Roundup

Hamline Controversy Shows How Religion and Neoliberal Administration Converge to Reject Expertise

by Alexander Jabbari

An instructive contrast can be drawn from a 1997 controversy over a frieze depicting Muhammad on the wall of the United States Supreme Court. Since then, post-9/11 Islamophobia, a culture of deliberate trolling under the banner of free speech, and the rise of corporate-style university management have drained the capacity for nuance.

The Middle Ages Were Much Cleaner Than We Think

by Eleanor Janega

Our myths about medieval cleanliness are contradicted by mountains of evidence about the lengths people of all social classes went to to bathe. 

The Black Widows' Struggle for Civil War Pensions

by Hilary Green

Black women's struggles to claim pensions earned by their late husbands' service in the Union Army reflected the incomplete realization of freedom after emancipation and the intrusive controls the pension system and growing administrative state placed on Black families. 

"Classical Christian" Education Movement Can and Must Clean House of White Nationalists

by Jessica Hooten Wilson

The classical educational tradition can be more than a vehicle for reaction and defense of hierarchy if educators recognize the diversity that already exists in the non-male and non-European thinkers represented among its foundational texts. 

Florida Man Calls the Thought Police

by Victor Ray

"Another word for believing in systemic inequality is 'reality.' Few legitimate social scientists claim otherwise, as an overwhelming body of evidence supports structural accounts of racism." By suppressing this reality, DeSantis reaches back to the McCarthy era's suppression of thinking about racism.

The Right's Chaos Politics Meet Institutional Inertia in the Fight for Florida's New College

by Brian Rosenberg

"The reference to Hillsdale and not to a 'great books' college like St. John’s in Annapolis totally gives away the game: This is not about teaching the Western canon but about scoring political points and creating not a traditional college but a conservative Republican college."

Margaret Sanger's Ghost and the Antiabortion Movement

by Melinda Cooper

The anti-abortion right's invocation of eugenics in the Dobbs case and in their public rhetoric might seem cynical. But it could be effective, unless the history of Sanger's relationship to eugenics and reproductive freedom is better understood. 

DeSantis's New College Coup Will Fail

by Adam Laats

Transforming colleges along ideological lines is much more difficult than amassing political power or appointing allies to governing boards. Conservatives are able to operate successful and ideologically friendly institutions when they accept that they will be occupy a niche, not change the ecosystem. 

50 Years at Cook County Hospital Prove Abortion is Healthcare

by Amy Zanoni

Abortion rights activists have focused on horror stories of the pre-Roe era as cautionary tales, but the history of public hospitals since Roe shows that real reproductive freedom requires expanded access to care and a robust social safety net. 

Will Ukraine Be the Death of German Pacifism?

by Stephen Milder

The real transformation wrought in Europe by the Russian invasion isn't the return of war (which was certainly present in the 1990s) but the turn of Germany away from a post-fascist pacifist posture to a potential remilitarization. 

My Course Examines Why God and Guns Go Together in America

by Joseph P. Slaughter

Although there are many "peace church" traditions in American Christianity, there are many other historical strains that view violence as an appropriate and necessary means of securing the divinely sanctioned destiny of the nation. 

William Longbeard, the Unjustly Forgotten Radical of 12th Century London

by Dominic Alexander

The rebellion sparked by William Fitz Osbert, the bearded holy man of London, presaged the growing assertiveness of the rural and urban poor in English politics. 

A History of Violence in the US/Mexico Borderlands

by Brian Behnken

Policing both the border and Mexican American communities in the Southwest has always been entangled with white supremacist violence, the author argues in a new book. 

Why the Kremlin Made "Z" its Symbol of the Ukraine Invasion

by Alexander Etkind

Can Russia's aggression against Ukraine be explained by its leaders fetishizing the small differences in national life, and the divergent fortunes of the post-Soviet generation, in the two countries? Are those gaps so small that only an invented symbol could express them? 

China's Rising Surveillance Capacity Ill Omen for Other Modern States, Too

by Kathleen Keller

The inherent desire of states to protect their power and interests means that the aggressive implementation of electronic surveillance measures in China is likely to be repeated, with dire consequences for social solidarity. 

John Fetterman and the Politics of Disability

by Anya Jabour

The personal became political for a historian who experienced disability similar to that affecting the new Pennsylvania senator on the campaign trail. The media must significantly readjust its framing of how disability impacts the ability to perform work. 

The Hamline Fiasco is no Isolated Incident

by David M. Perry

The key issues at stake in the dismissal of an adjunct art history professor for showing a reverential image of the Prophet Muhammad aren't about campus culture or religious freedom. They're about administrative power and labor relations in modern academia. 

The Demographic Shift Behind Israel's Ascendant Religious Zionists

by Michael Brenner

Demographics are pushing Orthodox religious nationalists, who are led by West Bank settlers, to political power that is forcing confrontations over both secularism and the occupation. This bloc is growing rapidly less friendly to compromise with secularists, Arabs, or LGBTQ Israelis.

Oil and Spills Have Always Gone Hand in Hand

by Nolan Varee

Transporting a toxic substances quickly over long distances to market will inevitably produce spills. Though the technology of oil transport has changed, this essential fact remains unchanged, and will as long as regulation treats the risk as an acceptable part of the business.

What Can We Learn from the 1923 Speaker Fight?

by Christopher McKnight Nichols and Maxine Wagenhoffer

Intraparty factionalism was prevalent then as now, but the most recent speaker battle shows that the forces of party discipline that could moderate factional strife have fallen away, making bomb-throwing and grandstanding politically rewarding.