History

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 […]

Archaeology

Medieval Crusaders in Levant Married, Recruited Locals, DNA shows

contributors

News article by the Communications Team | – (Wellcome Sanger Institute) – Sanger Institute researchers have produced whole-genome sequences from skeletons discovered in a 13th Century burial pit in Sidon, Lebanon. The DNA sequences reveal that some of the dead were Crusaders, some were locals to the region, and some were decendents of mixed relationships […]

Colonialism

How Colonialists Led the Way to our Environmental Crisis of Over-Exploitation

The Conversation

By Joseph McQuade | – We are currently experiencing the worst environmental crisis in human history, including a “biological annihilation” of wildlife and dire risks for the future of human civilization. The scale of that environmental devastation has increased drastically in recent years. Mostly to blame are anthropogenic, or human-generated factors, including the burning of […]

Donald Trump

America’s current Racism, Patriarchy and Fear of Immigrants Eerily look like 1919

Arnold R. Isaacs

By Arnold R. Isaacs | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Reading about immigration policy, religious and racial bigotry, and terrorism fears in America in 1919 offers an eerie sense of decades melting away and past and present blurring together. The blend isn’t exact. Bigotry was expressed much more explicitly a century ago, not in code as it […]

Featured

On the Universalism of Notre Dame, from Muslim Arches to the Goddess of Reason

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The tragedy of the burning of the 800-year-old Notre Dame is a loss for global culture. Regular readers know that I grew up partially in France, and I love Paris with a passion. I remember visiting Notre Dame with my parents as a child. Perhaps there is a faded Kodak […]