Mark Leopold— From the beginning of my research into the life of the notorious Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, I noticed the frequency with which contemporary commentators (especially but not only British ones) described him as a “buffoon.” So I was interested when, sometime around 2015, the same word became increasingly applied,
Sal Nicolazzo— In his Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms—the precursor to The Wealth of Nations—Adam Smith defines “the objects of police” as “the cheapness of commodities, public security and cleanliness.” This broad mandate for “police”—most of which has little or nothing to do with crime prevention—may sound idiosyncratic to
Vernon Bogdanor— Is Britain part of Europe? Of course, geographically we certainly are part of Europe. But politically? The answer is by no means clear. Britain has long had an ambivalent relationship with the Continent. It is apparent even in the way that we speak. We speak of entering Europe
Steven B. Smith— The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump ended in an acquittal by a vote of 57-43. Democrats could take some comfort in the fact that it was the largest bipartisan vote in any impeachment trial, although it was a virtually foregone conclusion that they would fail to
Christian Lund— In 2013, my friend Oji and I were talking to a group of villagers not far from Garut, in West Java. The land around had been the object of dispute and struggle for generations. It had been taken over from Javanese nobility and peasants by Dutch planters in
Transmissions is an installation, a collage of several art forms, a revisionist investigation of New York modernism and sexual expression, and an essay in queer theory…. The juxtapositions show that Transmissions is a work of creative imagination as much as revelation. You go to sample it as history, you absorb
Michael Hattem– For a few decades, American history has played a prominent role in the most current iteration of culture wars in the United States. We saw this most recently in some of the ways that President Trump motivated his base in the 2020 presidential election. These included holding “the
Janek Wasserman— Americans searching Amazon’s best-seller list in June 2010 would have encountered a surprising title at the top, above the likes of books by Stieg Larsson, George W. Bush, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Lewis: Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. The “Definitive Edition” had appeared in 2007, yet it sold only
David Western— Over the course of barely two centuries, subsistence herding and farming societies tied to rainfall and the seasons have coalesced into a global society and interwoven economy. Amboseli, situated beneath the rising mass of Kilimanjaro in Kenya, gives a snapshot of the last vestiges of the Neolithic Age
Jack M. Balkin— The two important federal challenges brewing in the courts—the struggle over California’s Proposition 8 and the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act—converged on the Supreme Court’s docket in the election year of 2012. In the California case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Supreme Court held 5–4 that