News and Views

Honoring William Still on his 200th birthday. A conference, a website, and more are planned on campus and around the city to celebrate the abolitionist who helped nearly 1,000 enslaved people to freedom.

Benjamin Nathans

Benjamin Nathans - Stalin’s Lawyers at Nuremberg. The Soviets were not just part of the prosecution team at Nuremberg; they were instrumental in defining the crimes of which the Nazi leaders were accused. (The New York Review of Books)
Prof. Lee Cassanelli

Lee Cassanelli - Afghanistan reclaimed, again. While we may be dismayed by the outcome of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, we should not be surprised. We saw the same thing happen in Somalia in the 1990s.

(Re)Introduction to US History - How two Penn History professors (Kathleen Brown & Walter Licht) revamped the entry-level history class for an age of instant information access and endless quarrels over the meaning of America’s past.

Aron Brouwer "It was a fatal mistake that politicians (inside and outside Germany) did not take Mein Kampf seriously"

Kimberly St Julien-Varnon headshot

Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon - African American in the ‘raceless’ Soviet Union
Sarah Yu

Sarah Xia Yu - Masks and Geopolitics in Richard Pearson Strong’s photos of the Manchurian Plague Epidemic, 1910—1911

Mary Frances Berry - To honor John Lewis, we must turn back the rising tide of voter suppression. It has been a long and tumultuous year for voting rights since we lost one of their greatest defenders

Headshot of Jared Farmer

Jared Farmer: Heirlooms of Conquest: Trees + Justice in Los Angeles. First episode of LENS.cast a new podcast from UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies.
Grant Stanton

Grant Stanton - Before July 4, American colonists celebrated Pope’s Day — an anti-Catholic rallying cry. Religious vilification united early Americans