History Department News and Research

A whole series of sort of mid-tier and lower level and smaller kind of up-and-coming, wannabe cartels are trying to set up shop in this terrain," says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations. "They're striking deals with each other, with the big players."

Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations, says Thursday’s apparent capitulation to the Sinaloa Cartel was "sending a loud message to other organized crime networks…that if they show up with enough firepower to a fight, they will win and get their way because the government does not have the wherewithal to fight back."

"What is incontrovertible is that the Sinaloa Cartel won yesterday’s battle," said Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations. "Not only did they get the government to release Ovidio, they demonstrated to the citizens of Culiacan as well as the rest of Mexico who is in control."

Osama Khalil, associate professor of history, discusses the current state of U.S.-Iran relations, arguing that the U.S.'s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal has made it more difficult to achieve a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict between the two countries.

The Maxwell School’s Tenth Decade Project provides seed funding for worthy scholarly projects that have the potential to produce significant external research funding and high-impact publications. Since it was created, the Tenth Decade Project has attracted nearly $850,000 in gifts from 267 individual donors, including a lead gift from long-time Maxwell supporters Gerry and Daphna Cramer.

"The most the Israelis are willing to offer does not meet the minimum demands of the Palestinians. This includes a viable, independent state with sovereignty over its borders and resources," says Osamah Khalil, associate professor of history.

Junko Takeda, an associate professor of history at Maxwell who focuses on European and global histories, has been named the inaugural Daicoff Faculty Scholar. The five-year appointment recognizes Takeda’s contributions as a teacher and mentor, productive researcher, and engaged citizen and leader at the school.

Beginning this fall, for the first time ever, students planning to major in the social sciences applied and were admitted directly to the Maxwell School. Prior to this, students applied to A&S, and they became a Maxwell student only if they declared a Maxwell major, usually sometime around the end of their sophomore year.

Lucretia Mott, a feminist activist who was involved in the slavery abolition movement, believed that "you have to change the way people think and feel about slavery, not the way that they vote" analyzes Carol Faulkner, associate dean and professor of history. 

"A lot of communities now are very committed to dealing with issues of racism, but the fact is their own history is problematic," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. "They’re beginning to confront their own racism, and their own complicity in the racism of the past."