The vitriolic Presidential campaign of 2016 and the new Trump Presidency have suddenly made many old issues newly, even insistently, relevant again. The constant promise to put “America First,” plans to build a border wall, executive orders intended to keep out “dangerous” immigrants (overwhelmingly from Islamic countries), and White House photo ops featuring only white male lawmakers and administrators all have re-sparked long standing conceptual debates about the place of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender in American identity. They have also raised, for many, recollections of the harrowing rise of the fascist movements of the 1930s and the horrors that they unleashed. It is therefore appropriate that we feature essays in this issue of Soundings that directly or indirectly address each of these topics, connecting the past and the present, ethics with politics.
We continue our year-long series “Resoundings”—reexamining central writings from past issues of this journal—with a pair of...
