Discussion on Nara Pavão's "Corruption as the Only Option: The Limits to Electoral Accountability" (The Journal of Politics 80, 3, July 2018), and Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman's Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World (Cambridge Elements, 2021)

What is Donald Trump's personality like? What was his family like? What is his ideology? What have been the highlights of his performance as a businessman, candidate, and head of the government of the most powerful country in the world? These questions require multi-causal answers that go beyond the clichés that have been spread by his defenders, his detractors, and Trump himself. The 45th president of the United States has been both praised and reviled. His personality, his professional career, and his emergence in American and world politics have been the subject of biased and didactic analyses. This book attempts to offer a more nuanced explanation, underpinned by hundreds of articles, books, and interviews on the character and his historical context.

To understand the “Trump phenomenon” it is necessary to analyze its origins, as well as the political, social and economic dynamics of the United States. For better or worse, Trump is not a historical anomaly, but rather a product of his time. However, some of the most controversial actions of his mandate, which put democratic coexistence on the ropes, were largely his responsibility. His style of doing politics is still alive, as are the circumstances that made for his rise to power in 2016. Will he return to the White House in 2024?

When an assistant professor of medicine witnesses a student storming out of a respected older colleague’s office in tears, she finds herself drawn into an all-consuming quest for justice that is further aggravated by domestic pressures and her daughter’s troubles at school. Painting a portrait of the systemic sexism and abuses of power that push one of the few dissenters into a spiral of obsession, Rehana Maryam Noor hinges on a fearless performance by newcomer Azmeri Haque Badhon, who lends the heroine a complex mix of egotism, moral fervor, and repressed anger. The film took home two awards at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, winning Best Performance by an Actress for Badhon and the Jury Grand Prize for director Abdullah Mohammed Saad.

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