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  • 1/26/20

    1,056 Feet: Why I Needed the 1619 Project Growing Up

    by Derek Litvak

    The 1619 Project is not interested in retelling America’s founding story. It seeks to forge a new one. The people who contributed to this effort know full well those like myself, who grew up in the drainage ditches of America, in the long shadow of a bright star, need to hear this history. Demands to “stick to the facts” often sideline or silence our story. 

  • 1/26/20

    Could the Climate Crisis Be “The Good News of Damnation”?

    by Lawrence Wittner

    There is no other solution to the onrushing climate catastrophe than for people and nations to forget their tribal animosities and start behaving as part of a world society. The climate crisis, like the prospect of nuclear annihilation, really is “the good news of damnation.”  And we can only overcome it by working together.

  • 1/26/20

    Justin Amash On the Exquisite Veracity of Truth Telling

    by Dan Roberts

    Justin Amash is preceeded by three other courageous American politicians — Alexander Butterfield, Margaret Chase Smith, and Edmond Ross — who were unwavering champions of truth-telling, consequences be damned. 

  • 1/20/20

    George Orwell, 70 Years Later

    by John Rodden

    Would the visionary author of Nineteen Eighty-Four have ever imagined that George Orwell might become the most important writer since Shakespeare and the most influential writer who ever lived? 

  • 1/19/20

    A Courageous Catholic Voice Against Antisemitism

    by Stephen H. Norwood and Rafael Medoff

    As the harassment and beatings of Jews in the streets of Boston reached epidemic levels in 1943, one hundred Jewish boys and girls, ages 12 to 16, sent a poignant petition to the mayor. 

  • 1/19/20

    Ross Douthat's Prescription for Academia Won't Solve the Real Problem

    by Ed Simon

    Humanities departments have shrunk, tenure track jobs have disappeared, and the academy has increasingly come to rely upon an exploited underclass of contingent, part-time faculty. The argument of who exactly is responsible for this state of affairs rages on, but New York Times columnist Ross Douthat insists he knows the answer.

  • 1/12/20

    Trump Checks all of the Impeachment Boxes: Will it Matter?

    by Donald J. Fraser

    Unlike other presidents, Trump’s actions meet each of the requirements that the Framer’s laid out to impeach a president. Ironically, just as impeachment is needed most, the partisan tenor of the times may make it impossible to accomplish.

  • 1/12/20

    Can America Recapture Its Signature Exuberance?

    by Tracy Dahlby

    Walt Whitman understood transcendence of national mood is an uphill climb. Periods of division and strife sort new realities into a renovated sense of purpose. Yet periods of upheaval must necessarily lead to a refitting, not obliteration, of our common story or democracy is toast.

  • 1/5/20

    A Historian Reflects on the Return of Fascism

    by Lawrence Wittner

    In the last decade or so, enormous headway has been made by movements and parties following the old fascist playbook, with rightwing demagogues trumpeting its key elements of virulent nationalism, racial and religious intolerance, and militarism. 

  • 1/5/20

    Capitalism Versus Socialism: Did Capitalism Really Win?

    by Walter G. Moss

    The main task of voters in 2020 and thereafter will not be to choose whether we want capitalism or democratic socialism. Rather, it will be to decide the best pragmatic mix of the two (and best presidential candidate) to further the common good. 

  • 12/22/19

    Does truth matter less than it did in 1974?

    by Roy E. Finkenbine

    At the moment of the impeachment and pending trial of another president, there are still lessons to be learned from Watergate.  One of these is the sad story of Earl Landgrebe.

  • 12/22/19

    Americans Are Ready for a Different Approach to Nuclear Weapons

    by Lawrence Wittner

    Although today’s public protests against nuclear weapons can’t compare to the major antinuclear upheavals of past decades, there are clear indications that most Americans reject the Trump administration’s nuclear weapons policies.