Category: Political Science

Evan Faulkenbury: What Does Tax Policy Have to Do with the Civil Rights Movement?

Today we welcome a guest post from Evan Faulkenbury, author of Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South, just published by UNC Press. The civil rights movement required money. In the early 1960s, after years of grassroots organizing, civil rights activists convinced nonprofit foundations to donate in support of voter education… Continue Reading Evan Faulkenbury: What Does Tax Policy Have to Do with the Civil Rights Movement?

African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Political Science/Politics/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

Evan Faulkenbury: Who Deserves Credit for the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

Today we welcome a guest post from Evan Faulkenbury, author of Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South, just published by UNC Press. The civil rights movement required money. In the early 1960s, after years of grassroots organizing, civil rights activists convinced nonprofit foundations to donate in support of voter education… Continue Reading Evan Faulkenbury: Who Deserves Credit for the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Political Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

Aram Goudsouzian: Politics, Old and New

Today we welcome a guest post from Aram Goudsouzian, author of The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America, just published by UNC Press. The presidential election of 1968 forever changed American politics. In this character-driven narrative history, Aram Goudsouzian portrays the key transformations that played out over that dramatic year.… Continue Reading Aram Goudsouzian: Politics, Old and New

American History/Author blog entry/Political Science/Politics/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

February 15, 2018

Gregg A. Brazinsky: South Korea: The Unappreciated Ally

Today we welcome a guest post from Gregg A. Brazinsky, author of Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy, and more recently, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. Here, Professor Brazinsky discusses the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and that nation’s fraught relationship with the United States. ### South… Continue Reading Gregg A. Brazinsky: South Korea: The Unappreciated Ally

American History/Author blog entry/Current Events/Political Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

November 16, 2017

Irfan Ahmad: Beyond Trump’s Notion of the “Pathetic Critic”

Today we welcome a guest post from Irfan Ahmad, author of Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace. Professor Ahmad is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Studies in Göttingen, Germany. In Religion as Critique, Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and… Continue Reading Irfan Ahmad: Beyond Trump’s Notion of the “Pathetic Critic”

Anthropology/Author blog entry/Current Events/Islamic Studies/Middle Eastern Studies/Political Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

September 29, 2017

John Hayes: On Class, Religion, and Politics

Today we welcome a guest post from John Hayes, author of Hard, Hard Religion: Interracial Faith in the Poor South, on the history behind the increasing importance of class and religion on today’s American political landscape. In his captivating study of faith and class, John Hayes examines the ways folk religion in the early twentieth century allowed the South’s poor–both… Continue Reading John Hayes: On Class, Religion, and Politics

African American Studies/Current Events/Political Science/Politics/Religion/Southern Studies/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

September 23, 2017

Nicholas Grant: Apartheid South Africa and the 1957 Little Rock Crisis

Today we welcome a guest blog post from Nicholas Grant, author of Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960, on the South African government’s reaction to the 1957 crisis over the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Winning Our Freedoms Together examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing… Continue Reading Nicholas Grant: Apartheid South Africa and the 1957 Little Rock Crisis

Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Education/History/Political Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News

Gregg A. Brazinsky: Is China’s New World Order Really New?

Potentially, One Belt One Road can also raise Beijing’s international profile at the expense of Washington’s. Especially with the Trump administration intent on putting “America First,” the PRC has an opportunity to promote itself as a champion of free trade and assert its global leadership. The PRC is challenging the United States more subtly than during the 1950s and 1960s but it nonetheless aims to create a new balance of economic power in which China and other non-Western countries will play a more important role. Continue Reading Gregg A. Brazinsky: Is China’s New World Order Really New?

American History/Asian Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science

Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts: Reflections on John Shelton Reed

In our new book, The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People, we revisit and update a few of Reed’s key findings about the South. We focus particularly on the question of southern identity, exploring the powerful connection between southerners and their region. Continue Reading Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts: Reflections on John Shelton Reed

American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Political Science/Sociology/Southern Studies

Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts: Thinking About Southern Identity on the Way to Work

While the reasons for identity may vary across people, we find that southern identity is heightened when individuals are forced to contrast the South with other regions, and people. In writing this book, we had many people tell us that they became most aware of their southern identity when they moved away from the South for the first time. They recalled stories where someone questioned their accent, criticized their home region, or asked them if they spent their free time watching reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard. Continue Reading Christopher A. Cooper and H. Gibbs Knotts: Thinking About Southern Identity on the Way to Work

Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Political Science/Southern Studies

October 20, 2016

Lon Kurashige: When Buddhism Was an Enemy Religion

A few months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the FBI took my grandfather away from his wife and seven children and confined him and hundreds of other Buddhist priests apart from their families and congregations. Their main “crime” was to be leaders of an enemy religion. There was no evidence produced to implicate my grandfather or any Buddhist priest of wrongdoing. Continue Reading Lon Kurashige: When Buddhism Was an Enemy Religion

American History/Asian Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science/Religion

Laura Visser-Maessen: How Exploring Bob Moses’s 1960s Civil Rights Activism in Mississippi Can Modify America’s Current Terrorism Debate

Paris is only a five hour drive from my home in the Netherlands. I have strolled its streets many times, undoubtedly also those covered in blood after the November 2015 attacks. I have also passed through San Bernardino, California, and have stood regularly at the former World Trade Center site. Yet as I commemorate those victims of religious terrorism, I cannot but remember my meetings with black civil rights activist Bob Moses and his colleagues of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Their haunting tales of life in Mississippi in the 1960s wryly challenge some politicians’ and media pundits’ current claim to exclusivity for the term “terrorism” only in relation to Islam, reminding us that the most bloody and consistent trajectory of terrorism in the United States occurred under the banner of white supremacy. Continue Reading Laura Visser-Maessen: How Exploring Bob Moses’s 1960s Civil Rights Activism in Mississippi Can Modify America’s Current Terrorism Debate

African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science

Excerpt: The Ashley Cooper Plan, by Thomas D. Wilson

The political scientist Daniel J. Elazar identified three traditions of political culture in America, generally consistent with Tocqueville’s characterizations. New England political culture of the Puritans evolved to become moralistic political culture. This component of American character emphasizes community and civic virtue over individualism. It promotes the idea of participatory democracy and the positive role of government in addressing common problems. The Mid-Atlantic region produced individualistic political culture, which views government as a utilitarian necessity and seeks to limit its intrusion into private activities. Private initiative is held to be of higher importance than the public sphere. The South produced traditionalistic political culture, which elevates social order and family structure to a prominent role. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Ashley Cooper Plan, by Thomas D. Wilson

American History/Excerpts/History/Political Science

Laura Visser-Maessen: Bob Moses’s Lessons on the Meaning of Citizenship We Need in Today’s Race Debates

After the 2015 riots in Baltimore and elsewhere, I was struck—though not surprised—by many of the media’s depictions of its black inhabitants, as if they were irrational, self-defeating hoodlums, rather than emphasizing stories like that of Wayne, one of several hundred students in Baltimore’s public schools who participate in the Algebra Project (AP). Wayne had been kicked out of several schools until his AP involvement made him realize “what I can do inside of school and how I can help other people.” Continue Reading Laura Visser-Maessen: Bob Moses’s Lessons on the Meaning of Citizenship We Need in Today’s Race Debates

African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science

Excerpt: The Ashley Cooper Plan, by Thomas D. Wilson

Ashley Cooper’s Grand Model was the ultimate product of English colonial policy, political philosophy, and city planning prior to the Enlightenment. The Fundamental Constitutions and “instructions,” products of both Ashley Cooper and Locke, formed a body of law and policy written by two of the most astute minds of the time, tempered to be sure by the diverse opinions of the remaining seven Carolina proprietors. Within those documents, city planning (in the broad sense of the term used throughout) held an essential place in the overall design of the colony’s social structure, economy, and government. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Ashley Cooper Plan, by Thomas D. Wilson

American History/Art / Architecture/History/Political Science

Video: Sulmaan Wasif Khan on China, Tibet, and the Complications of “One Country, Two Systems”

In the following video, Khan talks about China’s takeover of Tibet, the complications of the “one country, two systems” policy of governing, and the importance of the role of non-state actors in shaping the trajectory of empire. Continue Reading Video: Sulmaan Wasif Khan on China, Tibet, and the Complications of “One Country, Two Systems”

Asian Studies/History/Political Science/Video

Michael H. Hunt: The Pentagon’s Durable Asian Fairy Tale

The Pentagon’s fairy tale history of U.S. involvement in eastern Asia appears alive and well. So at least statements made by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter during his recent visits in Singapore and Vietnam suggest. Following the lines of the mythology that seems to exercise strong appeal in official U.S. circles, Carter claimed that the United States by playing a pivotal military role in the region over the past seven decades has “helped maintain peace and stability.” (See the transcript of his address in Singapore on 30 May and his interview in Vietnam with the BBC dated 1 June.) Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: The Pentagon’s Durable Asian Fairy Tale

American History/Author blog entry/Columnists/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Michael H. Hunt/Military History/Political Science

November 5, 2014

Michael Barkun: Reverse Transparency in Post-9/11 America

Unlike the covert electronic infringements by the NSA, some other infringements are open and obvious—for example, security check-points at airports and government buildings, or surveillance cameras covering public spaces. These are examples of what I term “reverse transparency.” Traditionally, transparency has been a standard applied to organizations, such as corporations or governments, by which we require that their decisions be clear and open in order to permit accountability. Increasingly, however, under the pressure of homeland security concerns, this traditional conception has been, as it were, stood on its head. Continue Reading Michael Barkun: Reverse Transparency in Post-9/11 America

Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Political Science/Public Policy

August 28, 2014

Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Putin is pushing a new nationalist conservatism with a strong strain of anti-Americanism, promoting a vision of the United States as the primary conspirator pulling strings to foster international chaos and regime change.

As former Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul noted recently in the New Yorker, “Putin has a theory of American power that has some empirical basis.” The CIA overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, the United States bombed Belgrade to remove a dictator, and there is, of course, Iraq. However, a close examination of American policy toward Poland—the country the United States pushed hardest to break from the Soviet sphere in the 1980s—brings to the fore just how far the Russian president’s views are removed from reality. The United States is not nearly the revolutionary mastermind Putin seems to think it is. Continue Reading Gregory F. Domber: What Putin Misunderstands about American Power

Author blog entry/Current Events/European History/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science

Angie Maxwell: The Long Shadow of Scopes

When Bryan agreed to assist the prosecution in the 1925 Scopes trial that would test the Butler Act’s ban of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee, he was anything but new to the debate. Despite his progressive political record on issues such as women’s suffrage, Bryan’s swan song as an anti-evolution crusader was zealous and emphatic. He argued, wrote, and perhaps believed, that this single issue would erode American faith. For Bryan there was no middle, and his readers need only choose sides. His widespread essay on the subject was titled “The Bible and its Enemies,” and he considered the cause the greatest reform of his life. Science and even the experts who defense attorney Clarence Darrow had attempted to call at the trial, were adversaries in a zero-sum game that the world was watching. Continue Reading Angie Maxwell: The Long Shadow of Scopes

American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Political Science/Religion/Science