History

By Lubna Omar | – I used to be a Near Eastern archaeologist working in Syria. Nowadays, I am stuck in academic purgatory, observing from a great distance as the country burns, unable to help protect its history or its present. Syria sits within what’s known as the cradle of civilization. It’s part of the […]

Donald Trump

1917: The Racist, Right Wing Age of Delirium that Trump Resurrected

Tomdispatch

By Adam Hochschild | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Along rivers prone to overflowing, people sometimes talk of preparing for a 100-year flood — a dangerous surge of muddy, debris-filled water so overwhelming it appears only once a century. In our political world, we are now seeing a 100-year flood of toxic debris. The sludge washing ashore […]

Colonialism

Putting the American in Somali-American: Why does Ilhan Omar put a Scare into the US Power Elite?

Juan Cole

Reprint edition. By Juan Cole | – Trump has attempted to depict Rep. Ilhan Omar’s reformism as an expression of hatred for the US. It is not. It is a recognition of the dark underbelly of this country’s history, its entanglement in colonialism and slavery and class oppression. She makes this critique from a unique […]

Colonialism

Israel Systematically Hiding Documents Proving Expulsion, Oppression of Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Hagar Shezaf at the Israeli newspaper of record, Haaretz [“The Land”], reveals that a secretive Israeli agency has been systematically going through the country’s archives, including local repositories, and removing and classifying documents having to do with repressive and embarrassing Israeli actions toward Palestinians and Palestinian-Israelis. One such disappeared document […]

Bill of Rights

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July (in the Age of Trump)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised for the the Age of Trump: Your Fourth of July is tanks in the streets. My Fourth of July is James Madison’s warning, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” Your Fourth of July is unbathed refugee […]

Feminism

Cole in Time Magazine for the Fourth of July on Lydia Maria Child and Islam

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Time Magazine does an annual feature on unsung moments in American history for their 4th of July edition. This year they asked me to submit one of the 15 vignettes. Influenced by the work of Jeffrey Einboden on Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), I suggested as my unsung moment the 1855 […]

Colonialism

Great Powers in Latin America have Tried to Make Walls before: It didn’t End Well

The Conversation

By Alberto P. Marti | – Despite the US administration’s renewed interest in Cuba, including new travel restrictions, few have paid attention to a little-known, but telling, historical episode: the island’s 19th-century military “Trocha”. This massive fortified line was a Spanish attempt to contain the Cuban independence rebellion by splitting the island in half – […]

Featured

On D-Day: Remembering the Muslim Troops who Fought the Axis

Juan Cole

Updated. By Juan Cole One of the frustrations for a world historian is the unyieldingly parochial vision of the North Atlantic common among journalists and even many historians, and consequently among the public. The world leaders gathering for the D-Day commemoration should by all rights include the Pakistani and Indian prime , Indian Prime Minister […]

astronomy and outer space

No, Ben Shapiro, Science isn’t White

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In this clip via Twitter, Ben Shapiro, who is somehow touted as a serious thinker on the Right, alleges that the scientific method is peculiar to something he calls “the West.” He appears to think it consists of Greek empiricism mixed with what he terms a “Judeo-Christian” conviction that to […]