This is Democracy

Jeremi and Zachary sit down with historian and former U.S. State Department official Michael Kimmage to take stock of where things stand in the fourth year of the war in Ukraine.

Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America, and the director of the Kennan Institute. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His latest book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability.

Edited by Uriel Murillo.

Jeremi and Zachary speak with historian Vaneesa Cook about her book “Empire and Liberty,” using the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building to examine how monuments have reflected debates over U.S. liberty, empire, immigration, protest, and public memory from the late 19th century through the Cold War. They discuss how each landmark’s meaning has shifted over time through politics, popular culture, and commemoration as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In today's episode, Jeremi and Zachary discuss how U.S. universities are changing, delving into shifts in campus political culture, administrative growth around DEI, viewpoint diversity and ideological siloing. They also discuss the financial and policy pressures such as federal research funding cuts, visa changes for international students, and endowment taxes, and what exactly these changes mean for teaching, civics education, and the role of universities in public life.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Daniel Hummel to address the claim of the US as a "Christian Nation" by many of its citizens, and how this notion relates to our democracy.

Dr. Daniel Hummel is the director of the Lumen Center in Madison, WI, and a research fellow in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research and writing are on American evangelicals, theology, politics, and culture. His most recent book is: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation. He has also written about similar topics for Christianity Today, New Lines Magazine, and the Washington Post.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary interview Brown University historian Dr. Omer Bartov about his book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, written after October 7 amid his efforts to understand Israeli society, media narratives, and the war in Gaza informed by his visits to Israel in 2024.

Dr. Omer Bartov is the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He is the author of many important books, including: Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz; Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past; and most recently, Israel: What Went Wrong?.