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  • 1/25/2021

    Biden's Inaugural and the Return of History

    by Paul J. Welch Behringer

    Joseph Biden's inaugural address signals a willingness to return to learning from history that may encourage the empathy and humilty elected officials need to solve the nation's problems. 

  • 1/24/2021

    Misremember the Alamo

    by Douglas Sackman

    Like most Americans, when Trump tries to "remember the Alamo," he gets it all wrong. His recent visit to Alamo, Texas was 240 miles south of the mission so holy to many Texans, but it was closer in spirit than Trump probably realized. 

  • 1/24/2021

    Will Eugene Goodman Share the Fate of Frank Wills?

    by Adam Henig

    Congress and the nation have celebrated the heroic actions of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who distracted a mob to give members of Congress time to reach safety. When his momentary fame fades, Goodman deserves better than another unexpected hero, Watergate security guard Frank Wills. 

  • 1/22/2021

    Kamala Harris and the Modern Vice Presidency

    by Richard Moe

    Kamala Harris seems poised to exert influence over policy and legislation as vice president. In this sense, she will carry forward the evolution of the office, according to a former vice presidential chief of staff who contributed to the development of the "modern vice presidency." 

  • 1/17/2020

    The Politics of an Inauguration Unlike Any Other

    by Michael A. Genovese

    Joe Biden's inauguration will be unlike any other, but he will need to draw on inaugural traditions of declaring purpose and invoking solidarity if he is to begin to repair national division.

  • 1/17/2020

    Confronting "Who We Are"

    by Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson

    The Capitol riots should prompt consideration of how racism is sustained by mainstream institutions and operates through everyday patterns of thought and action, as much as in open eruptions of violence. 

  • 1/17/2020

    Restoring Civil Society by Executive Order?: An Inaugural Reverie

    by John L. Godwin

    Joe Biden should defend the First Amendment right to peaceable assembly by a temporary emergency order criminalizing the carrying of firearms at public protest events and make clear that the threat of force is not part of the democratic process.

  • 1/17/2021

    The Great Evasion

    by Lawrence Wittner

    Joe Biden should reverse the nation's long dereliction of duty in leading the world toward nuclear disarmament and reducing the threat of nuclear war.

  • 1/17/2021

    Were Trump's Pardons Even Legal?

    by James D. Zirin

    Almost all the pundits, constitutional lawyers, and members of the professoriate are laying down their arms, largely conceding that the President has broad powers to pardon anyone in the world, with the possible exception of himself. But are they giving too much away?"

  • 1/14/2021

    Donald Trump’s Situational Fascism

    by Gavriel Rosenfeld

    Rather than engage in an unproductive debate about whether Donald Trump is or is not a bona fide fascist, scholars should consider the events of January 6 (and Trump's role in inciting them) as emergent, contingent results of the interplay of factors latent in American liberal democracy.

  • 1/14/2020

    Historians, Insurrectionists and Fragile White Folks

    by James Brewer Stewart

    A historian of abolition and an advocate of racial justice argues that historians must reject the psychological framework of some recent popular antiracist books and learn from the history of activists embodying Frederick Douglass's call for a "moral revolution" through engagement with others.

  • 1/13/2021

    The Problem with a Self-Pardon

    by Robert J. Spitzer

    It is likely that the issue of a president's ability to pardon himself will be contested in short order. A constitutional scholar of the presidency explains why such an action cannot be countenanced in a society of law. 

  • 1/13/2021

    Trump's Nero Decree

    by Frank Domurad

    Adolf Hitler coped with the realization of incipient defeat by ordering the destruction of vital infrastructure in Germany as vengeance against a people who had, he believed, failed him. Donald Trump has been taking a similar approach to the nation's infrastructure and the COVID response (except for the border wall). 

  • 1/12/2020

    The Long Overdue End of the “Serious Conservative"

    by Charles J. Holden

    Two darlings of the conservative movement – Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – found themselves in hot water last week after supporting the false narrative of election fraud that inspired the Capitol rioting. It's part of a long legacy of media-anointed "serious conservatives" whose smarts have been inflated.

  • 1/12/2021

    A New "Trump Precedent" Under the 25th Amendment?

    by Devan Charles Lindey

    If the vice president and cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from the powers of the presidency, it would set a new precedent in the largely uncharted territory of dealing with Presidential incapacity.