"Churchill was the apotheosis of the historically-minded statesman, committed to the idea of history as progress in which the role of great men was to suppress ordinary moral compunctions about destructive events that forwarded it."
As a historian, I see recent attacks on indigenous Americans and intrusions on tribal lands as part of a lengthy tradition of violence. But this year has witnessed a surge in apologetics for colonial violence in history that give support to present-day harm.
The Nobel Prize Commiteee has departed from Alfred Nobel's wishes to honor the cause of global demilitarization and disarmament in favor of statements of political favor in the awarding of the Peace Prize.
A scholar of presidential politics suggests that a first Biden term is more likely than a second Trump term to achieve sweeping change through the political process, though it's far from certain Biden seeks a transformative presidency.
If there is to be a healthy conservative presence in the Republican Party and the American political system, supporters and enablers of Donald Trump's abuses will need to be cleared out.
The author of a new history of the Israel-Palestine conflict argues that a myth of national innocence crafted by Israel and embraced by the United States impedes pragmatic compromise and costs lives through ongoing violence.
The degree of anger, anxiety and agitation accompanying the presidential campaigns are signs we've failed to heed some important insights from a key observer of American democracy.
Donald Trump apparently does not believe in the concept of "bad publicity," which removes a major set of incentives for him to follow the lead of previous losers of bitter elections and exit the scene quietly.
Trump's encouragement of a nostalgic, pseudohistorical understanding of the past thwarts both the hope for betterment and the determined realism Americans need at this moment.
We must commend those who stood on line and stood up for democracy. That these people waited and then voted means that as a people we are still on track in preserving the Republic and what we contend, despite attacks on its value, it still stands for.
The Republicans' choice to push through Amy Coney Barrett's nomination with the backing of a minority of the country means a new Congress must consider corrective action in the name of justice and democracy.
"A tenth of Europe's pre-war population of Jewish children survived the Holocaust. Many sought and achieved reunification with their families, but reunification did not usually end the trauma endured by this "fragment of an entire generation."
The bizarre idea that COVID-19 can be defeated through manliness is one of the stranger cultural themes of our time, but it connects to a long history of anxiety about masculinity.
After witnessing firsthand the depth of struggle needed to secure the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the author says the 2013 Supreme Court decision to gut the VRA and subsequent acts by state governments to suppress the vote "betray the most basic principle of democracy."
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