Dissent Magazine, formally organized as the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, is a New York City-based socialist magazine. ¹ In 2023 and 2017, the magazine received grants from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. ²

Background

Literary critic Irving Howe and sociologist Lewis Coser co-founded Dissent Magazine in 1953. Howe and Coser claimed to have been part of an “anti-Stalinist left” and founded the magazine to oppose both McCarthyism and communism. The editors wrote in the Spring 1954 issue: “Socialism is the name of our desire.” ¹

The magazine has several names attached including political theorist Hannah Arendt, social commentator Richard Wright, novelist Norman Mailer, trade union leader A. Philip Randolph, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) founder Michael Harrington, Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, civil rights activist and AFL-CIO official Bayard Rustin, Polish author Czesław Miłosz, socialist journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, cultural critic Ellen Willis, Mexican diplomat and poet Octavio Paz, academic Martha Nussbaum, and academic Roxane Gay. ³

Articles

Abolishing The Police

In November 2021, Dissent Magazine published an interview with Derecka Purnell, an advocate of abolishing the police. Purnell advocated for reducing interactions with police as part of a broader project that included reducing police funding and the size of police forces, and freezing police academies. Purnell further advocated for authorities using a gun buyback program and rely on truces between gang members to keep the peace. Purnell also advocated taking legal action against gun manufacturers and implementing more laws restricting civilian firearms ownership to reduce the number of guns in the United States as well as the demand for police officers. ⁴

COVID-19

In December 2021, Dissent Magazine published an article by Stephanie DeGooyer and Srinivas Murthy that criticized the United States’s travel bans enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic as ineffective at containing the spread of the virus. The article also mentioned what it claimed was the inability of poorer nations to get the COVID-19 vaccine while urged wealthier nations to allow said countries to copy their vaccine formulas. ⁵

Environmental Reparations

In February 2022, Dissent Magazine published an interview with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò that advocated for reparations for slavery and racial preferences on a global level. According to the interview, Táíwò advocated for world governments to use money raised for reparations to encourage less-developed countries away from using conventional energy sources. In addition, governments would use funds raised from divesting from conventional energy companies to fund programs benefiting racial minorities. ⁶

Gaza War

In October 2023, Joshua Leifer wrote an article for Dissent Magazine criticizing those who celebrated the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. Leifer called it “smarmy moralizing about civilian deaths.” Dissent published a rebuttal by University of Chicago professor Gabriel Winant who claimed the focus on Jewish victimhood fed into “a machine for the conversion of grief into power” and what he claimed was further oppression of the Palestinians. ⁷

Criticism

In August 2021, Christopher Sarjeant criticized Dissent Magazine in an article in UnHerd reporting on the departure of Jim Sleeper from its editorial board after 40 years, claiming the magazine had strayed from its original mission of “class-based” leftism that was replaced by identity politics and multiculturalism. ⁸

Fundraising

In 2023, Dissent Magazine received $100,000 from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. It previously received $90,000 in 2017. ²

In 2023, it received grants of more than $5,000 from the DSA Fund, the Charlotte Foundation, the One World Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation. ³

Leadership

Dissent Magazine’s co-editors are Patrick Iber, Natasha Lewis, and Timothy Shenk. ⁹ Iber is a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ¹⁰ Lewis is a British writer. ¹¹ Shenk is a historian at George Washington University. ¹²

The editorial board consists of Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Kate Aronoff, Kaavya Asoka, Joanne Barkan, Tim Barker, Alyssa Battistoni, Paul Berman, Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Bromwich, Luther P. Carpenter, Leo Casey, Marcia Chatelain, Michelle Chen, Jean L. Cohen, Siddhartha Deb, Mark Engler, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Gary Gerstle, Adom Getachew, Jeffrey C. Isaac, Sarah Jaffe, Sarah Jones, William P. Jones, Colin Kinniburgh, William Kornblum, Jeremy Larner, Joshua Leifer, Sarah Leonard, Susie Linfield, Kevin Mattson, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Laura Marsh, Deborah Meier, Harold Meyerson, Nicolaus Mills, Jo-Ann Mort, Brian Morton, Julia Ott, Maxine Phillips, Aziz Rana, Ruth Rosen, James B. Rule, Madeleine Schwartz, Matthew Sitman, Arlene Skolnick, Christine Stansell, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Sean Wilentz, Gabriel Winant, and Richard Yeselson. ⁹

Financials

According to Dissent Magazine’s 2022 tax returns, the magazine had $408,142 in revenue, $487,228 in expenses, and $245,204 in assets. ¹³

1. Packer, George. “A Modest Utopia: Sixty Years of Dissent.” The New Yorker, October 21, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-modest-utopia-sixty-years-of-dissent.
2. “Open Society Foundations – Awarded Grants, Scholarships, and Fellowships.” Open Society Foundations – Awarded Grants, Scholarships, and Fellowships – Open Society Foundations. Accessed October 14, 2024. https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/past?filter_keyword=Dissent%2BMagazine.
3. “About Dissent Magazine.” Dissent Magazine, March 28, 2024. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/about-dissent-magazine/.
4. Fuchs, Lyra Walsh. “Why Do We Call the Police?” Dissent Magazine, November 17, 2021. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/booked-why-do-we-call-the-police/.
5. DeGooyer, Stephanie, and Srinivas Murthy. “Vaccine Nationalism.” Dissent Magazine, December 1, 2021. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/vaccine-nationalism/
6. Jones, William P. “How to Repair the Planet.” Dissent Magazine, February 4, 2022. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-to-repair-the-planet/.
7. Spaeth, Ryu. “Israel, Gaza, and the Fracturing of the Intellectual Left.” Intelligencer, November 20, 2023. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/israel-gaza-nplusonemag-dissent-jewish-currents.html.
8.  Sarjeant, Christopher. “Dissent Magazine Used to Be Important. I Miss It.” UnHerd, August 26, 2021. https://unherd.com/newsroom/dissent-magazine-used-to-be-important-i-miss-it/.
9.  “Masthead.” Dissent Magazine. Accessed October 14, 2024. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/about-dissent-magazine/masthead/.
10. “About.” patrick iber, July 5, 2023. https://patrickiber.org/about/.
11. “Announcing New Editors.” Dissent Magazine, October 5, 2020. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/announcing-new-editors/.
12. “Shenk, Timothy: Department of History: Columbian College of Arts & Sciences: The George Washington University.” Department of History | Columbian College of Arts & Sciences. Accessed October 14, 2024. https://history.columbian.gwu.edu/timothy-shenk.
13. “Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas Inc, Full Filing – Nonprofit Explorer.” ProPublica. Accessed October 14, 2024. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/132993308/202323199349311477/full.