News at Home

• 
• 5/28/2023
  

  Dangerous Records: Why LGBTQ Americans Today Fear the Weaponization of Bureaucracy

  by Emily Hand

  Requests made by Texas's Attorney General for information about gender change requests on drivers' licenses and other documents alarmed transgender advocates because the data could support an official list of trans Texans at a moment when the group faces public vilification. History shows that innocent bureaucratic records can be used oppressively.

• 
• 5/21/2023
  

  Texas Judge Revives Anthony Comstock's Crusade Against Reproductive Freedom

  by Bill Greer

  The career of Anthony Comstock shows what can happen when a highly committed moral crusader gains traction in the political system. His rehabilitation in the contemporary abortion war is cause for concern. 

• 
• 5/21/2023
  

  AI the Latest Instance of our Capacity for Innovation Outstripping our Capacity for Ethics

  by Walter G. Moss

  The words of General Omar Bradley are as prescient as ever: "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

• 
• 5/21/2023
  

  Forget "Finding Forrester"—Our Best Teaching Can Be Ordinary

  by Elizabeth Stice

  Hollywood loves to tell the stories of singularly brilliant students pushed to greatness by similarly singular mentors with unconventional methods and unaccommodating personalities. This ideal won't help anyone teach the real students in their classrooms. 

• 
• 5/14/2023
  

  Contemporary Pundits Need a Refresher on Populism's History

  by Steve Babson

  "Elites who tar their critics in the U.S. with the sly pejorative of 'populist' count on our collective amnesia. They’d rather the real Populists remained forgotten, along with the potential they represented."

• 
• 5/14/2023
  

  How a Little-Known Anti-Vietnam Protest Reverberates Today

  by Gary B. Ostrower

  A 1968 disruption of an ROTC ceremony at Alfred University in 1968 involved just 15 students and 2 faculty. It won't be remembered with Berkeley or Columbia in the annals of student protest, but it made a significant impact on the legal requirements placed on universities' policies for dealing with student protest. 

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• 5/14/2023
  

  Brandon Johnson Built a Coalition to Win in Chicago. Can He Keep it to Govern?

  by Gordon K. Mantler

  When Brandon Johnson takes office on Monday as Chicago's mayor, he will experience the same challenge that his political predecessor Harold Washington did in 1983: turning a winning electoral coalition into a durable governing coalition. It won't be easy, but progressive change in the city depends on it. 

• 
• 5/14/2023
  

  Political Pundits, Apply the "Resentment" Label with Caution

  by Robert A. Schneider

  As the brief respite between two Trump-Biden races reaches its end, "resentment" is once again the go-to political explanation. But too often the term is used to describe voters as irrational and unhinged while obscuring some real causes of moral aggrievement in contemporary society. 

• 
• 5/7/2023
  

  Buried Footage Helped Chicago Police Get Away with Killing 10 Labor Activists in 1937

  by Greg Mitchell

  Paramount's newsreel division shot footage of the murderous attack on a steelworkers' march in 1937. They sided with the bosses by burying the footage. Even after Senator Robert LaFollette pushed for the film's release, cities banned it from the screen as Chicago prosecutors ruled the killings justifiable. A new documentary tells the story of the film. 

• 
• 5/7/2023
  

  "An Inconvenient Truth" Shows the Missed Opportunities to Act on Climate Change

  by Robert Brent Toplin

  Al Gore's documentary project was more influential on the public than on the political system when it came to advancing awareness of climate change. One wonders what might have been if Gore had been advancing his message from the Oval Office 20 years ago. 

• 
• 5/7/2023
  

  Let Us Now Praise R. DeSantis

  by Marc Stein

  "I can’t believe it’s taken this long to have a political leader take a stand against gender and sexuality!"

• 
• 5/7/2023
  

  The First Campgrounds Took the City to the Wilderness

  by Martin Hogue

  The growing popularity of the Model T put wilderness excursions within reach of ordinary city dwellers, bringing trash, fire, and pollution with them. The solution, mass campgrounds, made camping more accessible at the cost of rendering the experience more orderly, rule-bound, and urban. 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  Confronting the Roots of American-Style Fascism in One Family's History

  by Julie Carr

  What led Populist Party founder  Omer Madison Kem, the author's great grandfather, on a path from economic radicalism to eugenics? 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  Bipartisanship Once Took Flight—To Protect Birds

  by Will McLean Greeley

  Senator George McLean's successful effort to pass the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, one of the most important conservation laws in American history, reflected two virtues in short supply in Washington today: bipartisan cooperation and humility. 

• 
• 4/30/2023
  

  We Pay the Price for Failing to Treat Ex-Presidents as Ordinary Citizens

  by James D. Robenalt

  Deferential treatment given to Richard Nixon after his resignation, including not only his pardon but also lenient treatment by the Watergate grand jury, set precedents for impunity that the nation suffers from today. 

• 
• 4/23/2023
  

  Despite Popular Opposition, The Death Penalty Marches on Unabated

  by Rick Halperin

  A commitment to human rights cannot coexist with capital punishment. Political leaders must heed the growing public opposition to the death penalty and move to abolish it. 

• 
• 4/23/2023
  

  Jimmy Carter's Human Rights Legacy: A Lifetime in the Making

  by Richard Moe

  We should remember Carter as arguably the most consequential one-term president, because of his insistence on taking the long view through a moral lens. 

• 
• 4/23/2023
  

  Annelise Orleck on "Storming Caesar's Palace" and the Lessons of the Welfare Rights Movement

  by Michan Connor

  A leading historian of poor people's activism joins HNN for a discussion of the new edition of her acclaimed book on the Las Vegas Welfare Rights movement, which is the basis for a documentary now streaming on PBS. 

• 
• 4/9/2023
  

  If Universities are a Culture War Battleground, it's Time for University Workers to Fight Together

  by Jeff Kolnick

  "If higher education loses out in the culture wars, so too will American democracy. Our only hope is to enter the fray with our own culture in mind, and to insist on respect. If we stay on the sideline, we will lose."

• 
• 4/9/2023
  

  The Power and Betrayal of Cross-Ethnic Solidarity in the 1903 Oxnard Beet Strike

  by Frank P. Barajas

  The Japanese Mexican Labor Association overcame the deliberate ethnic division of the farm labor force in Oxnard, California to win a major strike in the sugar beet fields in 1903, overcoming violent repression. Anti-Asian prejudice in the broader labor movement ended this successful experiment to the detriment of generations of workers.