Join us as Professor Sung-Yoon Lee of Tufts University situates the current standoff within historical context and challenges common misconceptions about North Korean politics and society. We’ll unravel the history of U.S. involvement in the Korean Peninsula, analyze potential paths going forward, and discuss how you can help your students better understand the contexts and … Continued
Everybody has heard of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision, which held that state-mandated segregation of public education was unconstitutional. But how representative was Brown of the Supreme Court’s contributions to racial equality in American history? Have the Court’s rulings, on the whole, been more helpful or harmful to the … Continued
This webinar examines the relationship between white supremacy and the making of America in the long twentieth century. For many white Americans at the turn of the last century, “white supremacy” was a political program and a battle cry. A response to black freedom struggles, changing populations, and new economic orders, white supremacy set the … Continued
This seminar explores the historical contexts leading to the eruption of the uprisings known as the Arab Spring in early 2011. After a brief introduction to politics in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, we turn to the flowering of music, art, graffiti, poetry, film, and digital media that gave expression to the revolutionary unrest. This seminar … Continued
The United States first engaged with Vietnam in the immediate aftermath of World War II, as it struggled with the dilemmas of postwar reconstruction, the course of decolonization in Asia, and perceived Soviet aggression across the globe. Though largely unremarked at the time, during the late 1940s the administration of Harry S. Truman chose sides … Continued
In the recent presidential election, Mexico as a country of violence became a campaign issue. The United States and Mexico share a two thousand mile border; both countries are major trading partners; and U.S.-Mexican relations have long and complicated histories. This webinar explores this complex relationship through key historical moments from the Mexican Revolution to … Continued
While we often think about aviation in terms of heroes such as Charles Lindbergh or Amelia Earhart, an equally important story to tell is the role that the Federal government has played in shaping the American aviation industry. In this talk, we’ll look at the origins of flight, the creativity of the Wright Brothers, and … Continued
Comparisons between ancient Rome and the United States are suddenly all around us. Why, and what do they portend? Right around the time Jesus was born, ancient Rome’s 500-year-old republic failed. Its traditions of representative elections, checks and balances, tolerance, and freedoms of movement and expression were swept away, never to recover. In their place … Continued
Many Americans are fascinated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but we know very little about their histories. This webinar will use recently declassified documents to analyze the histories of both agencies and of the controversies that they’ve inspired. What were the original purposes of each agency, and … Continued
As the 20th century came to a close and the 21st began something occurred in the United States that was both internationally unparalleled and historically unprecedented. Between 1970 and 2017 more people were incarcerated in this country than were imprisoned anywhere else in the world, and at no other point in this nation’s recorded past … Continued