Abstract
I write as political attention in the United States and Europe is focused on terrorism, a thematic that almost but not completely obscures sight of the violence of climate change. Societies that are themselves wedded to violence—in the United States, to gun culture, fracking, racialized killings, militarizations of all sorts—express horror at forms of violence insistently presented as coming “from the outside.” It is a hair-raising and sea-rising time, a time, it seems, on the cusp.
There is also the apparent tenacity of everyday life.
Political Theory continues to receive and respond to many thoughtful, provocative, and inspiring essays. And it is run by a team of committed scholars who share those traits. I want to thank Danielle Allen for her service on the Executive Editorial Committee, wishing her the best as she steps away from that role to take up the leadership of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. Also stepping down is Rogers Smith, whose generous and creative intellect will be greatly missed too.
The departures of Professors Allen and Smith have allowed us to add two new wonderful voices to the EEC. We are pleased to be joined by Professors Nivedita Menon, a feminist political theorist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Professor Neil Roberts, Chair of the Department of Religion and Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. Nivedita Menon’s most recent books include Seeing Like a Feminist; Power and Contestation: India since 1989 (Global History of the Present); and Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics beyond the Law. Neil Roberts is the author of Freedom as Marronage, he edits (with Jane Anna Gordon) the book series Creolizing the Canon, and is currently assembling essays for A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass.
I welcome them both, and send the readers of the journal thoughts in the direction of a compassionate and intelligent 2016.