The question of the relation between liberal education and political liberty, perennially important, is driven for this forum by the Obama administration's endorsement of "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future," according to which the chief ends of postsecondary civic education ought to include the promotion of sweeping…

A "civic recession" is as worrisome as an economic recession. "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future" (The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012) should be praised for acknowledging the peril and seeking to rebuild the "depleted civic capital." Welcome, too, is the report's conviction that…

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama, the first African American US President, as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of…

"A Crisis of Legitimacy" is a unique comparative examination of the question of legitimate rule, as observed through Shakespeare's "Richard II" and the contemporary presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Largely pedagogical, this article is the result of an active learning exercise, whereby students in a "Politics and Literature" course…

Argues that Rockefeller Foundation served as an unofficial arm of the state from 1938 to 1944 by mobilizing social-scientific expertise to fight fascism when the Roosevelt Administration was politically unable to do so. Notes that Rockefeller Foundation officer John Marshall's role in the history of American mass communication research and the…

The presidents of the United States have had a lasting impact on the history of the United States. From the founding of the nation to the new century, the presidents have set the tone of the nation in matters of race. For centuries, the ideology of the country has been one in which only one perspective that of the white, European man has been…

Class differences and class warfare have existed since the beginning of western civilization, but the gap in income and wealth between the rich (top 10 percent) and the rest has increased steadily in the last twenty-five years. The U.S. is heading for a financial oligarchy much worse than the aristocratic old world that our Founding Fathers feared…

Compares historical writing and historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries. Asserts that early history, written primarily by amateur historians, was simplistic and prone to error. Maintains that present-day histories provide more coverage of ethnic groups and women. (CFR)