Andrew McKevitt: Gun Rights and Consumerism

Professor Andrew McKevitt talks about his book, “Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America.” America’s gun culture was not an inevitable outcome of the Second Amendment and Professor McKevitt explains why. Framing America’s obsession with guns as essentially a consumerist market, not unlike another other collectible or commodity, Prof. McKevitt uncovers one potential origin – post-War European military surplus. Professor Andrew McKevitt is the John D. Winters Endowed…

Ruth Colker: White Supremacist Constitution

Professor Ruth Colker, Distinguished University Professor and Heck Faust Memorial Chair in Constitutional Law, is one of the leading scholars in the country in the areas of Constitutional Law and Disability Discrimination. Professor Ruth Colker discusses her 2022 Utah Law Review article, "The White Supremacist Constitution." The United States Constitution is a document that, during every era, has helped further white supremacy. White supremacy constitutes a “political, economic and…

James Oakes: Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

James Oakes is one of our foremost Civil War historians and a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize for his works on the politics of abolition. He teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He discusses his book, The Crooked Path to Abolition Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution. Beginning with the inclusion of the 3/5th clause and the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution there existed a tension between a proslavery and antislavery interpretation. How did…

Robert Pierce Forbes: Race and Jefferson's Notes

Robert Pierce Forbes taught U.S. history at the University of Connecticut and was the founding associate director of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Robert Pierce Forbes discusses his introduction, scholarship, and editorship of Thomas Jefferson's seminal work, "Notes on the State of Virgina." Prof. Forbes locates the origin of United States' racial dynamic in Jefferson's notes on race. Specifically, how Jefferson,…

Eric Foner: Reconstruction's Consititution

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, is one of this country's most prominent historians. Professor Foner discusses his book "The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution." By looking at the history of debate and aftermath of each Post-War Amendments, Prof. Foner examines how each sought to permanently end American Slavery.

Paul Finkelman: Slavery and the Supreme Court

Paul Finkelman, the Chancellor of Gratz College, is the author of more than 100 law review articles, 100 other scholarly articles and more than fifty books. He is a specialist on slavery, civil rights and race relations, African American history, American Constitutional and legal history, the American Civil War, religious liberty, the history of religion in the U.S., American Jewish history, and legal issues surrounding baseball. The United States Supreme Court has quoted and cited his work in…

Alex Reinert: 8th Amendment Debate

Alex Reinert is the Max Freund Professor Litigation and Advocacy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Prof. Reinert discusses his article "Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment." Prof. Reinert talks about "the law of slavery" and how little we have travelled from the 1870s to today when it comes to the understanding of "cruel and unsual" punishment as the standard of imprisonment.

David Waldstreicher: Historians and the 1619 Debate

Professor Waldstreicher discusses his book "Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification." Specifically focusing in on the slavery compromises written into the US Constitution - we go into some depth about 3/5th Compromise which enshrined slavery as a means of governing. Next Prof. Waldstreicher explains his position on the New York Times' 1619 Project, specifically focused on his Boston Review article "The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy."