Proponents of military force learned from Vietnam that their freedom of action depended on insulating the public from the effects of war. Contractors were an ingenuous solution to the problem of a public squeamish about fighting and killing. Continue Reading Election 2010: Making the Wars Go Away
David Ruggles (1810-1849) was one of the most heroic–and has been one of the most often overlooked–figures of the early abolitionist movement in America. Graham Russell Gao Hodges provides the first biography of this African American activist, writer, and publisher who secured liberty for more than six hundred former bond people, including Frederick Douglass. Hodges’s portrait of Ruggles establishes the… Continue Reading Interview: Graham Russell Gao Hodges
We welcome a guest post today from Carolyn de la Peña, author of Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda. In her book, de la Pena sheds light on the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda. In this post, she describes how these “sweet cheats” have… Continue Reading Carolyn de la Pena: What’s that diet soda teaching you?
The midterm election campaign now approaching the home stretch has brought with it striking but fairly empty calls to action–from the Tea Party frenzy over fiscal virtue to a president exhorting his base with the banal promise of “moving America forward.” But this and all the other lamentable features of our democracy, it is worth stressing, are nothing new. Many… Continue Reading American Democracy and the Challenge of Globalization
As we celebrate the University of North Carolina’s 217th anniversary on this University Day, chancellor Holden Thorp introduces a new project called “Innovate@Carolina: Important Ideas for a Better World” to lead the university forward. This three-year roadmap, described in detail at innovation.unc.edu, is designed to “build a culture of innovation that permeates every corner of campus, from the chemist in… Continue Reading The University Day Challenge: Innovate!
As we celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, we welcome a guest post from Hannah Gill, author of The Latino Migrant Experience in North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North State. In the book, Gill offers North Carolinians from all walks of life a better understanding of their Latino neighbors, bringing light instead of heat to local and national debates… Continue Reading Hannah Gill: Immigrant Youth and the High Stakes of Higher Education
Congratulations to Michael Walden, author of North Carolina in the Connected Age: Challenges and Opportunities in a Globalizing Economy, who has just been awarded the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Public Service. The award is intended “to encourage, identify, recognize, and reward distinguished public service and outreach by faculty across the University.” So what has Walden done… Continue Reading UNC system honors Mike Walden for helping make economics easier for the rest of us to understand
Earlier this week we posted lots of links to headlines about Susan Reverby’s discovery of U.S. medical experiments on nonconsenting Guatemalans in the 1940s. Today, she wrote in more detail about the discovery of this horrific medical history over at the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum: What might have been buried in an historical journal, however, took another step. To make… Continue Reading Reverby recalls discovery, Hadler puts Guatemala case in context
On Monday the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to the biologist who helped develop in vitro fertilization (IVF). As a New York Times op-ed noted, the honoree is “a man who was reviled, in his time, as doing work that was considered the greatest threat to humanity since the atomic bomb.” Thirty-two years later, there are millions of healthy,… Continue Reading Karey Harwood: IVF Kids: Are They Really All Right?
You’ve probably already heard: last Friday President Obama called President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala to apologize for a public health outrage committed 64 years ago. In 1946, American doctors, with the support of the Public Health Service, conducted experiments on prisoners, the insane, soldiers, and prostitutes, who were initially used to infect the prisoners. Though the institutions and governments involved… Continue Reading Susan Reverby Uncovers History of U.S. Medical Testing on Guatemalans
As the Supreme Court opens its 2010-2011 session today, we welcome a guest post from Marc Stein, author of Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe. Focusing on six major Supreme Court cases, Sexual Injustice examines the more liberal rulings on birth control, abortion, interracial marriage, and obscenity in Griswold, Fanny Hill, Loving, Eisenstadt, and Roe alongside a… Continue Reading Gay Rights and the Supreme Court: The Early Years
UNC celebrated its second annual First Amendment Day yesterday, and as predicted, it was an absolute smasheroo. The day began with the weather exercising its freedom of expression with sheets of rain, but only a few of the events were shifted inside before the drizzling tapered off. The events kicked off with a planting of a symbolic Liberty Tree next… Continue Reading Highlights from First Amendment Day 2010
Continuing our special focus on First Amendment Day today, we welcome the following guest post from someone situated at the intersection of law and literature. Poet Katie Bowler places her own experience with book burning in the context of the history of books as weapons used in attempts to devalue the beliefs of others.–ellen The recent threat by a fringe-element… Continue Reading Katie Bowler on the Need to Respect Books That Other Cultures Value
As the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus celebrates First Amendment Day today, we welcome a guest post from legal scholar and professor William Marshall, who teaches at the UNC Law School. He reminds us that with our freedom from government intrusion comes the responsibility for public engagement.–ellen Humorist, social critic, and cartoonist Walt Kelly once famously wrote,… Continue Reading William Marshall on the Rights and Responsibilities of the First Amendment
Gus, book lover South of Chapel Hill, where James Taylor once wandered the countryside strumming a six-string, there was a small farm. And it’s on this farm that Larry and I had been busting our humps for almost a week–burying bones, fetching sticks, digging holes under fences, and generally running the place under the supervision of Cookie, the farm owner’s… Continue Reading See Gus Read: The Retelling of a Classic Banned Book by Gus, History Buff and Dog
On July 26, a mural named SERVICE was dedicated at UNC’s School of Government in the Knapp-Sanders Building. The mural depicts a gathering of African-American leaders at the counter of a diner, painted by Colin Quashie as a creative interpretation of the historical 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina sit-in. We are featuring each of the eight panels in a series, highlighting… Continue Reading A Womanist Reading of “Service: Panel 8—Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy” or “Anna Julia Cooper and Willa Player”
The following are rulings on and objections to books in the last year. Read on to see which books these are. 1. “The teacher must appropriately prepare students for parts of the book that may be considered provocative; limit the book to juniors and seniors; should a parent object to the book, board policy is currently in place that allows… Continue Reading Banning Books is Alive and Well in America
As we kick off Banned Books Week, we welcome a guest post today from someone committed to the freedom to read. Erica Eisdorfer is more than just a booklover, she’s a novelist and a bookseller, too, and she’s had first-hand experience on the censorship front.–ellen Banned Books Week 2010 is the 29th annual celebration of our freedom to read. The… Continue Reading Erica Eisdorfer: Reader, Writer, Bookseller, Defender of Your Freedom to Read
We’re revving our engines in anticipation of Banned Books Week 2010, which starts tomorrow and runs through October 2. Banned Books Week is a weeklong celebration of the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. The project is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the… Continue Reading Celebrating Banned Books Week 2010
Hot off the press this month is a new book by Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. In the book, Williams reveals the central role of African American soldiers in World War I and how they, along with race activists and ordinary citizens alike, committed to fighting for democracy at home… Continue Reading Chad Williams takes the page 99 test
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