Author: TheConversation

By Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross At the end of a small cemetery on the campus of the College of the Holy Cross, the Jesuit college where I teach, is the grave of Joseph O’Callahan, former professor of mathematics. O’Callahan is one of the few Catholic military chaplains to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his heroic actions during World War II. Only five Catholic priests have received this highest American military honor. Two of them are in the process of being considered for the highest honor recognized in...

By Robert McKee Irwin, Deputy Director, Global Migration Center, University of California, Davis Hundreds of thousands of immigrant families have been separated by deportation from the United States, in many cases with a parent on one side of the border and children on the other, according to estimates by the Urban Policy Institute and Migration Policy Institute. Reunification is a priority in President Joe Biden’s proposed immigration overhaul and in bills that both the House and Senate will debate in coming weeks. Both bills have provisions to preserve “family unity.” These include giving immigration judges increased discretion in deportation...

By Samantha Hill, 2019 – 2021 Joyce Bock Fellow at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan and current graduate student at U-M School of Information, University of Michigan; and Janette Greenwood, Professor of History, Clark University Frederick Douglass is perhaps best known as an abolitionist and intellectual. But he was also the most photographed American of the 19th century. And he encouraged the use of photography to promote social change for Black equality. In that spirit, this article examines different ways Black Americans from the 19th century used photography as a tool for self-empowerment and...

By Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino Pessimism looms large in America today. It is not just because of Donald Trump’s legacy as the vicar of fear and violence. It is COVID-19, a faltering economy, racial tensions, the growing power of Russia and China, massive fires, and climate change – you name it. Journalists and analysts have launched warnings: American democracy is about to end; the American century is about to end; the American era is about to end. This is not the first time in American history that writers and intellectuals in general have cast...

By Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University Hunger is not evenly spread across the U.S., nor within its cities. Even in the the richest parts of urban America there are pockets of deep food insecurity, and more often than not it is Black and Latino communities that are hit hardest. As an urban planning academic who teaches a course on food justice, I’m aware that this disparity is in large part through design. For over a century, urban planning has been used as a toolkit for maintaining white supremacy that has divided U.S....