Can the Left Take Back Identity Politics?

by Umut Özkırımlı

Recovering the liberatory potential of identity politics means going back to the term's source—the Combahee River Collective—and recognizing its radical roots and embrace of coalition-building and politics.

The Crisis of the Intellectuals

by Ibram X. Kendi

A dire health crisis forced the author to ask what his intellectual work was ultimately for. Intellectuals more broadly need a similar push from the dire state of democracy, and should be assured that when they face pushback about being "illiberal" or "presentist" or violating the traditions of their discipline, they're on the right track. 

“If Black Women Were Free”: An Oral History of the Combahee River Collective

Writer Marian Jones gathers together the recollections of the participants in the 1977 efforts to define the relationship between struggles against sexism, racism and capitalist exploitation and reminds that the group's coinage of the term "identity politics" was meant to bring multiple groups together.