The National History Center of the American Historical Association provides a venue in the nation's capital for all who care about the human past to make history an essential part of public conversations about current events and the shared futures of the United States and the wider world.
U.S. Gun Rights and Regulations
At our most recent Congressional Briefing in March, Saul Cornell (Fordham) and Darrell A. H. Miller (Duke) discussed the history of gun legislation and jurisprudence in a panel moderated by Karin Wulf (William & Mary). Past efforts at regulation since the revolutionary period speak to present and future efforts to legislate and rule legally on interpretations of the Second Amendment.
A video recording of the briefing can be found here, in C-SPAN’s video library.
A briefing summary, with bios of the panelists, is available here.
Congressional Reform
At February’s Congressional Briefing, “How Congress Reforms Itself: Historical Perspectives on Rules Changes” — recently aired on C-SPAN — leading historians of both bodies of Congress addressed past changes to rules and the overall history of congressional reform and rule changes since 1789. A panel of four historians — Matthew Wasniewski (House of Representatives), Daniel S. Holt (Senate), John Lawrence (University of California’s Washington Center), and moderator Michele Swers (Georgetown University) — presented perspectives on how these modifications have changed the way congress works over time, and they explored some of the unintended consequences of reform efforts.
A video recording of the briefing can be found here, in C-SPAN’s video library.
A briefing summary, with bios of the panelists, is available here.
History of US Refugee Policy
In October, the National History Center hosted a congressional briefing on the history of US refugee policy. At the briefing, Carl Bon Tempo (SUNY-Albany) and Maria Cristina Garcia (Cornell) outlined the evolution of refugee policy from the immediate postwar period through the Refugee Act of 1980.
A video recording of the briefing is available here, in C-SPAN’s video library. You can read a one-page briefing summary here.
Read Dane Kennedy’s recap of the event, “Myths and Realities of the US Refugee Policy,” for Perspectives Daily.