“Who Are the Leaders in Our Heads - and How Did They Get There?”, Aeon (February 2024)

How the biblical King David and Machiavelli’s Prince can help us understand the dominant view of leaders as individualists

“Essential Elements for Turning a Cause into a Movement — Lessons from the Suffrage Struggle”, Common Dreams (January 2024)

History demonstrates that leaders of successful movements need to go beyond appealing to the powers that be. They need to unify.

“Why the French Strike”, Journal of Democracy (May 2023)

Why are the French protesting this time? Emmanuel Macron is imposing deeply unpopular reforms, and it’s one of the only ways left to check an arrogant and tone deaf president. 

“Save la République!”, Journal of Democracy (April 2022)

Why Emmanuel Macron’s reelection hangs on him winning support from the very people he has ignored most.

“How to Interpret Historical Analogies”, Aeon (July 2020)

They’re good for kickstarting political debate but analogies with the past are often ahistorical and should be treated with care.

“Massachusetts executed two Italian immigrants 90 years ago: Why the global fallout still matters”, The Conversation (August 2017)

The factors in American society that brought about the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti never completely went away.

“Historians Shouldn’t Be Pundits”, New York Times (June 2017)

The most important thing historians can do is to leave the analogies to the pundits, and instead provide a critical, uncomfortable account of how we arrived at our seemingly incomprehensible current moment

“Culture vs. Kultur, or a Clash of Civilizations: Public Intellectuals in the United States and the Great War, 1917-1918,” The Historical Journal (March 2015)

A scholarly reevaluation of American intellectuals and their attitudes towards the Great War in Europe and of American intervention in that war, showing the connections between past and present

“Ferguson, Human Rights, and America’s Interests Abroad”, The Nation (October 2014)

History suggests that progress in racial justice comes only when American leaders see it as crucial to US geopolitical interests.

“How to Kill the Death Penalty”, Los Angeles Times (May 2014)

Those of us horrified by the death penalty should not look to the courts or the states. We must look toward our national leaders and demand that they do what is right.

“From Black Revolution to ‘Radical Humanism’: Malcolm X between Biography and International History”, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development (June 2012)

Review-essay of Manning Marable’s Pulitzer-winning biography of Malcolm X and an evaluation of Malcolm X’s life and death in the context of international history and the meaning of his leadership for the present