History Department News and Research

"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."

"Because of the fact that it has a horizontal leadership structure, the decentralized network of bosses, a lot of local gangs with specialized duties that are affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel, what we're witnessing is sort of a moment of transition," says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

In the wake of President Trump's recent tweets about four Democratic congresswomen of color, Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science, assesses that coded racial language began to be used as a political strategy under President Richard Nixon.

"Since Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón declared the start of the Drug War in 2006, both the U.S. and Mexico’s security forces have aggressively pursued what is referred to as the kingpin strategy: they go after the 'head’ with the intent of weakening the ‘body,’" says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

"The question we should all ask is whether President Donald Trump’s threat of imposing scaled tariffs on Mexico will go the way he plans—including shutting down the border," says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

"The fallout of such tariffs could be catastrophic to Mexico's economy, thereby worsening the migration north," says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.