real arguments....[His] death leaves all serious readers of history terribly impoverished."

INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS are rising rapidly as a share of GDP at the same time that governments are being told that they have to cut spending," writes Fred Block. But countries need such investments now more than ever: "[We] are transitioning into an era...when the future of the global economy depends on sustaining significantly higher levels of infrastructure spending." Bay Bridge (Daniel Schwen / 2006 / Wikimedia Commons)

"I'VE WALKED and bicycled through the narrow streets that house migrant workers and used to marvel at how safe and secure I felt...Why are the shanty towns of migrant workers in China [so] safe? Sociologists have spilled lots of ink trying to answer the question...But now I realize that we've been asking the wrong question. In China, the criminals live inside the walls." Clark Gregor / 2007 / Wikimedia Commons

IN HIS June web article in Dissent, Nelson Lichtenstein argued that "when a Democratic administration is in power, the most potent and efficacious strategy for labor and its leadership is to be-and be seen as-a troublesome, even unreliable ally." Labor historian Melvyn Dubofsky contests that claim, and Lichtenstein replies. Alfred T. Palmer / Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons

A RECENT list of failed states ranked Pakistan as tenth closest to collapse. Saskia Sassen and Razi Ahmed dispute Pakistan's placement on the list, and the Failed States Index itself: "Designating Pakistan a failed state renders invisible the multiple and diverse democratizing forces that have evolved there...They should not be written out of history by indexes that pivot solely on the character of the state." Gilgit, Pakistan (Waqas Usman / 2002 / Wikimedia Commons)

THE COMMISSION on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has been charged with taking on the federal budget deficit, even as the economy continues to suffer. Writes Jeff Faux, "If the Commission can rise above its origins as a sop to the deficit hysteria now gripping Washington," it could show how "the consistent and obsessive focus on the long-term fiscal imbalance has dangerously distorted the debate over the country's immediate economic needs." Photo: President Obama speaking at a town hall on economic recovery (White House/2009)

EUGENE GOODHEART takes on Obama's critics on the Left: "The liberal base seems incapable of imagining how radical Obama is being made to seem to those on the other side of the political spectrum...His tone of sweet reasoning, of temporizing and compromise, may be a necessity...Liberal disenchantment with Obama and the apathy that accompanies it only helps the Republicans and does a disservice to its own cause." Photo: Barack Obama (Pete Souza / White House / 2009).

THE NEW Sanctuary Movement, an immigrant-rights organization, faces many challenges as it "seeks to confront globalized economic injustices on a frequently fragmented local front." But as Daniel Schwartz reports, the NSM has begun to implement a strategy its predecessor successfully used decades ago: allowing immigrants to tell their own stories. Photo: New Sanctuary Movement Rally (Daniel Schwartz).

THE 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Sudan's civil war rested on the promise of a self-determination referendum for the south. Now, as Eric Reeves writes, the Sudanese government has signaled that it will abort the January 2011 referendum. Unless pressure is put on Khartoum to allow the vote, "We will witness a truly national civil war, with unfathomable human suffering and destruction." Photo: Refinery at Port Sudan (Wikimedia Commons/Ryj).