After fifteen years at the helm of the most important historical association in the world, Jim Grossman is stepping aside. Here is Ryan Quinn at Inside Higher Ed: A chapter of history is closing: Jim Grossman is retiring after 15 […]
Jimmy Carter’s Farewell Address: Nuclear disarmament, environmental stewardship, and human rights
January 14, 1981: Read it here.
Commonplace Book #306
On all sides, key public intellectuals, activists, politicians, and the various institutions they represent have, for all practical purposes, given up trying to work through their differences. Few, it would seem, have the appetite for it. What, they might plausibly […]
Jimmy Carter’s “life was a testament to the goodness of God”
Here is Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason Carter today at the former president’s memorial service: I was struck by three things during the service There was a different kind of “power” on display here. Watch the recessional here: Until the very […]
Reviving intellectual life in the university is “more than simply promoting the humanities or encouraging interdisciplinary study”
Earlier today I posted on Steven Mintz’s categorization of university professors. Read it here and figure out where you fall in Mintz’s taxonomy. Mintz’s categorized professors as part of his larger thoughts on how to make universities less anti-intellectual. Here […]
What kind of professor are you?
Here’s a post for the academics who read this blog. Over at his Inside Higher Ed blog, historian Steve Mintz writes: “As an academic, I’ve encountered a complicated taxonomy of professors that goes beyond these stereotypes.” He suggests ten categories […]
Pamela Paul: “it would be better if the A.H.A. as an institution never weighed in on political conflicts”
Yesterday we called your attention to the American Historical Association’s resolution on “scholasticide” in Gaza. Get up to speed here. Today, New York Times columnist Pamela Paul, who attended the AHA business meeting where the resolution was approved, weighs in. […]
Commonplace Book #305
While many worry about fragmentation, polarization, and the potential for violence, among leading political actors, the idea of a common good sought through common hopes is nowhere invoked, much less pursued. The ethical boundaries that define solidarity are erected and […]
Russell Moore on Jimmy Carter’s salvation
Back In December, a podcaster asked Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, if Jimmy Carter was a “born-again Christian.” Jimmy Carter always said he was a born-again Christian, but the podcaster’s question seemed to […]
The American Historical Association votes to condemn “scholasticide” in Gaza
From the AHA website: Whereas the US government has underwritten the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign in Gaza with over $12.5 billion in military aid between October 2023 and June 2024; Whereas that campaign, beyond causing massive death and injury […]
Peter Wood’s “Black Majority” turns 50
When I started teaching colonial American history twenty-five years ago, Peter Wood’s Black Majority: Race, Rice, and Rebellion in South Carolina was on the syllabus. I used to teach it alongside Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery-American Freedom. (Today my students no […]
‘Don’t Look Up’: Three years later
Some of you may remember Adam McKay’s movie Don’t Look Up. Wikipedia describes it an “apocalyptic political satire black comedy.” The film starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl […]
Jimmy Carter at Washington D.C.’s First Baptist Church
Over the weekend I watched a 2023 C-SPAN piece on Jimmy Carter’s relationship with the First Baptist Church in Washington D.C. The Carters arrived at First Baptist on the Sunday after his inauguration and immediately applied for membership. The C-SPAN […]
Commonplace Book #304
Puritan perfectionism has, in fact, survived its pluralization into faiths other than Calvinism, and it has survived its pluralization into faiths other than Calvinism, and it has survived its secularization into movements that are self-consciously nonreligious. That ethos endures and […]
Commonplace Book #303
Outrage against a grievance caused by others, then, becomes the source of authentic identity and authentic action. In this strange calculus, the more rage the better. In turn, rage, hatred, and the desire for revenge that emanate from injury become […]
James Kirby Martin, RIP
I met James Kirby Martin once. We both spoke at the Fort Ticonderoga Seminar on the American Revolution in 2009. I did not know him well, but he was always kind to me following that meeting and I have learned […]
What does Reinhold Niebuhr’s “spiritual discipline against resentment” look like on the fourth anniversary of January 6th?
This is a question I want to start thinking about. Today I feel full of resentment and unhealthy anger. As the Senate certified the 2024 election results, confirming Donald Trump’s electoral college victory, I could not get over the fact […]
The “cultural and political rot” that led to the January 6, 2021 insurrection
Here is a taste of Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield’s piece, “The Internet Is Worse Than a Brainwashing Machine“: Conspiracy theorizing is a deeply ingrained human phenomenon, and January 6 is just one of many crucial moments in American history […]
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What Mike Pence learned from Al Gore
It’s January 6th. Later today, Vice President Kamala Harris will certify the 2024 presidential election. She will do what Al Gore did in 2000 and Mike Pence did in 2020. Here is Mickael Kruse at Politico: Last summer, in a […]