What Crime Does the Thanksgiving Turkey Answer For?

A Philosopher Reflects on How Pardoning the Birds Only Compounds the Holiday’s Hypocrisy and Brutality

“Merciful President Pardons Turkey” declared headlines when John F. Kennedy saved the turkey gifted to the White House from being on the dinner table in 1963. But the tradition of sparing a turkey goes all the way back to when Thanksgiving was first declared an official holiday a century prior, in 1863. That year, Tad Lincoln, youngest son of Abraham and Mary, grew attached to the live turkey that had been sent to the White House and persuaded his dad to grant clemency to the bird to stop it from …

by Erin McKenna | November 24, 2021

It Takes a Village to Create a Nation’s Memory

Returning Jews and Local Communities Worked Together to Lead Germany Toward Historical Reckoning

by Helmut Walser Smith | January 11, 2021

In the early postwar years in the German town of Warendorf, no one contributed as much to facing the difficult past as Hugo Spiegel. He was not a learned man. …

I Was Once a Classic Car Show Judge

UCLA Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala Doesn’t Dance

August 29, 2015

Kal Raustiala is professor of law and global studies at UCLA and director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. Before moderating a discussion of why it’s so difficult …

When It Comes to Stopping Genocide, There’s a Will But Not a Way

We Are More Committed to Ending Mass Atrocities Than Ever Before—We Just Don’t Know How

by Sarah Rothbard | May 5, 2015

What does genocide mean? What are its causes? And what kind of actions can be taken—in the U.S. and elsewhere—to stem this horrifying, ongoing global problem? Kal Raustiala, director of …

Here’s Why Genocide Keeps Happening

The Social, Economic, and Political Conditions That Lead to the Worst War Crimes

May 1, 2015

A century since the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, and over half a century since 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, mass atrocities continue to take place …

Genocide in Our Hemisphere

Why the Trial of Gen. Ríos Montt is Good for Guatemala and the World

by Daniel Rothenberg | June 19, 2013

On May 10, a Guatemalan court made history when it found General Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity committed while he controlled the government in the …

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