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Interviews on Two Faces

Interviews on The Constitutional Bind

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Four-part Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine) on the book The Constitutional Bind.  April-May 2025.

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"Aziz Rana's The Constitutional Bind," day-long book symposium at Harvard University.  October 25, 2024. 

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"Dangers of Constitutional Veneration," Democracy's Future podcast (conversation with Julie Suk and Zephyr Teachout).  June 10, 2024.

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Aziz Rana Wants Us to Stop Worshipping the Constitution,” The Nation (conducted by Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins), on the basic arguments of The Constitutional Bind.  June 3, 2024.

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Interviews on The Two Faces of American Freedom

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"The Two Faces of American Freedom Ten Years Later: Three Part Interview,” Law and Political Economy Project (conducted by Henry Brooks), revisiting the arguments and aims of the book on its anniversary and in the context of Trumpian "populism."  December 14, 2020.

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"Universalizing American Liberty with Aziz Rana,” Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine) on the book The Two Faces of American Freedom.  October 31, 2017.

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Universalizing Settler Liberty: An Interview with Aziz Rana,” Jacobin Magazine online (conducted by Nikhil Pal Singh), on the basic arguments of The Two Faces of American Freedom and how to think about settler colonialism, the relationship between the foreign and the domestic, and how race and class have intersected in American life.  August 4, 2014.

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A Conversation with Aziz Rana, Talk with Bruce Ackerman on The Two Faces of American Freedom at Labyrinth Books, New Haven, CT, co-sponsored by Yale Law Library.  December 8, 2010.

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Selected Interviews on Politics and Current Events​

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"The Constitution v. Democracy," Behind the News with Doug Henwood, on the essay "Constitutional Collapse." April 24, 2025.

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"Trump's War by Executive Order," London Review of Books podcast, discussing the law and politics of Trump's return to the White House, with Judith Butler and Adam Shatz.  April 9, 2025.

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"From CRT to DEI: Tracing the Assault on Multiracial Democracy," #RaceClass podcast, virtual panel discussion with Aslı Bâli, LaToya Baldwin Clark, and John Feingold charting the law, history, and politics binding recent anti-CRT and anti-DEI campaigns.  September 27, 2024.

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"Third Worldism with Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana," Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on the history and politics of left internationalism from the era of decolonization to the present.  September 25, 2024. 

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"The Rise and Fall of the American Constitutional Model," Interview with American Prestige (podcast of The Nation), on the intertwined relationship between American constitutional veneration and American global power.  July 9, 2024.

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"Reviving the Language of Empire," Jewish Currents online (conducted by Nora Caplan-Bricker), on the legacy of 1960s and 1970s anti-imperial politics in the context on today's student protests over Gaza.  May 9, 2024. 

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"Why the Left Isn't Internationalist Enough," The Jacobin Show, on the essay "Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire."  July 16, 2022. 

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"Aziz Rana and Darryl Li on Building a New Foreign Policy," Interview with Democracy Now, on the essay "Left Internationalism in the Heart of Empire" and the published responses.  July 7, 2022. 

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"Is It Time for a 28th Constitutional Amendment?," Interview with NPR's 1A, on what the difficulty of amending the federal constitutional system suggests about constitutional politics today.  July 5, 2022. 

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"Interregnum with Wendy Brown, Nikhil Pal Singh, and Aziz Rana," Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on the sense of structural impasse marking left and liberal politics in the Biden first term.  January 6, 2022. 

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"Some Like it Cold (War) with Aziz Rana," Interview with American Prestige (podcast of The Nation), on where the Biden presidency fits in the long history of American global power.  July 23, 2021.

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Reconstructing Democracy in America: An Interview with Aziz Rana," Socialist Forum (conducted by Chris Maisano), Winter 2021 (on what the Trump presidency suggests about the role of the Constitution in American life).

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"The 2020 Elections: A Roundtable," Dissent Magazine, Winter 2021 (five Dissent editorial board members discuss what the elections indicates about the path ahead for the left, center, and right in American politics).

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"SCOTUS, Politics, and the Law with Amna Akbar, Aziz Rana, and Marbre Stahly-Butts," Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on how the left should orient itself to the courts and to constitutional politics more generally, transcription published by Jacobin.  October 9, 2020. 

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"Empire Unhinged with with Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana," Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on the idea of the American Century and the meaning of Trump for U.S. power abroad.  June 11, 2020.   

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"We Need an Insurgent Mass Movement," Dissent Magazine (conducted by Jedediah Britton-Purdy), on the state of contemporary American politics, the limitations of creedal nationalism, and how to conceive of the left's reform vision and political praxis.  Winter 2020.

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"Social Democracy at Home Requires Anti-Imperialism Abroad," Jacobin Magazine online (conducted by Doug Henwood), on the essay "Renewing Working-Class Internationalism" and the need more generally for the left to dissolve the hard separation between foreign and domestic in American politics.  April 26, 2019.

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"Rethinking Migration with Aziz Rana," Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on how settlement and immigration have been interlinked in American history and what this suggests about contemporary debates over the border and immigrant rights.  January 9, 2019.

                         

"The Need for More Robust Left Foreign Policy," Interview with Radio Dispatch, on the essays "Goodbye, Cold War" and "The Left's Missing Foreign Policy."  May 31, 2018.

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The Left’s Missing Foreign Policy,” Interview with The Majority Report, on the essay “The Left’s Missing Foreign Policy.”  May 7, 2018.

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"Reviving Resistance to Empire with Aziz Rana,” Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on the essay “The Left’s Missing Foreign Policy.”  April 7, 2018.

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Aziz Rana on the Cold War’s Late Demise," Interview with The Dig (podcast of Jacobin Magazine), on the essay, "Goodbye, Cold War."  February 14, 2018.​

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Goodbye, Cold War with Aziz Rana,” Interview with The Majority Report, on the essay “Goodbye, Cold War.”  February 12, 2018.​

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"Going Nativist,” Interview with Radio Open Source, on the essay “Decolonizing Obama.”  February 9, 2017.

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Under Western Eyes: On Islamophobia and the Security State after Trump,” Interview with BR: A Political and Literary Podcast (by the Boston Review), including John Bowen.  December 15, 2016.

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The New Nativism,” Interview with Radio Open Source, on immigration in the American settler imagination and how to think about Trump’s anti-immigrant politics.  December 3, 2015.

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© 2018 by Aziz Rana

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Header image excerpts a poster for an information meeting on the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention, 1970.  Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-62076.

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