Boston Review

Boston Review is a bimonthly magazine from the United States that focuses on politics and literature. It features a variety of content including discussions on politics, poetry, film, fiction, philosophy, economics, as well as reviews and critiques of books. Additionally, Boston Review collaborates with MIT Press to release a series of books under its own imprint.

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Letter from the Editors: Our 50th Anniversary

2 weeks ago | bostonreview.net | Deborah Chasman |Joshua Cohen

Dear Reader,The first issue of Boston Review appeared in June 1975. The magazine was then called New Boston Review, published by a small nonprofit and focused on literature and the arts. Vol. 1, No. 1 was 32 pages and sold for 75 cents, in tabloid format, with Susan Sontag in the front and classifieds in the back. In 1991, with New gone from the name, the magazine took a sharp editorial turn. Politics had always been in our pages, but we resolved it would now be our beating heart.
The Insidious Doctrine Fueling the Case Against Mahmoud Khalil

1 month ago | bostonreview.net | Debbie Nathan

An immigrant to the United States with a green card walks into his apartment building. Homeland Security agents enter, handcuff him, whisk him into detention hundreds of miles away, and present him with papers for his removal from the country. Then the government makes a public statement: the man hasn’t broken any laws, yet he’s still deportable. What happened to former Columbia University student and Palestine rights activist Mahmoud Khalil has rightly alarmed many indignant Americans.
The Violence Prerogative

1 month ago | bostonreview.net | Noam Chomsky |Nathan J. Robinson

Every ruling power tells itself stories to justify its rule. Nobody is the villain in their own history. Professed good intentions and humane principles are a constant.
The Limits of Professional-Class Liberalism

2 months ago | bostonreview.net | Simon Torracinta |Brent Cebul |Lily Geismer |Dylan Gottlieb

Boston Review recently hosted a virtual roundtable featuring contributors to a new collection of essays, Mastery and Drift: Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s, published by University of Chicago Press. A full video of the event is below. The transcript that follows is of the second half of the event, with moderated discussion. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
Will you help us cover this crisis?

Feb 6, 2025 | bostonreview.net | Deborah Chasman

Dear Reader,Donald Trump spent his first days back in the White House rolling out plans for mass deportations, an unbridled assault on civil rights, and the defunding of vital social programs. Meanwhile, the tech billionaire class has grown even more powerful. Its tightening grip on news and social media—coupled with the Trump administration’s attempts at repression and censorship—poses a serious threat to independent publishing.
The Boomerang Comes Back

Feb 5, 2025 | bostonreview.net | Noura Erakat

This essay is part of an Election Chronicle series in our Winter 2025 issue, Trump’s Return. Subscribe to get a copy. In the fallout of the election, a stream of social media content—some from passionate Harris supporters, some from lesser-evil Democratic voters, and some, presumably, from people simply lashing out, horrified and distraught at Trump’s win—took to blaming Palestinians for the outcome. My initial fury at these statements eventually gave way to analysis.
Resisting Trump’s Immigration Machine

Jan 24, 2025 | bostonreview.net | Lauren Carasik

Trump’s inauguration ushers in uncertainty and terror for immigrants and advocacy groups as they brace for the massive immigration crackdown he has already initiated since taking office on Monday. His second presidential campaign, like his first, was centered on virulent anti-immigrant demagoguery and lies.
The Lexicon of Empire

Jan 15, 2025 | bostonreview.net | Sam Klug

On a Sunday in the summer of 1959, in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, Senator John F. Kennedy rose to address the banquet of the annual meeting of the American Society for African Culture. Kennedy, who had recently been appointed chairman of the Subcommittee on African Affairs in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spent much of his speech highlighting the potential of U.S. development aid to contribute to economic growth on the African continent.
The “Terrorists” in My Grandmother’s Neighborhood

Jan 13, 2025 | bostonreview.net | Alex Shams

Down a tree-lined street near my grandmother’s house in Tehran is a mosque where locals go to chat, rest, and sometimes even pray. In the back of the mosque, behind a small library, is an office for a youth group that organizes volunteers to teach classes, run food drives, get together on religious holidays, and take trips to impoverished villages on Tehran’s outskirts to build schools.
The Plot Against Finance

Dec 4, 2024 | bostonreview.net | Edward Ongweso Jr

Morozov’s paean to “ecological reason” is a breath of fresh air, demonstrating how the Cold War perverted not only AI development but our capacity to imagine alternatives—technological forms untethered to markets and the military. He lays special emphasis on the way AI today captures the ethos of neoliberalism; I’d like to expand on the way financialization helps it do so.