Politics

The AI Data Center Backlash

A conversation on the groundswell of local organizing and the movement’s political shockwaves.

Robinson Meyer
Nicholas Rabb
Astra Taylor
Lily Hu

The Latest

Arts in Society

Revenance Event

China Miéville returns to fiction with a secret history of late-twentieth-century Britain.

Mark Bould
China Miéville

Politics

Think Again

Dwight Macdonald’s gift of self-critique.

Daniel Wortel-London

Philosophy

Normativity from the Standpoint of Its Victims

Critical theory’s Israel exception.

Lorna Finlayson

Politics

Carrying Water

As enormous sums flow to creditors and investors in Puerto Rico, the state continues to recede.

Yarimar Bonilla

From the Editors: How to Save Science

Introducing our Summer 2026 issue.

Boston Review

Science

What Was the Internet?

As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.

Siva Vaidhyanathan
Avery Dame-Griff
Joanna Walsh
Chad Wellmon
Cory Doctorow
Matt Lord

Current issue

Featuring Zeynep Pamuk on saving science, Michael Harris on math in the age of AI, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Omer Bartov on memory politics, Lorna Finlayson on critical theory after Habermas, Mark Bould on China Miéville’s The Rouse, and more.

Events

Learn more about our in-person and virtual events with leading scholars, writers, and activists.

Forums

Politics

How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism

Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated.

Adam Bonica
Jake Grumbach

with responses from

Cori Bush
Amanda Litman
Matthew Yglesias
G. Elliott Morris
Julia Serano
Eric Rauchway
Suzanne Mettler & Trevor E. Brown
Thomas Ferguson
Timothy Shenk
Jared Abbott & Milan Loewer
Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
Lily Geismer
Danielle Wiggins
William A. Galston
Henry Burke

Politics

The Real Border Crisis

The problem isn’t immigration. It’s the failure of liberal democracy itself.

Lea Ypi

with responses from

Paulina Ochoa Espejo
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Dara Lind
Daniel Denvir
Chandran Kukathas
Ayelet Shachar

Politics

The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide

Speaking the truth and exposing lies is not enough.

Robin D. G. Kelley

with responses from

David Waldstreicher
Jennifer Zacharia
Martin O’Neill

“Far from preventing a slide into the moral abyss, ‘guiding principles’ often prove to be infinitely flexible in their application.”

—Lorna Finlayson, “Normativity from the Standpoint of Its Victims”

“When public services are treated as liabilities to be contained rather than obligations to be fulfilled, disaster becomes routine.”

—Yarimar Bonilla, “Carrying Water”

“In those blue links I saw footnotes; I recognized something of the self I was working to become and the institution I thought would get me there.”

—Chad Wellmon, “That Obscure Object, Desire”

“The opportunity to participate in the arts, not only as spectator but creator, was the promise of Web 2.0. It was a promise very imperfectly kept, but one we must remember.”

—Joanna Walsh, “Net Positives”

“Our current internet landscape has a totally different scale—we are connected to more people than ever before, and yet we are profoundly isolated from them.”

—Avery Dame-Griff, “The Scale’s the Thing”

“All those centuries of books, in hundreds of languages: it was never about the good of humanity. It was about laying the groundwork for generative AI.”

—Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Infrastructural Imperialism”

“It was policymakers who made decisions that had the foreseeable and foreseen outcome of ushering in the enshittocene—this era in which all of our technology is turning into shit.”

—Cory Doctorow, “Managed Decline”

John Crowley(1942–2026)

Arts in Society

A Postcard from Ursula

A science fiction writer remembers his early correspondences with Ursula Le Guin.

John Crowley

Arts in Society

Elizabeth Hand’s Curious Toys

John Crowley talks with Hand about her new novel and the ways that historical fiction can—and can’t—answer our questions about the past.

Elizabeth Hand
John Crowley

Arts in Society

Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia

A biography of Norman Bel Geddes, designer of the Futurama, tells the story of American innovation.

John Crowley

ICE’s reign of Terror

Politics Race

Renee Good’s Murder and Other Acts of Terror

An interview with Robin D. G. Kelley on how to think about ICE—and the broader history of police violence.

Robin D. G. Kelley
Deborah Chasman

Politics

How Not to Abolish ICE

What have we learned from the past two decades of struggle?

Harsha Walia

From the Archive

Science

Use Sunlight Locally (or Lose It)

A new “solar homesteading law” could harness rays of sun that fall on roofs and parking lots in cities and advance the aims of energy democracy.

David McDermott Hughes

The War on Iran

Politics

Object Lessons

The ceasefire in the Persian Gulf is a prelude to an emerging, precarious realignment.

Aslı Ü. Bâli

Politics

The War on Iran: A Conversation

A roundtable on U.S. and Israeli aggression, reactions from Iran and the Iranian diaspora, and the future of Iranian struggles for freedom and democracy.