Category / Public Scholarship

by abritt

LaChance Interviewed by ‘Le Devoir’ on Trump’s Embrace of Death Penalty

Dr. Daniel LaChance, Associate Professor and Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History, 2020-23, gave an interview to the Quebec newspaper Le Devoir on the Trump administration’s last-minute push to carry out executions in its final months. LaChance is a legal scholar working at the intersection of American legal and cultural history, criminology, and literary studies. His first book is Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Read an excerpt below along with the full article.

“The Trump administration enthusiastically embraced the death penalty, summarizes Historian Daniel LaChance, who teaches at Emory University Atlanta, Georgia, in an interview with Le Devoir. ‘In this respect, you can even say that Donald Trump is the deadliest president since the nineteenth century. His provocative support for the death penalty was a key part of his Make America Great Again platform.’ And obviously, he intends to take his project to the end.”

by abritt

Price Quoted in ‘The Atlantic’ Article on Quarantine Practices and Pressures

Dr. Polly J. Price, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Professor of Global Health, and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in an article in The Atlantic titled “The Real Reason Americans Aren’t Quarantining.” The piece examines how many residents of the U.S. are not able to quarantine in the midst of COVID-19 because of economic and labor pressures. Read an excerpt from the piece below along with the full article.

Conflicts over remote work and leave are the most common type of COVID-19 employment litigation in the U.S., according to a database compiled by the law firm Fisher Phillips. “We don’t really pay people to stay at home to quarantine,” Polly Price, a global-health professor at Emory University, says. But that’s exactly the problem: In a study in Israel, people were more likely to quarantine after exposure to COVID-19 if they were paid during their isolation.

by abritt

Suddler Participates in Schomburg Center’s Conversations in Black Freedom Studies Series

Dr. Carl Suddler, Assistant Professor of History, recently participated in conversation hosted by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Titled “Resisting Carceral Cities: Prisons, Police & Punishment in Perspective,” the event centered on the rise of prisons and police and resistance to them in historical perspective. Suddler was joined by Garrett Felber (The University of Mississippi), author of Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement and the Carceral State (UNC Press, 2020), and Kelly Lytle Hernandez (UCLA), author of City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (UNC Press, 2017). Suddler is the author of Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York (New York University Press, 2019). Read more about the event here.

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Crespino Joins Other Distinguished Scholars for AHA Panel ‘The Crisis of Democracy’

Jimmy Carter Professor and History Department Chair Joseph Crespino spoke with a group of distinguished scholars in an American Historical Association webinar titled “The Crisis of Democracy” on November 18 at 3pm EST. Panelists included Crespino, Jerry Dávila (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Jennifer Evans (Carleton University), and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine). The four scholars of social movements, protest, and political culture examined the perceived “crisis of democracy” and the extension of authoritarianism from comparative and historical standpoints. The colloquium was chaired by Janet Ward (University of Oklahoma).

by abritt

Crespino in ‘The New York Times’: “What Democrats Are Up Against in Georgia”

Jimmy Carter Professor of History and History Department Chair Joseph Crespino published an opinion piece in The New York Times over the weekend. Titled “What Democrats Are Up Against in Georgia,” the article examines how Georgia’s distinctive political culture and history will shape the state’s two runoff elections for the U.S. Senate. Read an excerpt below along with the full piece.

“Mr. Trump’s delusional tweets declaring that he won the election or teasing new revelations of fraud and corruption evoke a similar sense of living in a dream world. The good news for Georgians is that on Jan. 5 they have an opportunity to send a wake-up call. Two Democratic victories would not only give Democrats control of the Senate but could also help turn the page on Donald Trump’s influence in American politics.”

by abritt

Crespino Comments on Political Polarization and Everyday Life for the ‘AJC’

Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History and Department Chair, was recently quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article “Divided Georgians resort to tiptoeing, avoidance, unfriending.” Written by Matt Kempner, Shelia Poole, and Andy Peters, the piece discusses contemporary political polarization in the state of Georgia, especially in the wake of the 2020 election. Crespino is an expert in the political and cultural history of the twentieth-century United States and of the U.S. South since Reconstruction. Read an excerpt from the article below along with the full piece here.

Today’s bitter partisanshipis boosted by what people are exposed to, from cable TV news sources to personalized advertising on Google and Facebook, driven by algorithms, said Emory University historian Joseph Crespino. “We don’t look at the same sources of information.”

Communities also are much less politically diverse than they used to be, Crespino said. People are surrounded by others who think like them.

“If you live in Decatur, you’ll have very little understanding of how people in the rest of Georgia could vote for Trump,” he said. “If you live in South Georgia, you can’t understand how people could vote for Biden.”

by abritt

Anderson Quoted in ‘U.S. News and World Report’ Article: “Stacey Abrams’ Legacy: A Democratic South?”

The 2020 election saw a majority of Georgians vote for a democrat for president for the first time since 1992. Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, analyzed the years of grassroots organizing and coalition building that led toward this shift in a recent U.S. News & World Report article. Anderson discusses Stacey Abrams’ role in turning Georgia blue along with the prospect that other states in the U.S. South may see similar shifts in future elections. Read an excerpt below along with the full piece: “Stacey Abrams’ Legacy: A Democratic South?“

“What we have here in Georgia is incredible grassroots mobilization and organizing,” says Anderson, chair of Emory’s African American studies department and author of “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy.” Abrams may have had a high profile, Anderson says, but an army of behind-the-scenes workers were just as invaluable, and the coalition they built included advocacy groups for Asian Americans and Latinos.

“They’ve been doing the work for years, and I mean years,” Anderson says. “Not just two years or three years. I mean, years,” including a decade for Abrams, who started when she was in the Georgia General Assembly – “and it is long, hard work. That is not glamorous. It takes long, hard, sustained effort.”

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Lipstadt Joins ADL in Condemning Yad Vashem Post

Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in an article in The Atlanta Jewish Times. The piece discusses Lipstadt’s opposition to the controversial nomination of former far-right politician and military commander Effi Eitam to head Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Shoah or Holocaust. Read the excerpt below along with the full article: “ADL and Lipstadt Condemn Yad Vashem Post.”

“Yad Vashem is one of the jewels in the crown of Israeli institutions,” said Deborah Lipstadt, Emory University Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies. She said that, given Eitam’s “fringe views, views that separate and divide rather than unite,” his nomination is a “colossal mistake.” She told the AJT that she plans to voice her opposition to the controversial nomination.

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Anderson Pens Op-Ed in ‘The Guardian’: “Democracy won’t die on our watch”

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, has published an opinion editorial in The Guardian. Titled “Millions of Americans have risen up and said: democracy won’t die on our watch,” the piece outlines how U.S. citizens responded to efforts at voter suppression by casting an unprecedented number of ballots in the 2020 elections. Read an excerpt below along with the full article: “Millions of Americans have risen up and said: democracy won’t die on our watch.”

While the forces arrayed against the United States looked formidable, they were not invincible. Instead, they ran into something that is even more powerful than a president, a senate, or the US supreme court. The American people themselves and their belief in and devotion to democracy.

by abritt

Anderson Analyzes 2020 Election for ‘Democracy Now’ and ‘The New York Times’

In the lead up to and shortly following the 2020 election, Dr. Carol Anderson contributed political analysis and historical context to two major media organizations. Four days before the election, Anderson was a guest on the Democracy Now segment, “‘Fighting for Democracy’: Carol Anderson on Voter Suppression & Why Georgia Could Go Blue.” Her prediction that Georgians may vote for a democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1992 seems likely to come true. Three days following the election, while officials in Georgia and other battleground states continued to count votes, Anderson offered historical context for The New York Times on the links between U.S. slavery and the Electoral College. Read an excerpt from that article below along with the full piece: “The Electoral College Is Close. The Popular Vote Isn’t.” Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department.

“We look at a map of so-called red and blue states and treat that map as land and not people,” said Carol Anderson, a professor of African-American studies at Emory University who researches voter suppression. “Why, when somebody has won millions more votes than their opponent, are we still deliberating over 10,000 votes here, 5,000 votes there?”