Person

Aziz Rana

Bylines

Who’s Afraid of “Settler Colonialism”?

If we dismiss concepts because of particular examples of misuse, we encourage the repression of discomforting histories and ideas.

by Aziz Rana via Dissent on September 8, 2025
Remake America

If we want democracy to survive, we need a vision that’s going to be more compelling than the one the authoritarians are offering.

by Aziz Rana, Osita Nwanevu via The Baffler on August 19, 2025
The Constitution and the American Left

A culture of reverence for the U.S. Constitution shields the founding document from criticism, despite its many shortcomings.

by Aziz Rana via Dissent on July 19, 2024
Aziz Rana Wants Us to Stop Worshipping the Constitution

A conversation with the legal scholar on why it is unusual that the Constitution is core to American national identity.

by Aziz Rana, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on June 3, 2024
Democracy Was a Decolonial Project

For generations of American radicals, the path to liberation required a new constitution, not forced removal.

by Aziz Rana via Boston Review on May 30, 2024
Reviving the Language of Empire

On revisiting the anti-imperialism of the 1960s and ’70s amid the return of left internationalism.

by Aziz Rana, Nora Caplan-Bricker via Jewish Currents on May 9, 2024
Our Segregation Problem

The consequences of racial separation are significant for left political organizing aimed at building a multiracial working-class majority.

by Aziz Rana via Dissent on October 5, 2022
American Social Democracy and Its Imperial Roots

This post is part of a symposium on “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” a new book by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath.

by Aziz Rana via LPE Project on April 19, 2022
The Long History of Anti-CRT Politics

The history of anti-racial justice rhetoric.

by Aziz Rana via LPE Project on November 30, 2021
Why Americans Worship the Constitution

The veneration of the Constitution is directly connected to America’s emergence as global hegemon.

by Aziz Rana via Public Seminar on October 11, 2021
It Would Be Great if the United States Were Actually a Democracy

The pervasive mythmaking about the supposed wisdom of the founders has covered up a central truth: the US Constitution is an antidemocratic mess.

by Aziz Rana, Chris Maisano via Jacobin on February 16, 2021
View All

16

The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them

Viewing 1–6 of 6

Sections of the US Constitution torn to be used as pennants.

Is the United States Too Devoted to the Constitution?

A new book argues that worship of the Constitution has distorted our politics.

by John Fabian Witt via The New Republic on June 24, 2024

Picture of the many different people that make up the US.

The Right to Leave

Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of open migration. But who qualified as a refugee?

by Stephanie Degooyer via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 29, 2022

A mostly African American audience listens to a speaker at the 5th Pan-African Conference, 1945

The New Black Internationalism

The Movement for Black Lives has developed an incipient internationalist language and vision, with the potential to remap America’s place in the world.

by Adom Getachew via Dissent on October 9, 2021

Two men sitting on a couch and laughing, with an American flag behind them

The Conceit of American Indispensability

As we mine the 1940s for alternate visions of international order, we must not presume that the US remains the benevolent center of global politics.

by Sam Klug via Boston Review on August 18, 2020

The Myth of the American Frontier

Greg Grandin’s new book charts the past and present of American expansionism and its high human costs.

by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Nation on April 1, 2019

On Memorial Day, Weaponizing the American Flag

As a young woman, civil rights pioneer Pauli Murray discovered that the flag could be used as a symbol of defiance.

by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via Scalawag on May 30, 2016

brought to you by

© Bunk History