Gil Troy

Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University. His latest book — his tenth — is The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s .

---

• 
  Feb 14, 2016
  

  Sorry Hillary, America Already Had Its First Female President

  by Gil Troy

  Ambitious to her core, First Lady Edith Wilson acted as the U.S.’s first female president when her husband suffered a debilitating stroke.

  

• 
  Feb 9, 2016
  

  Hercules Mulligan: The Spy Who Saved George Washington—Twice

  by Gil Troy

  _{Hercules Mulligan not only had one of the Revolutionary War’s greatest names, this cunning haberdasher was also one of its best spies.}

  

• 
  Feb 2, 2016
  

  Baseball’s First Naughty Hall of Famers

  by Gil Troy

  Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Honus Wagner were not exactly role models off the field when picked eighty years ago for the first Hall class.
  

• 
  Jan 26, 2016
  

  The Jew Who Silenced America’s Earliest Anti-Semites

  by Gil Troy

  Americans besieged by today’s hateful rhetoric would be wise to look up Jacob Henry, whose seminal defense of his own faith—and others’—was once memorized by school children everywhere.
  

• 
  Jan 21, 2016
  

  The Man Who Brought Us T-Rex

  by Gil Troy

  Barnum Brown is perhaps the most important paleontologist—and without him there likely would not have been a Jurassic Park.
  

• 
  Jan 21, 2016
  

  How Obama has turned back the clock on race relations

  by Gil Troy

  Americans celebrating Martin Luther King Day today should be proud of the incredible progress made since the civil-rights leader’s birth 87 years ago. At the same time, we should lament one of President Obama’s greatest failures.
  

• Jan 21, 2016
  

  We, the People, Were the Losers at the Republican Debate

  by Gil Troy

  The candidates have yet to offer compelling alternatives to Obama—leaving us to languish in this political stalemate

  

• 
  Nov 18, 2015
  

  These Are the Five Revolutions of the 1990s (And One Counter-Revolution)

  by Gil Troy

  Coming to grips with them is necessary to understanding Bill Clinton. 
  

• 
  Oct 28, 2015
  

  The Gay Marriage Fight Between Hillary and Bernie: Setting the Record Straight

  by Gil Troy

  An historical tug of war only muddies the record, muddies reputations, and distorts the truth.
  

• 
  Oct 27, 2015
  

  It's Time to Acknowledge that Bill Clinton Dominated His Era Just as Reagan Did His

  by Gil Troy

  The media’s obsession with both Clintons’ character flaws have disappointed and distracted too many chroniclers.
  

• 
  Oct 16, 2015
  

  The Challenges of Writing about the Age of Clinton

  by Gil Troy

  The Start of an Historical Conversation
  

• 
  Dec 15, 2013
  

  The ASA Advances the Longstanding Anti-Zionist War on Academia

  by Gil Troy

  Boycotts are as anti-peace as they are anti-academic.

  

• 
  Sep 24, 2013
  

  Barack Obama’s Dainty Presidency

  by Gil Troy

  Why his credibility is at stake over Syria.
  
  

• 
  Jul 6, 2013
  

  America -- The Republic of Nothing?

  by Gil Troy

  
  Image via Shutterstock.

  Cross-posted from the National Post.

  As the United States celebrates its 237th anniversary this week, the country is undergoing dramatic changes demographically, structurally and ideologically. Last week, the Supreme Court made historic decisions about race relations and gay marriage, while the Senate advanced a major immigration reform, proposing a 13-year-process for transforming 11 million illegal aliens into citizens. America’s face is changing. But as the country becomes more diverse, dynamic, and broadminded, the challenges of retaining some ideological glue, some social stability, and some cultural thickness are growing exponentially. As America builds a Republic of Everything, it must not build a Republic of Nothing.

  

• 
  Jun 6, 2013
  

  How Come We Don’t Call RFK’s Assassination Palestinian Terrorism?

  by Gil Troy

  
  RFK moments after being shot by Sirhan Sirhan. Credit: Wiki Commons.

  Forty-five years ago, on June 6, 1968, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds. His assassination, coming five years after his brother Jack’s and two months after Martin Luther King’s, traumatized America. Amid the tumultuous 1960s, with youth rioting, crime soaring, blacks protesting, the Vietnam War souring, and these young, visionary leaders dying, Americans wondered: “is ours a sick society?” While America then needed reforming, the soul-searching around Robert Kennedy’s assassination was unmerited. The truth -- which most overlooked then -- was that this Kennedy assassination was the first major act of Palestinian terrorism targeting the United States.

  

• 
  Apr 19, 2013
  

  Why the Brits -- But Not the Yanks -- Quarreled over Thatcher's Finale

  by Gil Troy

  
  Credit: Flickr/rahuldlucca

  Most Americans are surprised that Margaret Thatcher’s death and funeral proved so divisive in Great Britain. In the United States, the eulogies hailing the “Iron Lady” for resurrecting British spirit, saving England’s economy and helping to defeat the Soviet Union, paralleled the warm farewell Americans gave Ronald Reagan when he died in June 2004. The more contentious British reaction -- including the surprising campaign to propel “Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead” to the top of the charts -- reveals differences in Thatcher’s and Reagan’s leadership styles, as well as enduring contrasts between British and American political culture.

  

• 
  Apr 16, 2013
  

  Israel at 65: Start-Up Nation and Embattled State

  by Gil Troy

  
  The particle accelerator of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science. Credit: Wiki Commons.

  Today, as Israel celebrates its sixty-fifth anniversary, it should be the toast of the world. A model “new nation,” the Jewish State may be the most successful of the post-colonial states that emerged in the twentieth-century’s wave of nation-building as the great nineteenth-century empires collapsed. Starting with little, Israel quickly developed a thriving democracy, a booming economy, and a list of impressive technological and pharmacological achievements that have made life worldwide easier, safer, happier, and longer-lasting. Yet, for all its accomplishments, the start-up nation has also been the embattled state, built on contested territory, surrounded by hostile enemies many of whom seek to destroy it.

  

• 
  Mar 29, 2013
  

  Moynihan's Moment ... Extended

  by Gil Troy

  

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan died ten years ago this week, on March 26, 2003. His remarkable career took him from Hell’s Kitchen to Harvard, from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to the Nixon and Ford administrations, and from serving as America’s U.N. Ambassador for only eight months, starting in July 1975, to New York’s senator for four terms, from 1977 to 2001. But Moynihan “was not interested in power,” his widow Elizabeth Moynihan recalls, “Pat was interested in access for his ideas.” His unconventional ideas continue to illuminate public debate, his patriotic vision of liberal national greatness remains relevant, and his towering presence is sorely missed.

  

• 
  Feb 7, 2013
  

  Ed Koch, Pat Moynihan, and the Politics of Patriotic Indignation

  by Gil Troy

  
  Left to right: New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, President Jimmy Carter, New York Governor Hugh Carey, and New York City Mayor Ed Koch at the White House on November 2, 1978. Via Flickr.

  The rapturous praise for the late New York Mayor Ed Koch tames his legacy, overlooking the fact that in 1988 the Atlantic called him “disgraceful” while the New York Times declared his “relentless … truculence” and “tantrum[s],” embarrassing and “inflammatory.” Beyond the kind sentiment, caricaturing Koch as a feisty lone gunslinger wisecracking his city back to health misses the deeper historical significance of Koch’s attempt to save liberalism from itself, as well as the broader ambivalence Americans have had with political anger.

  

• 
  Jan 24, 2013
  

  BFFs: America's Inauguration and Israel's Election Celebrated Democracy

  by Gil Troy

  

  This week, both America’s inauguration and Israel’s election demonstrated democracy’s vitality. Both special moments offered valuable lessons about the rational and mystical elements of this extraordinary form of government, based on liberty, mutual respect and consent of the governed.

  The inauguration was a legitimizing ceremony and a healing moment, inviting Americans to cheer their system’s stability, their government’s continuity, and the opportunity every fresh start represents -- even second terms. The U.S. president is both king and prime minister, head of state and head of government. Those kingly aspects have a magical, otherworldly dimension. The pageantry, the oath, the red, white and blue bunting, the inaugural balls, and, these days, the requisite dash of celebrity with Beyoncé lip-synching the Star Spangled Banner as Bill Clinton beamed in the background, reinforced the president’s place in America’s pantheon, linked to his legendary predecessors. The range of politicians on the podium, followed by the bipartisan Capitol Hill lunch -- rather than a Tea Party -- emphasized the celebration’s non-partisan patriotic character, as even disappointed Mitt Romney Republicans hailed their president.