Press | History

The Department of History lost one of its true giants last Wednesday when Robert Divine, a preeminent scholar of U.S. foreign relations, passed away at the age of 92. Bob taught at UT for a remarkable 42 years before retiring in 1996. Along the way, he published 14 books, racked up numerous teaching awards, served as department chair, and advised numerous PhD students who went on to distinguished careers. Bob touched innumerable lives – including ours — and is remembered for generosity and good cheer as well as his scholarly brilliance.

In the wake of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, much attention has focused on the fate of Afghan citizens who risked their lives to aid U.S. forces. The hastily organized evacuation of Afghan refugees has frequently drawn unfavorable comparison to the evacuation and resettlement of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. As…

In the 1950s, researchers at the RAND Corporation ran two different wargames exploring questions of nuclear strategy. Both were named the Cold War Game, known to the participants as COW.  One, run by the Mathematics Analysis Division (MAD), abstracted questions of the ethics of nuclear war in order to seek reproducible results. The other, run…

Mark Twain once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The repetition of patterns of events and responses is one reason that scholars and policymakers often turn to the past for insight into how to best deal with contemporary events. It is also why classic works of history and strategy — such…

Congratulations to our former post-doctoral fellow Ian Johnson, now on Notre Dame’s history faculty, on the publication of his excellent new book with Oxford University Press.

“The most famous four words of the Cold War almost went unsaid. When President Ronald Reagan stood at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, and demanded ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!,’ he did so over fierce resistance within his own administration,” writer Inboden in his latest for the Dallas Morning News. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Thomas Ricks, journalist and historian, talks about his new book, “First Principles, What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How that Shaped Our Country.” Ricks outlines the degree to which the founding fathers were influenced by the ancients and how this influence helped to…

Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of President Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, which helped lead to the liberation of Eastern Europe and the peaceful end of the Cold War.  Follow the link to watch it on YouTube.

We at Clements would like to extend our congratulations to our friend Jim Hornfischer on his receipt of the Navy’s “Distinguished Public Service Award.”

Over the past several years, many CC students and faculty members have worked with Dr. Garrity and have benefited greatly from his scholarship. He will be missed by many. 

Charlie Laderman wins an award from Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era for his latest book, Sharing the Burden. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Frank Gavin, chair of the editorial board of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Philip Zelikow to discuss his new book, The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916 – 1917. Gavin and Zelikow explore the story of the peace talks and…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Prof. Sarah C.M. Paine of the U.S. Naval War College examines a variety of explanations for why the Cold War ended, when it did, and how it did. Paine does not arrive at a single answer but paints a much richer portrait of the fascinating events that…

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. This speech, known as “The Sinews of Peace” speech, became famous for the phrase that Churchill coined about the fall of the “Iron Curtain” across Europe. To mark its 75th anniversary, the Clements Center assembled a panel to discuss the…