Thinking critically: Looking for exciting classes next quarter? Consider pre-registering for a course in the new Public Thinking minor. A partnership between the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse and The Point magazine, Public Thinking does as it’s named. It takes thinking, a private activity that “conditions men against evil-doing,” and practices it in publics within and outside the academy.
This winter, Public Thinking is launching academic offerings at UChicago with three classes: The Philosopher as Public Thinker (PUBT 10100), Intro to Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School (PUBT 20211), and The Politics of Thinking Machines (PUBT 11200). PUBT 10100 and 20211 will be taught by the program’s Academic Director, Michael Lipkin. PUBT 11200 (a delightfully off-kilter entry to the growing canon of AI-related classes this year) will be taught by James Duesterberg, contributing editor at The Point and author of wide-ranging essays on the intersection of technology and politics.
Emily Sun, senior editor
Reality, televised: What drives progress? We may feel tempted to scoff and answer that, of course, it’s people who drive progress. But in the latest response to The Harper Review’s fall letters prompt, Adiyaan Ahamad argues that we easily forget this obvious truth. In his letter, Ahamad critiques doomscrolling, Labubus, Love Island, and Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreality to show how a curated media environment makes us forget that we can affect the world. Waiting hours in line for a Labubu isn’t just a fad, but a sign of total resignation to the powers that be. That resignation is reflected, as Ahamad points out, in the passive phrasing of this very prompt. We would do well to remember that, not only can we bring about progress, but we are the only ones who can.
Deniz Kurdi, assistant editor
Intelligent design: The Power and the Glory, British novelist Graham Greene’s story of a fugitive priest in revolutionary Mexico, turns 85 this year. The novel follows an anonymous priest as he struggles to perform his duties while evading anti-clerical police in the state of Tabasco. Unlike other Mexican states—which merely banished Catholicism from the public sphere following the Revolution—Tabasco prescribed the death penalty for priests who were unwilling to renounce their vows. The book unfolds as the priest’s fugitive status brings danger to those who protect him, and his own sins makes him question his worthiness to perform clerical duties. In the face of all this, the priest can’t help but wonder if his refusal to surrender emanates from a dangerous, worldly sense of pride.
William Moursund, contributing editor
What is and what never should be: Bernard MacMahon’s Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025) is the story of four musicians who rose from relative obscurity and worked their way up the ladder of “becoming.” The documentary presents the band as a patchwork of individual experiences elevated into something legendary. MacMahon does not romanticize the band’s early, “raw” phase. This isn’t a tale of squalor (the only misfortune was Jimmy Page’s current hairstyle situation, flattened past the charming mid-length stage). The romance lies instead in the newly formed quartet’s first rehearsal. Each member influenced the other, creating a sound that transcends the sum of its parts—Robert Plant’s voluntary unfavoured rhythm was only possible because of John Bonham’s rigorous one on the drums and John Paul Jones’s on the bass.
Critics have pointed out the documentary’s gaps—the absence of scandal, excess, and the darker side of the business—that I’m with the Band, Pamela Des Barres’s memoir of her groupie years, describes more directly. But MacMahon omits these details because he wants the band itself to tell its story. Rather than dwelling on the band’s legacy as an authority within the music scene, the film celebrates what it meant to become Led Zeppelin. Becoming Led Zeppelin is not a tale of excess and scandal, but rather a collective coming-of-age story for people who saw music as their only viable option.
Meri-Li Mercier, contributing editor
Overt undercurrents: I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the Art Institute’s current retrospective on American artist Elizabeth Catlett. I don’t often enjoy contemporary art, and I usually stick to paintings rather than sculptures or print. But you can feel the politics of Catlett’s time running through her work: the race riots of her childhood, the atrocities of WWII, the civil rights movement, and the inauguration of the United States’ first Black president. Many of Catlett’s works deal explicitly with political moments—Civil Rights Congress (1949) and Angela Libre (1972), to name a few. In Mother and Child (1956), a black mother cradles her infant as he sleeps on her lap. His head is tucked to her breast and she folds around him as if he were still a part of her body. The moment is quiet yet dignified, in the vein of a Madonna depiction. In The Torture of Mothers (1970), one sees a darker side to black motherhood: painted over the side profile of a black woman lies a dead child, limp on the ground as flames engulf his body.
In January, the National Gallery (a key contributor to Catlett’s exhibition) announced it had closed its office of belonging and inclusion to comply with a White House executive order. A week after the exhibition opened in Chicago, Operation Midway Blitz began. Elizabeth Catlett: “A Black Revolutionary Artist and All that it Implies” reminds us that nothing is apolitical—be that motherhood or the bureaucracy of a museum. Indeed, as another activist artist once said, “Everything is art. Everything is politics.”
Nora Holmes, contributing editor