James T. Kloppenberg

Oct 23, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | James T. Kloppenberg |Charles McNamara |Stephen Pope |Regina Munch

Commonweal celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1974. Across the country, but perhaps especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, the anger, exuberance, and idealism of the sixties were souring into disillusionment and disaffiliation. That year, I began graduate studies in history and humanities at Stanford. As a student of American intellectual history rummaging around in little magazines such as the Nation, the New Republic, and Dissent, I stumbled across Commonweal.

May 31, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Miles Doyle |James T. Kloppenberg |John Slattery |Karen Kilby

U.S. President Joe Biden hosts debt limit talks with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington May 22, 2023 (OSV News photo/Leah Millis, Reuters). In 2011, the last time the country faced a debt-ceiling showdown, Republican lawmakers took away an important lesson: economic extortion and political brinkmanship are good politics.

May 31, 2023 | commonwealmagazine.org | Isabella Simon |James T. Kloppenberg |John Slattery |Karen Kilby

Migrants waiting near the U.S. border wall are battered by dust and high winds near El Paso, Texas, May 10, 2023 (OSV News photo/Reuters). With the May 11 expiration of the national health emergency related to the pandemic, the use of Title 42 as an immigration-enforcement tool also came to an end.