A nation must think before it acts.
FootNotes
Footnotes are essays designed in particular for teachers and students and are often drawn from the lectures at our nationally recognized Butcher History Institute for Teachers.
The Causes of the War of 1812
As the foremost theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz, once noted, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” For the historian, the same can be said regarding any effort to determine the primary...
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Between Piety and Patriotism: Shariʿa and The American Way of Life
In May 2016, a row broke out at the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Williamsburg, New York following an anonymous complaint regarding its summer schedule. The Center had long offered gender-segregated swimming hours for Williamsburg residents who, for religious reasons,...
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Teaching the Cold War: Economics, Ideology, and Morality
A better understanding of the Cold War fosters insights into the incentive structures of socialism in its “democratic” forms as well as some understanding into its seemingly eternal appeal to large portions of the population. Students who systematically study...
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The Great War’s Impact on American Foreign Policy and Civic Religion
What happened in 1898 was accidental, but only in the sense that if you roll a die over and over again, it will turn up six sooner or later. That is, the tipping point was sure to come...
Read more »Religion and Secularism in the Middle East: A Primer
The flag of Egypt, 1922-1953 Abstract: Religion was a pillar of pre-modern political identity in the Middle East, arising out of Muslims’ understanding of Islam’s foundational moment and state institutions that developed with the spread of Islamic Empire. Beginning...
Read more »Religious Minorities in the Modern Middle East
The majority of the Middle East’s population today is Muslim, as it has been for centuries. However, as the place of origin of a range of world religions – including Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and many lesser-known faiths – it...
Read more »Identity in the Pre-Modern Middle East
We live in an age of identity politics. We define ourselves by one or more objective measures: measures of race, ethnicity, gender, politics, religion, sexual orientation, to name just a few. Those measures then define who we are to...
Read more »Post-Colonial States and the Struggle for Identity in the Middle East since World War Two
The term “post-colonial” has presented a seminal problem for historians of the 20th century Middle East. As this essay will detail, debates over the term have provided an important axis around which discussions of political identity revolve. Following World...
Read more »Islam and Islamism: A Primer for Teachers and Students
Defining – and distinguishing between – the terms Islam and Islamism has broad consequences for America, both domestically and internationally. However, teaching about the relationship between these two concepts involves negotiating numerous sensitivities and it can cause considerable consternation...
Read more »Civil Liberties vs. State Security in Historical Perspective
These remarks were delivered at a history institute for high school teachers on Ethical Dilemmas in American Warfare,” April 18-19, 2015, sponsored jointly by the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Butcher History Institute and the First Division Museum at Cantigny,...
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