Peter B. Kaufman

Peter B. Kaufman works at MIT Open Learning and is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge (2021). His book The Moving Image: A User’s Manual was published by the MIT Press in February 2025.

Articles

The Demons That Rule Us
Peter B. Kaufman considers Whitney Phillips and Mark Brockway’s “The Shadow Gospel: How Anti-Liberal Demonology Possessed U.S. Religion, Media, and Politics.”
Peter B. KaufmanSep 21
- Politics
- Philosophy & Religion
The Power of the Moving Image
Peter B. Kaufman argues that video has become our dominant cultural medium, yet we lack reliable archives for the audiovisual record.
Peter B. KaufmanFeb 11
A Venerable and Time-Tested Guide
Peter B. Kaufman reviews the 18th edition of “The Chicago Manual of Style.”
Peter B. KaufmanOct 23, 2024
- Literary Criticism
Authoritarian Media: On Peter Pomerantsev’s “How to Win an Information War”
Peter B. Kaufman reviews Peter Pomerantsev’s “How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler.”
Peter B. KaufmanApr 30, 2024
Trances, Ecstasies, Raptures, and Levitations: On Carlos Eire’s “They Flew”
Peter B. Kaufman reviews Carlos Eire’s “They Flew: A History of the Impossible.”
Peter B. KaufmanDec 12, 2023
A Crowd of Incompetents: On Peter Burke’s “Ignorance”
Peter B. Kaufman reviews Peter Burke’s “Ignorance: A Global History.”
Peter B. KaufmanApr 28, 2023
- History
In Defense of Facts and Expertise: On Ronald J. Daniels’s “What Universities Owe Democracy”
The project of reinvigorating the critical role of the public university has never been more urgent.
Peter B. KaufmanMar 7, 2022
- Education
Preserving the Archive
An absorbing history of concerted attacks on knowledge, from book burning to bureaucratic neglect.
Peter B. KaufmanMar 28, 2021
- History

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