Steven Mazie
Professor of Political Studies, BHSEC-Manhattan | Supreme Court Correspondent, The Economist
Steven V. Mazie is Professor of Political Studies at Bard High School Early College-Manhattan and Supreme Court Correspondent for The Economist. He holds an A.B. in Government from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan. Mazie’s recent publications include “Up from Colorblindness: Equality, Race and the Lessons of Ricci v. DeStefano” (2011), “Rawls on Wall Street” at the New York Times (2011),“Equality, Race and Gifted Education: An Egalitarian Critique of Admission to New York City’s Specialized High Schools” (2009) and Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State (2006). He has taught at the University of Michigan (1998), New York University (2001) and Bard College (2005, 2011).
Without dedicated devil’s advocates, groups are doomed to make poorly informed and sometimes dangerously bad decisions.
In late 2014, a court in Argentina took up the case of Sandra, a 29-year-old who has been held captive all her life. Born in Germany, taken from her parents […]
It’s that time of year again: the moment you can change your life for the better. But promising to ourselves that we’ll do something specific in the future is no […]
Last month at The New Republic, before that venerable American periodical sadly imploded, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote an article lamenting that the Supreme Court is increasingly a bastion of elite […]
With the second non-indictment of a white police officer who killed an unarmed black man in two weeks, the chant “no justice, no peace” continues to ring out in protests around the country. What does that phrase really mean — and how has it been used historically, in protest movements both peaceful and otherwise?
It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and soon enough Christmas trees, menorahs, Kwanzaa candelabras and nativity scenes will be dotting public buildings and squares in cities and towns across the United […]
Two years from now, Americans will be two months away from inaugurating a new president. Who will it be? A bunch of Republican and Democratic names (no, Hillary’s isn’t the […]
About three-quarters of Americans—74 percent, to be precise—believe in God. This 3-question quiz can help predict if you are likely to be among that majority.
Feeling blue this week? Chances are you’re a Democrat. I was so addled by the Republican sweep on Tuesday that I could not so much as glance at the front […]
Human irrationality is nothing new. But sometimes we get a fresh reminder that the human capacity for clear thinking is hampered by all kinds of stumbling blocks, and that our […]
Six years ago, in a mock presidential election held in my daughter’s pre-K class, Barack Obama was the clear winner. Of the 18 children, 16 voted for Obama. (“Superman” and […]
The trouble with teenagers is well-known to many parents: they are hormone-driven, thrill-seeking bundles of eros with a shocking inability to think through the consequences of their actions. Adolescents don’t […]
The average Facebook user now has about 338 friends, though the median number is quite a bit lower: 200. This means that while half of all Facebook users have 200 […]
Two decades after Antioch College, a small liberal arts college in Ohio, was ridiculed on “Saturday Night Live” for its policy of requiring students to obtain verbal consent from potential […]
“No one’s idea of excellence in conduct,” Mill wrote, “is that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one another.”
Kant’s proposal may seem implausible, but it’s good advice: give up the search.
The downsides to feeling other people’s pain.
In the writings of Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th-century political theorist, we find a keen analysis of the danger ISIS poses to civilized life in the 21st century.
The concept of an Internet “troll” is puzzling, if you think about it. No non-digital troll relishes anonymity or sneakily provokes or harrasses others with snarky comments. Trolls in literature […]
The human capacity for reason may be fragile and partial but it is not belied by studies in which large percentages of subjects answer a few tricky questions incorrectly.
Irony lurks in the surge of interest in cognitive psychologists’ research on human reasoning: we seem to be desperately interested in reading about how poorly we think.
It’s been a rather somber summer for anyone who reads the news, but in recent months few tunes have penetrated listeners’ hearts quite the way Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” has. The […]
This afternoon, at 1:57 pm, inmate Joseph Wood was injected with lethal drugs by the state of Arizona, a cocktail it had never tried out before today. Mr. Wood faced […]
“Slacktivism” online is exactly as deep as the paper-thin knowledge and commitment that fuels it.
We’ve come a long way from the days when women were relegated to the home and when Supreme Court decisions turned on the “obvious” observation that “woman’s physical structure and the performance […]
Are you a PATRIOT or an IGNORAMUS? Test your July 4th knowledge.
The marketplace of ideas would be a lot stodgier and less fluid—and more dangerously larded with lies—if it weren’t for humor. As Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert show night after […]
This post is not a scam, I assure you. You’ll find three (very different) paths to riches outlined below. But to appreciate my advice, I need to depress you a […]
“All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.” – W. H. Auden Auden, the great English poet who spent part of his twenties in the […]