Category: American History

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Why Not Start a Charitable Foundation? History Gives Us the Answer

You’ve probably heard that Henry Ford II resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation because it had veered far away from its donor’s intent.  In his 1976 resignation letter, Ford (grandson of Ford Sr.) wrote:

“In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the. foundation does.

“It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.”[1]

What had the foundation been doing? Essentially it had gone rogue. Continue reading “Why Not Start a Charitable Foundation? History Gives Us the Answer”

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Why Did the Europeans Win?

My last post, “Land Grants or Land Grabs,” revealed that most federal land that started land-grant universities had been taken from Indians. I  received some constructive pushback. (See the comments.) But that feedback reminded me of a question, Why did the Europeans invade the New World in the first place and conquer Native Americans, rather than Native Americans invading Europe and conquering Europeans?

The phrasing of this question will alert some readers to the subject of this post, the powerful 1997 book by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.[1]

Diamond’s book travels through time (back to the origins of humans) and space (all continents except Antarctica) to answer that question—to determine why some societies became so powerful, with such technology, that they could cross an ocean and conquer millions of people. The European/Native American conflict is the most obvious example, but history has many examples of more powerful groups overcoming less powerful groups.

Continue reading “Why Did the Europeans Win?”

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Land Grants or Land Grabs?

You may have seen a statement similar to this one on a university website:

NC State University . . . respectfully acknowledges that the lands within and surrounding present-day Raleigh are the traditional homelands and gathering places of many Indigenous peoples, including eight federally and state-recognized tribes. . . .

Such statements are not purely the result of gracious sentiments. NC State’s acknowledgment and many others were added after a troubling study appeared. It was “Land-Grab Universities,” published in 2020 by High Country News, an environmentally oriented nonprofit  newspaper in the West. [1]

I learned about this report from Stephen M. Gavazzi, a professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University and a strong proponent of land-grant universities. In 2020,  Dr. Gavazzi had just finished co-editing a book about the land-grants’ “virtuous mission of meeting community challenges and solving society’s problems.”[2]

But then he read the High Country News exposé. Continue reading “Land Grants or Land Grabs?”

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Wood Wars on the Susquehanna

This is a guest column by Jay Schalin, senior fellow at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Born in Pennsylvania, he responded to my request for “state stories.”

The uplands of northern Pennsylvania were a wild and wooly place in the early years of our nation. Rough men carved out large fortunes—or eked out bare livings—by extracting its natural resources, with violence occasionally erupting from their endeavors. Sometimes, the triggers for violence were the treatment of workers, as occurred in the eastern coal fields, pitting the pro-union Molly Maguires, an Irish secret society, against coal baron Franklin Gowen and his Pinkerton Detective Agency allies (the theme of a 1970 movie starring Sean Connery).

Another case of industrial violence resulted from a clash between competing technologies. It featured small independent entrepreneurs attacking the purveyors of more efficient, larger-scale methods. This is somewhat reminiscent of the violence wrought by English textile workers known as “Luddites” against more efficient factories in the early 19th century. Continue reading “Wood Wars on the Susquehanna”

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History: Has It Ever Been Predictable?

The American public recently watched a surprising event: After months of saying that he would stay in the presidential race, Joe Biden dropped out. What interested me most was the predictions that preceded it.

Some pundits were adamant that he would stay in; others, such as Bill Maher and Vivek Ramaswamy, were certain he wouldn’t.  (I have had difficulty finding the words of those other than Donald Trump who said he would keep going. Maybe they know how to “bury negative search results” on Google.)

Biden’s decision led me to think about whether events in history were predictable. Could the following events have been predicted? Continue reading “History: Has It Ever Been Predictable?”