The Washington Post featured Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History and Department Chair, in an article on the legacies of the Trump presidency. White House reporter David Nakamura wrote the piece, titled “As Trump’s presidency recedes into history, scholars seek to understand his reign — and what it says about American democracy.” Crespino is an expert in the political and cultural history of the twentieth century United States and of the history of the American South since Reconstruction. His most recent book is Atticus Finch: The Biography—Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon (Basic Books, 2018). Read an excerpt from the article below along with the full piece here.

“I wonder if there will be the same documentation of Trump’s own decision-making and processes that we have with other presidents,” said Joseph Crespino, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta. “He’s not a reader or a note-taker or a memo writer. That will be a challenge.”

Radio France International recently interviewed Dr. Jeffrey Lesser about the insurrection and attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The interview (in Portuguese) is headlined, “‘It was an attack on democracy and an example of racism,’ says historian about the invasion of the American Congress.” Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History and Director of the Halle Institute for Global Learning.

Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Director of the Halle Institute for Global Learning, was recently interviewed for a documentary program titled “Immigrants Part I: Brazil’s formation.” The program is the first in a series about immigration produced by TV Justiça. Lesser is an expert on ethnicity, immigration, and race, especially in Brazil. Watch the first episode in the documentary series below along with the second one here: “Immigrants, Part 2: In search of a nation.”

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and associated faculty in the History Department, recently published an opinion piece in The Washington Post with co-author Norman Eisen (Brookings). Titled “Denying the Holocaust threatens democracy. So does denying the election results,” the article compares Holocaust denial to the anti-democratic rejection of the results of the 2020 U.S. election, most prominently by Donald J. Trump. Read an excerpt from the piece below along with the full article.

“And there are lessons that can be learned from the active campaign to combat Holocaust denial.

“The first is that we must attack Trump’s big lie before it takes further hold. For years, some — ourselves included — viewed Holocaust denial as a fringe phenomenon and chose not to refute it. Then we found it creeping more and more into mainstream discourse, where we were forced to tackle it after it had spread. It’s too late by that point, though.

“We cannot make that mistake here. We must refute the falsehoods that the president is purveying, which tens of millions of Americans believe, according to opinion polls. And we need to do it now, before it takes further hold, instead of just dismissing the problem. These lies won’t change the outcome of the election. But they don’t just undermine the legitimacy of the new administration — they serve as an illiberal rallying cry in future election cycles and erode the faith that undergirds our democracy.“