John R. MacArthur
John R. MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. An award-winning journalist, he has previously written for the New York Times, United Press International, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Under his stewardship Harper's has received eighteen National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest recognition. He is also the author of the acclaimed books The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America: Or, Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy, and Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. He lives in New York City.
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, July 20, 2016 What Donald Trump Doesn’t Get about "Free Trade" As Donald Trump prepares to accept the Republican nomination for President Thursday night, he carries with him a record of verbal violence so extreme that it supposedly has placed him beyond the pale for much of his party's establishment. The billionaire dealmaker is said to be hated for his... Read more |
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Views Saturday, June 13, 2015 The Going Rate for Betrayal The vote buying to pass fast-track authority in the House of Representatives -- legislation that will speed up secret negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement so dear to President Obama and his Wall Street and corporate allies -- has evidently begun in earnest. The... Read more |
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Views Friday, April 17, 2015 Grinding Down the Working Class The gratuitous gunning down by a white police officer of a fleeing black man, captured on a phone camera by a passerby, has reignited the urgently needed debate about police arrogance and racism. So despite the horror of it all, I suppose we should be grateful for this moment of incontrovertible... Read more |
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Views Friday, March 20, 2015 Obnoxious Chicago Mayor Faces Threat Detested by the black voters of Chicago and unloved by the Democratic machine to which he owes his political career, Rahm Emanuel might conceivably lose — a previously unthinkable notion — in his bid for a second term as mayor of America’s third-largest city. The runoff against Jesus “Chuy” Garcia... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 20, 2014 How the New York Times Tries to Marginalize the Left Among the several depressing outcomes of the midterm elections, perhaps the saddest has been the media establishment’s refusal to draw conclusions that run counter to the ones promoted by self-interested politicians. A typical media “analysis” was provided by The New York Times , which almost... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 17, 2014 A Publisher Receives a Jerusalem Education NEW YORK -- The renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians began, coincidentally, while I was hosting a forum in Jerusalem that was intended to foster understanding between the opposing camps. Just days before the participants sat down around a table in the YMCA building on King David... Read more |
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Views Friday, June 20, 2014 In Praise of Michael Hastings: On the Lies and Obfuscations of the March to War in Iraq Having read his posthumously published novel, I’m sorry I never knew Michael Hastings. That said, I’m not sure I would have wanted to hang out with him. Hastings’s leisure-time pursuits, including the one that appears to have caused his untimely death last year, were a little reckless for my taste... Read more |
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Views Saturday, April 19, 2014 California's Problems Are Deeper Than Earthquakes California clichés get on my nerves — cutting edge; dream factory; innovative business culture — so when the time came to visit family and friends in Los Angeles and San Francisco last month I was prepared to be annoyed. But I wasn’t prepared for the earthquake that shook our Santa Monica hotel... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 13, 2014 Left Must Derail Clinton in Primaries As a presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in 2016 appears ever more likely, it’s a good moment to ask what alternative exists to lying down and letting such a campaign drown the body politic. Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 14, 2013 Some Balance on Press Snoops, Please For those of us who have spent the greater part of our lives writing for newspapers and magazines, these are trying times. Big dailies are being sold at rock-bottom prices, world-renowned periodicals are permanently closing their doors, and reputable journalists are left to beg, borrow and blog for increasingly tiny sums of money. Read more |