The DC Salon

This month's salon "Are We Separable From Our Origins?" was inspired by Nicholas Lemann's essay in Liberties "The Irony of Southern Jewish History."

Liberties Journal hosts a monthly conversation in this iteration of which dozens gather to together ask and answer the question IS THERE A MORAL AESTHETIC?

Liberties Journal hosts a monthly conversation in this iteration of which dozens gather to together ask and answer the question IS ICONOCLASM MORAL?

Liberties Journal hosts a monthly conversation in this iteration of which dozens gather to together ask and answer the question Does Success Help?

Chris McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends gather in the Liberties Journal offices to ask and answer the question "Is Curiosity Dangerous?"

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends ask and answer the question Is There Honor Without Revenge?

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty New Yorkers together ask and answer the question "Can We Change How We Love?"

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends ask and answer the question "Can We Change How We love?"

Liberties Journal's associate publisher and managing editor together with sixty of their closest friends ask and answer the question "Can We Learn To Be Alone?"

Chris McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and thirty of their closest friends assemble on New Years eve to together ask and answer the question "Can People Change?"

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends ask and answer the question "Is Art More Beautiful Than Nature?".

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends ask and answer the question "Can We Choose Our Beliefs?".

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends ask and answer the question "may we despair?".

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends ask and answer: Can Nonbelievers Pray?

Christopher McCaffery, Celeste Marcus, and fifty of their closest friends discuss what propaganda is and whether it is easily identifiable.

Christopher McCaffery, of the Washington Review of Books, and Celeste Marcus host a conversation in which a group of interested parties ask and answer whether or not they should like their friends.

Christopher McCaffery, of the Washington Review of Books, and Celeste Marcus host their spiciest salon yet. Is nationalism inherently evil? Is it the least important of our identities? It is the most important? Can one be loyal to a people but not that people's government? We ask and offer answers to these and more related questions.

Christopher McCaffery, of the Washington Review of Books, and Celeste Marcus host a salon of interested parties who together ask and offer answers to the question ‘Should art be useful?’

Christopher McCaffery, of the Washington Review of Books, and Celeste Marcus host a salon of interested parties who together ask and offer answers to the question ‘Should love be healthy?’

Christopher McCaffery, of the Washington Review of Books, and Celeste Marcus host a salon of interested parties who together ask and offer answers to the question ‘Is forgiveness possible?’

Host Chuong Nguyen talks to Celeste Marcus about her most recent essay, After Rape: A Guide For The Tormented. They consider questions like, "Why is rape so difficult to talk about?" "How long does it take to feel okay afterwards?" "Why do so many rapists not think of what they did as rape?"

Chris McCaffery, of the Washington Review of Books, and Celeste Marcus, managing editor of Liberties, host a salon in which they and a group of lively invested parties ask whether or not books are worthwhile. Speakers in order of appearance: Jerome Copulsky, Carlos Lozada, Becca Rothfeld, Mikra Namani, Laura Field, Osita Nwanevu, Nic Rowan, Ari Schulman, Steven Larkin, Zach Wehrwein, Lars Schonander, and Hannah Rowan.

Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian born and raised in Gaza, talks about his experience in the peace-building world and how he intends to change it.

Recording of a salon held on October 19th with Arash Azizi about socialism, liberalism, and the Israeli Palestinian conference. EVENT UPDATE: This salon is being reframed in light of the current crisis in the Middle East: Arash Azizi, a specialist on Iran, and Celeste Marcus, a liberal Zionist, will discuss how Arash’s socialism and my liberalism inform our views of the current paroxysms. Both of our ideologies are universalist, and that universalism is in tension with our respective tribalisms. This is sure to be a spirited, respectful, and interesting conversation.   Arash Azizi, author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Amibtions, and What Iranians Want: Women, Life Freedom, joins Celeste Marcus to discuss how the humanism that undergirds his socialism is complimentary of, if not identical with, the liberalism to which Liberties is dedicated. Liberalism is a political and philosophical theory dedicated to the protection of individual rights. It is itself secular, though an ideal liberal society is pluralistic and protects the rights of individuals to practice and observe as they please so long as their practices do not infringe on the rights of others. Because of liberalism’s pluralism, it depends on minorities to use the liberal system in order to advocate on their own behalf. Therefore, liberals are often dependent on non-liberals (since statistically a large percentage of leaders of minority groups will not identify as liberals) to do the advocacy work which allows a liberal society to function healthily. Arash Azizi is an example of a writer and advocate who uses the language and philosophy of socialism to advocate for the individual rights that liberalism too holds dear. This will be a discussion about how his socialism is and is not consistent with Liberties‘ liberalism. Recommended reading: “Liberalism of Fear” by Judith Shklar is the text that best informs Celeste Marcus’ liberalism “Marxism and Democracy”  by  Michael Harrington will furnish an understand of Arash Azizi’s socialism. See also: “What Karl Marx Really Thought About Liberalism.”

In the first in a series Liberties X Interintellect salons, Benjamin Moser joins Celeste Marcus to discuss his forthcoming book The Upside Down World. Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Moser was overwhelmed by the language, people, and culture. The great painters of the Dutch Golden Age —Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer among them— offered him entry into his strange new universe. This book is a portrait of seventeen of these artists, and of Moser’s peculiar conception of each of them.

Becca Rothfeld and Celeste Marcus pepper Agnes Callard with questions about motherhood, among them: how it changes one, whether it's possible to prepare for it, and if one's own identity is enriched or extinguished through it.

Justin E H Smith joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the thought and style of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Agnes Callard and Celeste Marcus use "Scenes from a Marriage," the television series directed by Ingmar Bergman and released in 1973, to consider themes such as whether  loneliness is inevitable, whether one has a moral imperative either to lie or to be wholly honest with their partner, what personal liberation means, and whether or not it is possible.

Jared Marcel Pollen joins Leon Wieseltier to discuss Václav Havel and the proper relationship between power and justice. 

Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the rise of the radical Israeli right and the peculiar pain of responsible loyalty to a state 

Justin E. H. Smith joins Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus to discuss the gamification of reality, and the pernicious compulsion to control and describe more and more of human existence via algorithms and technology.

William Deresiewicz joins Celeste Marcus to discuss his upcoming book "The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society." In this conversation they broach many of the themes which Deresiewicz explores in his book, including the nature of attention, the meaning of art, the purpose of education, and the snares endemic to membership in any community.

Morten Høi Jensen joins Celeste Marcus to discuss literary biography as a failed genre, the impossibility of a writer ever achieving intimacy with her own subjects, and the license that futility conditions. 

Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss  La Ruche, Soutine, the romantic, fleeting world of the School of Paris, and its brutal destruction during WWII.

Laura Kipnis joins Celeste Marcus to discuss Laura's most recent essay for Liberties, "Gender: A Melee," in which she debunks the bad faith arguments and fear mongering which frequently plague conversations about gender. 

Richard Thompson Ford joins Leon Wieseltier to discuss what the legacy of slavery can and cannot explain about America.

Martha Nussbaum joins Leon Wieseltier for a conversation about the relationship between the body and the soul. 

Agnes Callard and Becca Rothfeld join Celeste Marcus to discuss the movie The Night Porter.

Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the many dimensions of the horror in Ukraine. “If you want to deter such obscenities, and if you want to be able to resist such obscenities then you need to have a world view that will prepare you for such obscenities to occur.”

Holly Brewer joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the intellectual history of a pernicious racist idea contemporary scholars wrongly attributed to John Locke.  

Michael Kimmage and Leon Wieseltier discuss the rhetoric of declinism which is both ubiquitous and inaccurate, its origins, and the dangers it poses.

Benjamin Moser, in conversation with Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus, argues that translation is a form of cultural appropriation that does not appropriate nearly enough.

Jewher Ilham, Uyghur activist and the daughter of celebrated economist Ilham Tohti (now serving a life sentence in jail in China), joins Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus to discuss the Uyghur Genocide. Jewher describes how the conditions for Uyghurs have changed in China over the past few decades, what the concentration camps are and what goes on in them, who her father is and what he was fighting for, and what the international community can and should be doing to help the Uyghurs. 

Agnes Callard joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the movie Winter Light (1963), faith, faithlessness, body hatred, and, of course, Ingmar Bergman. 

Mamtimin Ala, a Uyghur activist and intellectual, talks with Celeste Marcus not only about the Uyghur genocide in China, but also about the syncretistic beauty and wealth of Uyghur tradition. Among the tragedies of the Uyghur story is that they are known most often for the horrors they now endure, and not for their vast, rich history. The Analysis of Uyghur culture - and Chinese culture - sheds much light on the origins of the current outrage.

Michelle Dauphinais Echols talks with Celeste Marcus about the alleged rape and torture of her nine cousins, the Charbonneau sisters, at St. Paul's Indian School in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Becca Rothfeld and Celeste Marcus discuss Sanctimony Literature, the relationship between art and politics, and how to evaluate political art. 

Ramachandra Guha talks with Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus about Modi's disastrous mishandling of the pandemic in India, the ensuing disaster, and the historical and political context for the current crisis.

Andrea Marcolongo talks with Celeste Marcus about how the pandemic has altered her self-perception as a writer, and about what a writer's role is. 

Elliot Ackerman and Leon Wieseltier talk with Celeste Marcus about American foreign policy. Regarding the decision to pull all troops out of Afghanistan: "We'll either never think about this again or we'll think about this in eighteen months when Kabul falls to the Taliban and people are being executed in the streets and we have to answer for it in some way."