History

It is 2022, the bicentenary of the birth of the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, and this is being celebrated in all kinds of ways. In 1955, as a biology student, I travelled with a group of young people to Brno (then part of Czechoslovakia), where he had done his experiments with […]

Donald Trump

The Trump Supreme Court Is Nothing New: A History of the Tyranny of the Supremes

Tomdispatch

By Steve Fraser | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Has the Trump Supreme Court gone rogue? The evidence mounts. Certainly, its recent judicial blitzkrieg has run roughshod over a century’s worth of settled law. A woman’s right to get an abortion? Gone (at least as a constitutionally protected civil right). Meanwhile, voting rights are barely […]

Books

Of Course there were Africans in Middle Earth, Just as there Were in Medieval England

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – American white nationalism has attempted to appropriate certain cultures, times and places as quintessentially “white,” and so it is no surprise that, as John Blake at CNN writes, there is controversy on the American Right about the multicultural casting visible in the Amazon Prime series Rings of Power, based on […]

Afghanistan

That Time Gorbachev Announced Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan and US went on Building up Muslim Fundamentalists there Anyway, leading to 9/11

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing yesterday at age 91 is a good occasion to review some of the profound mistakes of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies regarding Afghanistan. Reagan-era officials refused to believe that Premier Gorbachev actually intended to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, though Gorbachev came into […]

slavery

Slavery and War are tightly Connected – but we had no Idea just how Much until we crunched the Data

The Conversation

By Monti Datta, University of Richmond; Angharad Smith, United Nations University and Kevin Bales, University of Nottingham | – Some 40 million people are enslaved around the world today, though estimates vary. Modern slavery takes many different forms, including child soldiers, sex trafficking and forced labor, and no country is immune. From cases of family […]

Books

‘Summer with the Enemy’ by Syrian novelist Shahla Ujayli is a searing summer read

The Conversation

By Michelle Hartman, McGill University | – Wherever you spend your summer, allow yourself to be transported to Syria and immerse yourself in the world of Shahla Ujayli’s sweeping historical novel Summer with the Enemy. The ongoing devastation of the war that began in 2011 has brought Syria to the world’s attention. Reading a Syrian […]

Colonialism

Trump joins Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis as Former High Office-Holder Investigated for Sedition

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Carol D. Leonnig, Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, and Spencer S. Hsu at the Washington Post got the scoop that the Department of Justice has for some time been investigating Donald John Trump for possible charges in connection with his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results. (I call him Donald […]

Feminism

Abortion decision cherry-picks history – when the US Constitution was ratified, women had much more autonomy over abortion decisions than during 19th century

The Conversation

Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino | – Justice Samuel Alito appears spellbound by the 19th century. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the decision Alito wrote overruling 50 years of constitutional protection for women’s right to get an abortion, he deploys arguments that are based on several historical precedents. He uses the phrase “history […]

Archaeology

Does Megadrought of the 500s in Yemen help Explain the Rise of Islam?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new article in the journal Science gives evidence for a prolonged dry spell in the kingdom of Himyar (which now would comprise Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia and Oman) in the 500s. Since the Prophet Muhammad is traditionally said to have been born in 567 or 570, any new information […]