Benjamin Soskis (co-editor HistPhil) haas posted an essay titled Prudential Pluralism, Historical Perspective, and the Defense of Civil Society. Here are the opening paragraphs:
If this is a time of peril for U.S. civil society, it is also a time that has established civil society’s resilience, demonstrated in the construction of broad-based coalitions formed in its defense. At a local level, we saw this vividly last year on the streets of Minneapolis, where individuals came together under a shared ethic of what one commentator called “neighborism” to protest ICE raids in the city. On a national level, we have seen this most clearly in the broad, if loose, alliance of nonprofit and philanthropic leaders that have come together to defend civil society from the threats it faces from the Trump Administration. It is not surprising that progressives have featured prominently in this coalition; more striking has been the role played by a number of conservative leaders from the realms of philanthropy and politics.
As a historian of philanthropy and civil society, I’ve been watching that coalition grow over the last two years, tracking the ideas and narratives that hold it together, and trying to learn more about what is gained, and what potentially lost, in the forging of those bonds. Among the most powerful of these ideas are those that link the present moment to some usable past—what is the shared sense of history scaffolding this emerging coalition?