American presidents have spent a great deal of time proclaiming US leadership of the global system. The decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement undermines much of what they have said.
President John F. Kennedy watches as planes conduct anti-sub operations during maneuvers off the North Carolina coast in April 1962.
Associated Press
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently echoed the 1980s philosophy to ‘just say no’ to drugs. It’s important to remember, however, that the policy was ineffective.
President Ronald Reagan on stage with his wife Nancy, 1984.
AP Photo/Reed Saxon
Abram Van Engen, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Trump’s budget would eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities, breaking a tradition of funding humanities scholarship that goes back to the nation’s founding.
Kristina Spohr, London School of Economics and Political Science
Vladimir Putin’s aggressive nuclear strategy threatens to unpick decades of careful negotiation.
Thomas Piketty has demonstrated how inequality can be – and has been over time – fundamentally destructive of sustained economic growth.
Reuters/Charles Platiau
The crisis confronting neoliberal capitalism suggests that its internal contradictions are now undermining its very foundations. What can we expect from a post-neoliberal world?
A new megachurch movement is drawing crowds on the basis of belief in nonbelief.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
What we need now is unblinkered analysis and coordinated progressive political action beyond the extreme centre at both the national and international levels.
President-elect Donald Trump’s stance on climate change is very different to Barack Obama’s.
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
If Trump forsakes US support for the 2015 Paris Climate Accord as well as Obama’s bilateral climate agreement with China, the resultant rise of global warming will wreak havoc throughout Africa.
Sen. Jeff Sessions listens as then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks, October 2016.
AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File
Sarah B. Snyder, American University School of International Service
In 1981, many criticized Ronald Reagan’s nominee to head human rights initiatives in the State Department. Here is how activists mobilized to ensure the nomination was rejected.
Before the United States kicks out millions of Mexicans, perhaps Trump – and we – should ask whether Latino deportees are really criminals, and consider the origins of that errant notion.
A 2004 reenactment of the 1804 duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.
Marko Georgiev/AP Photo
A philosopher argues that Trumpism may have vulgarized electoral politics, but he has also unwittingly illuminated brilliantly one of America’s greatest accomplishments: a civil democracy
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama trade barbs during the 2012 presidential race.
Mike Segar/Reuters
On the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it,” a social work scholar asks why child poverty is still such a problem in the U.S. and what race has to do with it.
Jim Thorpe and Ben Johnson were both banned from the Olympics. But if each had played at different points in history, they would have been allowed to compete.
Nick Lehr/The Conversation