Top Articles of 2023
As 2023 comes to a close, we’re proud to present our most-read web pieces of the year, listed below in reverse order. If you enjoy…
On Students
As the campus protests against the war in Gaza spread across the country this past spring, affecting hundreds of colleges and resulting in the arrest…
On the Crisis of Men
On a Saturday morning this winter, while my wife trained for a half-marathon, I was tasked with taking our eighteen-month-old daughter to the neighborhood synagogue…
Note on Humility and Power
In 1956, announcing her opposition to Oxford’s decision to award Harry Truman an honorary degree, the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe noted that “protests by people who…
Israel Stories
Matti Friedman is a freelance journalist and the author of Pumpkinflowers and Who by Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen. Based in…
The City Beneath the City
This is the second installment of “Preserving Gaza,” a series of interviews with Palestinian scholars and writers about particular aspects of Gaza’s history, heritage and…
A Form of Refuge
This is the first installment of “Preserving Gaza,” a series of interviews with Palestinian writers and scholars about particular aspects of Gaza’s history, heritage and…
When Meghan Married Harry
This essay is a preview of our forthcoming print issue, which features the symposium “What is college for?”
Limited Time
INTRODUCTION The subtitle of Martin Hägglund’s new book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, indicates its ambition. In the first half of This Life,…
Manhood
This winter we surveyed hundreds of people—of all genders—about what they think men are for.
The Beauty Industry
What does it mean to face the question of beauty every day, not just personally but professionally? This spring we surveyed models, cosmetic physicians, influencers…
Working in Tech
What is it like to work in tech every day? This winter we surveyed people who work in tech about their jobs, common misconceptions about…
Notes Toward a Preface About School Statements
Introduction These notes are not a blueprint for how to write a school statement, or a script for how teachers should tackle hot-button topics. In…
Age-Old Wisdom
In light of Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race over widespread concerns about his age and mental fitness, The Point has assembled…
Intellectuals in Crisis
Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction: The Crisis of the Disillusioned Fellow-Travelers of Bolshevism Is Not the Same as a “Crisis of Marxism” (Trotsky 1939) The Intellectual:…
The Crisis of Language Project
alt right: i) right-wing racists who use leftist rhetoric. ii) establishment.
The (Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas
Classics, the: force of oppression. Know enough to despise ~: “Plato was an authoritarian.” “Aristotle condoned slavery.”
Another World
What was really at stake in this election was something closer to the existential: whether this utopian experiment would live on, or needed to be…
Ruins upon Ruins
The battles of late medieval times have had a long, poisonous afterlife in this part of the world, and there is something ominous about Vijayanagara’s…
Darkness over Donbas
War has settled into my imagination and doesn’t want to leave. Maybe it has always been there.
The Screen
The screen is very tall. It can’t be passed over or under or around or beside, has no gaps or passageways.
Every Weirdo in the World Is on My Wavelength
A writer is a creature of solitude: Has there ever been a bigger lie?
The Life of the Mind
By some indicators we are entering a new Dark Age: anti-intellectual fervor is raging, suspicion of experts is at an all-time high and appeals to…
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America arrives at an auspicious time. The French sociologist came initially to America to prepare a report on criminal justice,…
Back to Real Life
This is the first column in the fourth round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond…
Restless Minds
This is the third column in the third round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond to a prompt…
Guilt Lit
This is the second column in the third round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond to…
Does Love Just Happen to Us?
What is the root of that thing that feels magical when we “just know,” or when we’re overcome by that “gust of agitation,” or when…
Inappropriate Desires
“I think I’m just sexually attracted to women who are conventionally hot, and that tends to mean ‘not 55.’ But it somehow feels, I dunno,…
Performance Issues
You’re right: much of sex does feel like theater. But what kind of theater is it?