Liberties is an independent quarterly journal of ideas that publishes serious, stylish, and controversial essays about significant issues in culture and politics. The Summer 2024 issue of Liberties : Paul Berman finds the history of antisemitism on the American left in a cartoon circulated at Harvard; Sergei Lebedev laments the limitations of Navalny's understanding of Russia's violent history; Assaf Sharon diagnoses the horrific condition of the Israeli-Palestinian “discourse”; Rosanna Warren celebrates Wallace Stevens's first masterpiece; Using new sources about the pogrom at Kishinev, Ekaterina Pravilova considers the exacting task of analyzing victim testimony in the search for justice; Carlos Fraenkel adjudicates between Plato and Aristotle in their views of public philosophy; Justin Smith-Ruiu unhysterically explains what the real threats of AI are; Kit Wilson treats the death of tonality and the temptations of historicism in the understanding of music; Benjamin Balint recovers the legacy of an extraordinary Austrian Jewish writer, Ilse Aichinger ; Mitchell Abidor recounts the intellectual odysseys and battles of the great anti-Stalinist writer, Victor Serge ; Matthew Zipf uses the case of Renata Adler's braid to explore the role of iconography in crafting history; Adrian Nathan West introduces perhaps the most overlooked deep thinker of our time, Vladimir Jankélévitch ; David Thomson honors the intimate joy of small gestures in film; Celeste Marcus explains how to appreciate the brilliance of a great contemporary painter; Leon Wieseltier provides a close reading of an anti-Zionist screed from Naomi Klein ; and, new poems by Mosab Abu Toha and Daniel Halpern . Liberties features essays from leading op-ed writers and scholars, award-winning and well-known non-fiction and fiction writers, next generation rising talents, and poets from around the world. There's a reason why cultural warriors, political leaders, opinion makers, and engaged citizens from across political and cultural spectrum read and cherish Liberties . “If you wish to have your mind and spirit sharpened on the grinding stone of prescient, progressive and profound insights, Liberties is THE place to be. Change starts in the mind.” —Wynton Marsalis “A quarterly of urgency, of cultural exploration, of intellectual delight, of immaculate prose.” —Cynthia Ozick “Invaluable.” —David Brooks ( New York Times ) “A triumph for freedom of thought.” —Mario Vargas Llosa “ Liberties is a murderers row of important, fortifying, and inspiring writers.” —Aaron Sorkin “It’s like a meteor of intelligent substance that landed on my desk.” —Thomas L. Friedman ( New York Times ) “ Liberties sure is needed in these times.” —Bill Maher “The appearance of Liberties in the middle of the pandemic was a rare source of light. Its intellectual independence is as admirable as its intellectual seriousness, and it also has style and wit. Something was missing in our culture, and here it is.” —Tina Brown “Liberty is under threat and Liberties girds us for the fight.” —George Stephanopoulos “ Liberties : Some serious food for thought.” —Christiane Amanpour “ Liberties is full of observation, insight, and something you don’t find everywhere, something you don’t see coming: a kind of optimism, which shows clearly in its independent and all-inclusive mien.” —Isaac Mizrahi Paul Berman is the author of numerous books, including Terror and Liberalism . Sergei Lebedev is a Russian novelist and the author of Oblivion and Untraceable . This essay was translated by Antonina W. Bouis. Assaf Sharon is a Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University and a senior fellow at Molad: The Center for the renewal of Israeli Democracy. Kit Wilson is a writer and musician based in London. Ekaterina Pravilova is a professor of history at Princeton, and the author of A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia . Rosanna Warren is an American poet and the author most recently of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters . Carlos Fraenkel is the James McGill Professor of Philosophy and Religion at McGill University. Justin Smith-Ruiu is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris, and the author among other books of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning . Mitchell Abidor is an historian, writer and translator. Among his translated works is an anthology of Victor Serge’s anarchist writings, Anarchists never Surrender . Matthew Zipf is a writer currently at work on a biography of Renata Adler. Adrian Nathan West is a writer and literary translator living in Spain. His first novel My Father’s Diet was published in 2022. David Thomson is the author of many books on film and culture, most recently Disaster Mon Amour . Celeste Marcus is the managing editor of Liberties . Leon Wieseltier is the editor of Libertie