I always enjoy reading Wesleyan College president Michael Roth‘s reflections on liberal arts education. In his recent piece at The New York Times, he reminds us that learning and freedom are always connected, regardless of age. Here is a taste:...
Matthew J. Clavin is Professor of American and Atlantic History at the University of Houston. This interview is based on his new book, Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War (NYU Press, 2023). JF: What led you to...
Giuliana Perrone is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This interview is based on her new book, Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law (Cambridge University Press, 2023). JF: What led...
Leslie M. Alexander is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. This interview is based on her new book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States (University...
Elliott Drago is Editorial Officer of the Jack Miller Center. This interview is based on his new book, Street Diplomacy: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom in Philadelphia, 1820-1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Street...
Alex Zakaras is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont. This interview is based on his new book, The Roots of American Individualism: Political Myth in the Age of Jackson (Princeton University Press, 2022). JF: What led...
Damian Pargas is Professor of the History and Culture of North America at Leiden University. This interview is based on his new book, Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to...
Michael Tomasky is the editor of The New Republic. Here is a taste of his piece, “The Right Wants to Freedom Us to Death”: Future historians—that is, if future historians are actual historians and not a bunch of hired-gun fascist...
Today as I read New York Times writer Jamelle Bouie’s recent column on vaccines, I was struck by these words. Is it any surprise that millions of Americans treat this fundamentally social problem — how do we vaccinate enough people...
Don’t mess with the rights of Americans. We are individuals. We are free. Mask and vaccine mandates are tyrannical. They are un-American. Don’t people know that the Bill of Rights is divinely inspired? I am not convinced that the kind...
I am teaching the American Revolution this semester. The other day, as we were reading and interpreting some primary documents, I asked the students to notice how the writers of these documents all seemed to use a similar political language....
Yesterday at The New York Times, Pope Francis published an excerpt of his new book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. He offers a devastating critique of the selfishness that we Americans try to pass off as...
What have Trump’s evangelicals been saying since our last update? It looks likes COVID-19 was present at Robert Jeffress’s Sunday morning political rally at First Baptist-Dallas. Newt Gingrich is on the Eric Metaxas Show today talking about his new book Trump and the American...
The title of this post comes from my friend Phil Levy:...
We introduced readers to The New York Times 1619 Project in this post. It now looks like there are some people who do not like the newspaper’s attempt to observe the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Here are a few...
As some of you know, I was at Princeton University last week for the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History summer seminar on colonial America. Each year the teachers take a tour of colonial-era Princeton. One of our stops is the Maclean...
In American history they have represented freedom and unfreedom. Here is Stony Brook historian Jared Farmer at the Oxford University Press blog: Extralegal violence committed by white men in the name of patriotism is a founding tradition of the United...
Loren Schweninger is Professor Emeritus of History at UNC Greensboro. This interview is based on his new book Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South (Oxford University Press, 2018). JF: What led you to write Appealing for Liberty? LS: For many years I have been interested...
Last night on CNN, host James Lemon had African-American public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson on his program. Lemon asked Dyson to respond to the comments Donald Trump made yesterday about historical monuments. Trump said: So this week, it is Robert...
Earlier today I posted a piece from Rod Dreher’s blog about patriotic worship. At the end of the piece I was struck by Dreher’s “update” in which he published a message he received from one of his readers. Here it...
