Jim Downs

As Americans enjoy the holiday weekend, does anyone know how Memorial Day originated?

On May 1, 1865, freed slaves gathered in Charleston, South Carolina to commemorate the death of Union soldiers and the end of the American Civil War. Three years later, General John Logan issued a special order...

May 1, 2012 marks the one-year anniversary of the United States' government murder of Osama bin Laden. A day earlier, April 30, 2012 marked the erection of One World Trade Center as the largest building in New York City. And on May 8, 2012, a group of undergraduates at Connecticut...

Hillary Clinton's address on "gay rights as human rights" in Geneva on December 6, 2011 is going viral. Clinton's appeal to the international community responds to the rising atrocities and violence committed against gay people around the globe. The immediate and lasting effect of her address will have more of...

He came to her in a dream, and said, "Meet me in Paris in two weeks, I can't stand it here."

So, she packed a bag and brought along a used camera. When she arrived to St. Paul de Vence, the home of her late uncle's estate,...

Co-authored by Thavolia Glymph

The Help has stirred up a controversy.

On the one side are the faithful fans of the book-turned-film who have enthusiastically praised its moral lessons, believable characters and insider's view into the lives of black women domestics in the mid-20th century South, an interpretation author Kathryn...

Is Katy Perry changing what it means to be a man?

It all seemed to start this past fall on Glee when Blaine Anderson played by the self-identified straight actor Darren Criss serenaded Kurt Hummel, played by Chris Colfer, who earned a Golden Globe award for his palpable portrayal...

Delivered to the Connecticut College Student Body on October 13, 2010

I used to believe in happy endings -- not in the way that things end in children's fairy-tales, but the way that they end in Reese Witherspoon movies -- when the pretty-but-down-to -earth girl gets to live happily ever...

On July 4, 2010, I witnessed the unlawful arrest of a young black man in Provincetown, MA. While walking down the street following the fireworks, a gathered crowd caught my attention. The young man, whose name I do not know, was a member of a group of bystanders that formed...

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan takes me back to January 2008, when a line of undergraduate students waited outside of my history department office, asking for excused absences so that they could campaign for Obama. When they returned from the snowy climes of Iowa, they explained to the class...

Once upon a time, the United States had a full-fledged national health care system. The federal government employed 120 doctors, constructed 40 hospitals, provided medical care to over 500,000 people, and even created special facilities for orphans and the elderly.
That health care system, which lasted only five years,...

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, many Americans were quick to offer financial support and proud to see U.S. military forces leading search and rescue missions, providing medical care and keeping peace. Yet some have been critical of U.S. aid efforts, arguing that our country has no...