Jimmy Carter Archives - Public Seminar

History

Looking Back: The Indochina Migration and Refugee Act

The success of an immigration or refugee resettlement can never be fully evaluated in the first decades

September 16, 2025 • by Catherine Simpson Bueker

Catherine Simpson Bueker explores the legacy of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act and how Vietnamese refugees in America reshaped US society....

Looking Back: The Indochina Migration and Refugee Act

Body & Mind

Aging Can Bring Wisdom or Not—It Depends on How You Live Your Life

A dancer’s perspective

April 17, 2023 • by Jan Erkert

Growing older is a constant dance between how we feel about our age, how we judge other people, and how we are perceived by others....

Aging Can Bring Wisdom or Not—It Depends on How You Live Your Life

Past Present

Jimmy Carter

Past Present Podcast, Episode 364

February 28, 2023 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil discuss Jimmy Carter’s life and legacy....

Europe & Central Asia

Might the U.S. Military Support Nuclear Disarmament?

Its senior leadership is uniquely positioned in the present moment to pursue a revolutionary possibility

October 24, 2022 • by Robert Edwards

It is often difficult in the moment to recognize when one is at a crossroads. In the 1991 Gulf War, I was a lowly tactical intelligence officer in a parachute infantry regiment of the 82nd Airborne, rolling through the Iraqi desert beneath an air campaign that left smoldering charcoal where ...

Might the U.S. Military Support Nuclear Disarmament?

Politics

The Perfect Dictatorship

The perfect dictatorship is not one in which there are no elections. The perfect dictatorship is one in which the government does not lose elections

June 2, 2021 • by Francisco Rodríguez

_____ It was during the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, whom many saw as one of the champions of economic reforms (even today, some people remember him that way), that Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa decided to break one of the unwritten rules of Mexican politics. In a televised discussion ...

History

The US Olympic Team with No Results

A boycott ended hundreds of gold medal dreams in 1980—to what purpose?

May 18, 2021 • by Anita L. DeFrantz

_____ Boycotts have many virtues. They impose financial and social penalties for official behavior that cannot otherwise be changed. Boycotts can not only be successful, they can be turning points in history. Without a doubt, the most important American boycott of the 20th century was initiated by Mrs. Rosa Parks, who, ...

Democracy

A Political Paradox

Power, fallibility, and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

October 7, 2020 • by Rebecca Lubot

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment was ratified on February 10, 1967, in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and a period of great anxiety about nuclear weapons. The first section deals with a vacancy in the presidency, the second section with a vacancy in the vice presidency. But it is Sections 3 ...

Activism

Remembering and Resisting the Age of Reagan

An activist historian advises his students that the choices they make now will shape their future

September 24, 2020 • by James Goodman

______ It was November 1980, two months after my girlfriend and I moved to New York City from Boston, where we had met a year before. I had just started in the M.F.A. program at Columbia and she had just started a job at a small press, managing the production of ...

Remembering and Resisting the Age of Reagan

Politics

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

What we can learn from Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

July 8, 2020 • by Richard Johnson and Desmond King

History suggests that the response to the current crisis of policing in the United States must be a stronger role for the federal government. Yet few activists within the Movement for Black Lives are demanding that the federal government flex its coercive muscle. Given the racism of the current occupant ...

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

North America

Do Not Presume a Fair Election

“Obamagate” reveals the skulduggery still to come.

May 15, 2020 • by John Stoehr

The president and his confederates in the United States Congress have spent the last several days manufacturing a controversy for the press corps to report and debate. Donald Trump has dubbed it “Obamagate.” It seems to have something to do with the previous administration’s lawful handling of the case of former ...

Feature

Veeps, Beach-Going, and the Olympic Doping Scandal

Past Present Episode 45

August 5, 2016 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Neil J. Young and Nicole Hemmer

On this week's episode, Natalia, Neil, and Niki debate the changing role of the vice presidency, the history of beach-going, and the Russian doping scandal overshadowing the Rio Olympics. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have picked Tim Kaine and Mike ...