Ivan Milenkovic

Amendments to the Law on Higher Education

What will happen to "useless" disciplines

There are many ways in which philosophy can be harnessed to the wagons of the whole society: it is cheap to educate philosophers, we would get new jobs, and society would, in the long run, feel the healing effects of thinking. In addition, as a discipline that teaches how to think, philosophy educates free citizens with backbone and integrity - the two new ministers in the reconstructed government, for education and information, philosophers by training, are the exceptions that confirm the rule

Interview: Galeb Nikačević, guest coach of Beldocs

Reality is a matter of agreement.

If we want to talk about the freedom of a society, there must also be a social agreement and consensus regarding what we consider unfreedom, as well as what and what kind of boundaries we use to describe a society

Comment

Vučić has nothing more to offer, no one and no way

In a speech that made no sense from the point of view of logic and integrity, Vučić offered his voters everything they wanted to hear. But, all in contradictions. The spirit of rebellion can no longer return to the bottle because the bottle is broken

Re-readings

How (and why) to read Mihnik?

Adam Michnjik, Thinking about modern democracy. Essays, letters, interviews; translated from Polish by Biserka Rajčić; B 92, Belgrade, 1995.

Comment

There will be no election.

The knee-jerk Supreme Being trusts in the local elections in Kosjerić and Zaječar. It must not be forgotten that for 13 years he poured heavy poisons, especially in the province, and that detoxification is a long and painful process.

Roman

Damn America…

Namik Kabil, Amarcord
Academic book, Novi Sad, 2025

Comment

Long student march: How the government is crowned

Serbian students repeated a hundred times that this is a marathon. Similar to Adam Mihnjik in the eighties in Poland, when he talked about the "long march". The government in Serbia is on the way to the end - you just need to be patient

Comment

Regime Fall: Reality Strikes Back

If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey

Interview: Saša Ilić, writer

No story of resistance is a story of defeat

A characteristic of each of the narrative streams is learning about different forms of resistance. That's why I wrote the novel under a working title Resistance, although I knew I wouldn't publish it under that title. Over time, I realized that there is a common denominator between that working title and the place where the action takes place - the mountain Rtanj, two letters that remind us of the chemical element that the heroes of my novel are fighting for. And that is the "Cape", which, in addition to denoting the protruding free part of the land, is also a symbol for Freedom - a critical mineral that we desperately lack.

In memoriam: Mario Vargas Llosa (1936–2025)

The poetics of dissent and other subversions

Comment

The arrest of Dejan Ilic: Entering the phase of terror

Depriving Dejan Ilić, an intellectual with an impeccable life and work biography, of his freedom, without the slightest meaningful reason, is just one of the brutal indicators that the regime has turned against its own citizens and is entering a phase of terror

Urban Bushmen for the second time among the Serbs

In honor of Theophilus

The publishing house Biblioteka XX vek organized its book fair in Novi Sad and dedicated it to Teofil Pančić. Teofil published six books in the 2001th century: Urban Bushmen 2004, Keepers of the Bengal Fire 2007, Through the Gorges 2010, Time Machine on Repair 2013, Critique of Firepower 2007, all five with the subtitle "Life and Death in Serbian Post-Communism", and Karma Koma XNUMX, and just before the Novi Sad fair, the second edition of Urban Bushmen appeared, "Ojačano" with a foreword by Ivan Čolović and an index of names

Comment

Logic falls and wants from the asphalt

If the citizens' protests stopped, would the regime have the strength to fight back, to carry out a successful "counter-revolution"? To start terror, like the one in Belarus? Fallen logic says it wouldn't

The battle between illusion and reality: Napoleon, that's me

At the meeting place of illusion and reality, there is a knife in the hands of a citizen who jumped to the store to get a can of peas, and then, as if in passing, threw the can at the hated character

Controversy (1)

Republic against autocracy

Fall force and injustice, "Time" no. 1785, March 20, 2025.

Interview: Predrag Krstić, philosopher

Philosophy is a dam against the invasion of non-opinions

"The current student movement, if I'm not mistaken, is for the most part the realization of negative engagement. It stands up against obvious lies, injustice and lack of freedom without declaring itself the owner of truth, justice and freedom and, equally important, without agreeing to political settlements around it. It is anti-political in the sense that we, burdened by 'politics as fate', cannot understand at all: it is not a question of who will rule - when the question is posed in this way, the answer already implies absolute power - but to build institutions that will make autocracy impossible and enable the change of power without blood"

Comment

Vučić's abnormal silence

In the end, it turns out that the hole in Dr. Dragan Milić's window was made by a woodpecker. The only thing that is relevant at this moment is that there is a clear suspicion that he was shot at, that Vučić called the opposition champion in Nis pure evil and that the absence of his reaction is not normal

Comment

Genealogy of a Lie: The Minister and the Sound Cannon

The Minister of Police is lying. Okay, that's not much of a surprise. But the entanglement of Ivica Dačić in the kitchen is more than simple lying

Interview: Novica Milić

To write to live

One good musician, or painter, or writer, or thinker is worth more than all the main committees of all the parties, all the members of parliament, all the ministers in some imaginary government. They are - or should be - interchangeable. Artists and thinkers by their gift and type of intelligence are not. Culture is art, hence the art of life

Comment

March 15th: Nothing is the same anymore

Policemen saw Belgrade on Saturday, soldiers saw it. Members of the Serbian Progressive Party saw Belgrade. Ivica Dacic also saw him. And nothing is the same anymore

Politics and law

Technical or transitional government?

A technical government, or a government of experts, would have the task of creating the conditions of possibility for the re-establishment of the rule of constitution and law. Because of that, it is quite expected that factually the leader rejects the proposal to establish a technical government: if he agreed to a technical government, he would formally disempower himself. In other words, technical government is a political, not a legal issue

Exhibitions

In the midst of events

Goranka Matic, Memory and hope, gallery "November", Belgrade, March 2025, curators Una Popović and Mia David

Comment

Heroes of our time

If heroism is the result of fighting fear and overcoming fear, if heroism occurs as a conscious and deliberate act, then the true heroes of this fight against dictatorship are teachers and high school teachers.

Is Serbia a polarized country?

Praise of discord

"The problem of our society is that it is not divided enough, therefore, it is not politically profiled enough from the inside. The only division I see here is the division between the ruling team, which usurped public space and introduced corruption as the only institution, and citizens, on the other hand, who do not have access to public space, and that is why they go out into the streets," says philosopher Zoran Dimić.

Roman

Animalism and the Renaissance

Ivan Zrinusic, FIP; Sandorf, Zagreb, 2024.

Sovereignty and sovereign: The disempowerment of the Serbian emperor

Civil protests in Serbia seek to return sovereign power to the legal and legitimate holder of the highest authority: the people. It's as if they shaved in ancient Rome 2500 years ago during the reign of Anastasius I

Interview: Aleksandar Weisner

How we make soldiers out of children

"When you create an education system tailored to the needs and goals of militarization, then it is a kind of special war that you are conducting against the future of society. We have serious studies that show that for decades our schooling has been in the function of a warrior model of socialization (…) The rigid and authoritarian way of functioning of schools only favors the birth of peer violence, which is largely a response to such and such way of functioning of schools. Rather, one could and should talk about a disorder in the behavior of institutions, rather than a disorder in the behavior of students."