Zdeněk Koubek.

A Forgotten Athlete, a Nazi Official, and the Origins of Sex Testing at the Olympics

In 1936, the Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek became world-famous after undergoing surgery so that he could live openly as a man.
Street sign for Emancipation Ave.

The Border Patrol and Asylum Exclusion

Border Patrol has abused its authority and mistreated migrants in countless ways. Yet its role as the frontline force in asylum exclusion has only grown.

A First Case at Common Law

The case of Robinson and Roberts v. Wheble provides legal historians with the most thorough documentation of an eighteenth-century trademark dispute.
Frozen truck on icy road

The Frozen Trucker and the Fugitive Slave

On the TransAm Trucking case, legal reasoning, and the Fugitive Slave Act.
An FBI insignia on an officer's jacket.

To Fix the FBI, Abolish It

A new study of the national security apparatus finds the existing Bureau incompatible with republican government.
A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves by Eastman Johnson.

Unapologetically Free: A Personal Declaration of Independence From the Formerly Enslaved

Abolitionist and writer John Swanson Jacobs on reclaiming liberty in a land of unfreedom.
Wong Gin Foo to Wong Kim (in Chinese), March 31, 1930.

Paper Sons in the Era of Immigration Restriction

Chinese immigration and the Immigration Act of 1924.
Student watching smoke emanating from the student center after 1969 protests.

The CUNY Experiment

The City University of New York has long stood at once for meritocratic uplift and for civil disobedience.
Pennsylvania Hall in flames.
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Sordid Mercantile Souls

When labor found a common cause — and enemy — with the abolition movement.
Historical illustration of the arraignment of Boss Tweed in courtroom (1872).
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A 19th Century Case That Holds a Lesson for the Trump Trials

Fairly applying the rule of law to powerful politicians provides the stability that enables the U.S. to thrive politically and economically.
Image of a man distributing newspapers at a post office.

The Post Office and Privacy

We can thank the postal service for establishing the foundations of the American tradition of communications confidentiality.

‘Brown’ at 70

The rhetorically modest but functionally powerful ruling that ended segregation shouldn’t be misused to forestall other efforts at racial equality.

Divestment and the American Political Tradition

From Dow to now.
A colorful illlustration of Texas Rangers, three Tejano men, guns, and alcohol bottles.

After a Borderland Shootout, a 100-Year-Old Battle for the Truth

A century after three Tejano men were shot to death, the story their family tells is different than the official account. Whose story counts as Texas history?
A group of hip hop artists talking in the documentary “As We Speak.”

Rap Is Art, Not Evidence

A new documentary chronicles efforts to keep rap lyrics from being used by prosecutors, combatting a long-standing trend of criminalizing this art form.
1957 U.S. Supreme Court Justices
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Super Chief

Reconsidering Earl Warren's place in U.S. history.
Stanford Law School.

Why the Right’s Mythical Version of the Past Dominates When It Comes to Legal “History”

They’re invested in legal education, creating an originalist industrial complex with outsize influence.
Pete Rose on a baseball diamond, head bowed.

For Pete’s Sake

A new book traces "the rise and fall of Pete Rose, and the last glory days of baseball."
Campus police struggle with anti-war demonstrators in Berkeley, California 1967.
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The Protests That Anticipated the Gaza Solidarity Encampments

With the Dow sit-ins of the 1960s, students drew attention to links between the campus, war, and imperialism.
A 1963 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.
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Campus Protests Are Called Disruptive. So Was the Civil Rights Movement

Like student protesters today, Martin Luther King Jr. and other 1960s civil rights activists were criticized as disruptive and disorderly.
Student protestor holding sign behind campus police officer

Campus Police Are Among the Armed Heavies Cracking Down on Students

While some of the worst behavior has come from local and state police, university police have shown themselves to be just as capable of brutality.
Richard Nixon and Billy Graham at the podium at the University of Tennessee.
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The Leaders of Tomorrow

What happened in 1970 after Richard Nixon was told, “I doubt that there would be any problem of student demonstrations in Tennessee.”
Pro-Israel counterprotesters hold Israeli flags on the edges of a pro-Palestine encampment at Northeastern University in Boston, April 26, 2024.

The New Anti-Antisemitism

The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.
The 19-year-old Indian elephant, Fritz-Frederic, favorite of the children of Paris, was put to death after he had gone mad for several days, c. 1910.

Elephant Executions

At the height of circus animal acts in the late nineteenth century, animals who killed their captors might be publicly executed for their “crimes.”
NYPD officers in riot gear march onto Columbia University campus, where pro-Palestinian students were barricaded inside a building and set up an encampment, on April 30, 2024.

Columbia’s Violence Against Protesters Has a Long History

An overlooked history of selective policing at Columbia has undermined the safety of those within as well as beyond campus walls.
Side by side photos of Columbia University protests in 2024 and 1968.

America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed

Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.
Police gather to clear a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of Wisconsin at Madison on May 1st.

Anatomy of a Moral Panic

The repressive machine currently arrayed against campus protests follows a familiar pattern.
Members of the Mason family, St. Inigoes, Maryland, circa 1890–1909.

How Bondage Built the Church

Swarns’s book about a sale of enslaved people by Jesuit priests to save Georgetown University reminds us that the legacy of slavery is the legacy of resistance.
Mark Rudd speaking to protesters at Columbia University in 1968.

1968 Columbia Protest Leader Mark Rudd: These Kids Are ‘Smarter’

Mark Rudd says a lot has changed in half a century, but not the reason college kids paralyze a campus.
Illustration of Nancy and the first edition of the Emancipator.

He Published the First Abolitionist Newspaper in America. He Was Also an Enslaver.

When "The Emancipator" was first published in 1820, its original owner had to answer for why he owned Nancy and her five children.