Classical histories are in vogue as explanations for the Coronavirus-fueled tensions between the United States and China. A political science scholar argues that an influential theory gets Thucydides backwards.
The Greatest Generation won a world war and fed the hungry. We need that same spirit today as we face the Coronavirus menace and a world hunger crisis.
An oral historian of medical care in the South observes that the current crisis shows weaknesses in the fabric of society that would have long been obvious to policymakers if they were more inclined to listen to ordinary people.
The Trump administration's adoption of immigration restrictions during the COVID crisis echoes the racial and economic agenda of the white settler regime in Rhodesia.
JFK's diligent campaigning in West Virginian in 1960 overcame the state's suspicion of his Catholic faith and later put Appalachia on the nation's policy agenda.
There is ample evidence Booth declared his intention--complete with racist invective-- to kill Lincoln after hearing the President state his willingness to make black Union soldiers citizens. The quote helps keep Booth's motives in focus for students of history.
The U.S. diplomats who left China in 1949 left oral histories that are now archived at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Their stories warning how how misunderstandings, misplaced hopes, and missed opportunities can poison relations between great powers.
In a country with segments of people who deny science, act on revelation, see regular events as either conspiratorial or supernatural, COVID-19 offers a platform for misinformation and agitation.
In a crisis, unity and cooperation have been the positive sides of consumer politics. But they have always fought against price gouging, suspicion and stereotyping.
A virus doesn’t discriminate. But our social structures, systemic biases, and policy choices have made some populations particularly vulnerable. This pandemic has changed us. We must make changes so this tragedy, like the Holocaust, isn’t repeated.
It is time to start demanding a successor to the National Youth Administration to meet the educational and economic needs of students--and to ask who in Washington will carry the torch that Eleanor Roosevelt raised during the Depression decade as the champion of low income youth.
America’s colleges taught Western civilization for centuries before the curricular disruptions of the 1960s, and the topic’s appeal was trans-partisan.
The exact distribution of power in American federalism is debatable. But any federal arrangement demands consistency so that states and the federal government can cooperate in an emergency. That seems beyond the Trump administration.
Researchers who view Boko Haram as a Nigerian unsurgency need to understand its history as part of pan-African Islamist networks; responses to extremism must work across national borders.
