Новости за 02.11.2018

Related Link What historians said about the Kavanaugh hearings

Hand-written notes on a teenager’s calendar. Remembered whispered confidences. Letters of support signed by wealthy acquaintances. Letters of non-support signed by wealthy lawyers. Therapist records. Rate My Professor scores. The recent Kavanaugh hearings, and the broader #MeToo movement in which it unfolded, were less a contest of he-said/she-said and more a battle over evidence. As each side put forward its case, they made... Читать дальше...

Something went terribly wrong on the night that rough, tough staff sergeant Donna Caine, a seasoned drill instructor, led her regiment of U.S. Marines on a march through a tidal swamp at Parris Island, South Carolina, to bring the discordant group a little discipline. Five of them, two men and three women, died. It was a tragedy covered by CNN and other networks, focused national attention on Caine and the Corps and damaged the defense Department’s program to further integrate women into the Corps. Читать дальше...

The Czechs are commemorating a number of events this year, including the founding of the National Museum (200 years ago), the Revolution of 1848 (170 years ago), the establishment of Czechoslovakia (100 years ago), the Munich Agreement (80 years ago), the beginning of the communist regime (70 years ago), and the Warsaw Pact invasion (50 years ago). Czechoslovakia’s centennial, on 28 October, is the most significant of these events and has received intense media coverage in the Czech Republic because of the republic’s founder... Читать дальше...

Statue of Hamilton by Giuseppe Ceracchi (Courtesy: Jerry L. Thompson for the Boston Athenæum)

When Halloween came around in 1960 John F. Kennedy, while campaigning for president, came across a unique trick or treat event. This ghoulish party was not about collecting candy but instead raising money for the UN agency fighting child hunger and disease-UNICEF. JFK loved it! Kennedy remarked at a shopping plaza in Willow Grove where the UNICEF party took place, "I think that is in the best tradition of this country’s humane and sympathetic effort." Kennedy continued speaking about fighting hunger and disease in his short speech. Читать дальше...

As Labor Day came and went last month, many no doubt gave thanks for the low unemployment rate. At the same time the Democratic Party Labor Day BBQ saw presidential candidates, elected officials and activists touting proposals for a job guarantee to ensure full employment. Why bother if the population out of work is at historic lows? 

“Never trust anyone over thirty.” These words, uttered by Jack Weinberg, an activist at the University of California at Berkeley, became a famous slogan of the 1960s student left. It was catchy, but also contributed to a lazy portrayal of the student movement as the political equivalent of a fraternity prank. It was easily mocked: Kirkpatrick Sale, in his landmark study of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) ironically noted that on April 4, 1970 Weinberg himself turned thirty.

That question was posed recently at a Patriot Week talk I gave commemorating the bicentennial of Douglass’s birth. Created in 2009, Patriot Week is the brainchild of Judge Michael Warren and his daughter Leah of Oakland County, Michigan. Now celebrated in ten states, it aims to further our appreciation and discussion of America’s first principles and culminates on September 17 in Constitution Day, a federally-mandated observance in educational institutions that receive federal assistance of any kind. Читать дальше...

There was, once upon a time, an extremely popular genre of American biographical literature, going back at least to Parson Weems’s hagiography of George Washington, written with the explicit purpose of inspiring young boys (and only boys) to emulate the example of great leaders and accomplish great things. That genre is now regarded with amused condescension if not contempt and state US history curriculum standards, often echoing the ideology of Howard Zinn, identify few if any praiseworthy individuals... Читать дальше...

The upcoming presidential election campaign of 2020 may offer more potential candidates from a single state in our history.

After attending six President Trump rallies in October 2018, the New Yorker’sSusan Glasser wrote, “The biggest difference between Trump and any other American President, however, is not the bragging. It’s the cult of personality he has built around himself and which he insists upon at his rallies.” She added that he calls to the stage other Republican politicians who flatter him with lines like “Is he not the best President we have ever had?” and he is “the strongest President we have seen in... Читать дальше...

The hateful events of the past week – the anti-Semitic massacre in a Pittsburgh synagogue, the attempted bombing of two former presidents and other critics of President Donald Trump, the apparently racist murder of two African Americans in a Louisville Kroger’s after a failed attempt to invade a Black church – have provoked many Americans to consider the ways that Trump’s bigoted, violent rhetoric has poisoned our nation. It is true that Trump’s persistent appeals to racial and nativist prejudice... Читать дальше...

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

—George Eliot

Bradley Bagshaw is known as an outstanding Seattle trial lawyer and an expert in maritime law. He spent decades representing individuals and families against fishing corporations and also represented parties in cases involving civil rights, including same-sex couples who were pioneers in the quest for marriage equality.

Now he’s left litigation behind and he’s embarking on a new path as a writer with his rousing debut novel Georges Bank... Читать дальше...

For many years now one of the rituals of the baseball season, along with spring training the All Star Game and the World Series is journalists and pundits announcing that baseball is less popular than ever and is no longer America’s game. This has become as much part of baseball as rookie sensations, tension filled playoff games, the news that another top pitcher needs Tommy John surgery and a big trade at the deadline. However, some perspective is necessary here. Baseball is by many measures... Читать дальше...

Statue at the Emancipation Memorial in Washington DC.

Archer Alexander was an enslaved African who fought for freedom from bondage during the American Civil War. His story recently came to light when a 23andMe genetic test showed that Alexander was an ancestor of Muhammad Ali. He was Ali’s great-great-great grandfather, although Ali did not know of the relationship and probably did not know Alexander’s story.

Alexander’s biography was written and published in 1885 and is available... Читать дальше...

Writing in 1926 Albert Einstein made a discovery of another’s scientist’s work which he thought was equal to his own accomplishments. “The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us that the human race is poor in independent thinking and creative imagination. Even when the external and scientific requirements for the birth of an idea have long been there, it generally needs an external stimulus to make it happen” man has to stumble right up against the thing before the idea comes.”

The dreaded cookies.

James W. Loewen is a sociologist.  The New Press has just brought out new paperbacks of Loewen's bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me, and Sundown Towns, about places that were/are all-white on purpose. 

America has too many lawyers. Or at least, higher ed does.  

Consider Princeton. This week I spoke at its Department of History, co-sponsored by the Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. But first I had to sign a contract. 

Princeton sent me a doozy. Читать дальше...

In an article published in HNN on October 8, 2018, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi criticizes the Middle East Studies Association for the concerns it expressed regarding the partnering of theNew York Times with George Washington University (GWU)’s Program on Extremism (POE) to “produce a public archive of thousands of Islamic State (ISIS) documents the newspaper retrieved from northern Iraq.”He notes the importance of access to materials to write the history of this period, and reports that he himself... Читать дальше...

Throughout the The Prince and his other political works, Machiavelli cautions that internal subversion is the most dangerous consequence of a prince losing the trust of his subjects. To guard against this, a prince must never appear frivolous, unprincipled, fickle, or shallow. Instead, he must always appear to adhere to “certain values of virtu.” If he can do this, a prince will avoid the greatest danger of all: revolt from within. “Internal subversion is more perilous than external attacks,” Machiavelli cautions... Читать дальше...

The Midwest is the heartland of America, both in history in the past, and in the political present and future.

Like many people, I have watched over the past few weeks as women have been attacked from all sides. This is, unfortunately, nothing new. Yet, what has occurred over the course of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination process has been particularly painful for many women. As Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick have faced an all-out assault for daring to ask for accountability and justice, I watched as women I knew had their own pasts, their own trauma, brought to the surface. I watched... Читать дальше...

Bombardment of San Juan del Norte (Greytown), July 13, 1854 by USS Cyane.

Kurt Vonnegut, who died in 2007, was one of Americas most gifted writers, a marvelously innovative playwright and novelist who gave us the brilliant 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five and other books and short stories that were wildly original, tragic humor at its very best. One of his stellar works was the 1970s play Happy Birthday, Wanda June. A revival of it opened last weekend at the Duke Theater on W. 42d Street, New York. It is daffy, absurd, eclectic, bawdy and just wonderful.