Progressives for the Public Interest

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Professor Paul Adler about his new book. Paul is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Colorado College where he researches and teaches on topics in U.S. and World History. Particularly, his interests include recent U.S. political history, histories of activism, as well as histories of Global South-North relations in the late 20th century. Paul taught a course on the Cold War and Latin America that I took last year during my senior year at CC. Paul impressively deals in the history of idea, the history of political and military conflicts, and the history of struggles for liberation during the colonial and post-colonial past and present. Today we discuss Paul’s new book No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality out now from the University of Pennsylvania Press. As the title suggests, this book is about the history of those who agitated against the global world order that emerged in the late 20th century. Paul focuses his story on the work of what he calls Public Interest Progressives who emerge in the U.S. and elsewhere in the wake of the 1960s as a coalition of advocates for the public interest. Our conversation gets into this history, and we also get a bit into the present state of the fair globalization movement and the persistent need for internationalism, particularly now in the context of climate change. Please check out Paul’s book (don’t buy it from Amazon; call your local bookstore, they’d love to order it for you!).