History

CU historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East

Brad Worrell — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:28:57 +0000

CU historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East Brad Worrell Wed, 09/09/2026 - 11:28

Bradley Worrell

Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks, Middle East expert John M. Willis says 9/11 did not fundamentally reinvent U.S. policy in the region but it did remove political constraints and accelerate changes

If there is one misconception about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that University of Colorado Boulder historian John M. Willis would like to challenge, it is the idea that those attacks fundamentally reinvented U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Willis, whose research focus is on the modern Middle East, was living in Yemen on a Fullbright fellowship when the 9/11 attacks occurred. He recalls attending a town hall at the U.S. embassy a few days later, where he asked the ambassador if the U.S. would present its evidence for who it saw as being responsible for the attacks and if it would seek to build international community support for any actions it would take. He says the ambassador responded bluntly that the U.S. would not wait to respond.

That idea, as later articulated in more detail by the George W. Bush administration, was that the U.S. could react unilaterally—and preemptively—against any perceived threats, Willis says. Rather than following the established rules-based international order, Bush’s declaration put forth the idea “that the U.S. presented itself as above or beyond international laws,” he adds.

John M. Willis is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� history professor whose expertise is in the Middle East.

Officially, that represented a new policy for the U.S., but Willis says conservative think tanks had been laying the groundwork for such a change for at least two decades prior to the terrorist attacks.

‘Global War on Terror’

The first phase of the American response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and Pentagon in Washington, D.C., focused on Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda had established its base under Taliban protection.

For many Americans, the invasion of Afghanistan appeared to have a clear objective: dismantle the organization responsible for the attacks and prevent future acts of terrorism. But Willis argues that the U.S. government’s response quickly expanded into something much broader.

He says the idea of a “Global War on Terror” evolved beyond al-Qaeda and became a framework for understanding a wide range of international challenges. Terrorism, he explains, became the central lens through which policymakers viewed the Middle East.

Willis says that broader approach helped pave the way for the 2003 invasion of Iraq—even though there was no evidence linking al-Qaeda and the Arab dictatorship.

Long before the 9/11 attacks, Willis says influential neo-conservatives associated with the Project for a New American Century had been advocating for a more muscular U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. After the first Gulf War, many prominent neo-cons argued that defeating Saddam Hussein’s regime would create a “massive domino effect in the Middle East that would lead to the emergence of liberal democracy, free market capitalism and so on,” Willis says.

He adds that neo-con ambitions did not end with Iraq, noting that in the months following 9/11 President Bush described America as being in conflict with an “Axis of Evil” that included Iran.

In the days following 9/11, Willis says using language like Axis of Evil and Global War on Terror made it nearly impossible for Americans to challenge the direction in which the country was headed.

How

How have anti-Muslim backlash and stereotypes affected Muslim Americans in the 25 years since 9/11? ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Lori Peek asks how a nation of hundreds of millions of people from different backgrounds can live together, understand one another and build a shared future.

Learn more

“If you think back to that period, it was really difficult to speak against this idea of the Global War on Terror. It was a really constrained rhetorical and political environment if you were opposed to U.S. military intervention,” he says.

Unintended rise of Iran

Perhaps one of the great ironies of the post-9/11 era, Willis says, is that efforts intended to strengthen American influence in the Middle East by overthrowing the Iraqi government instead helped Iran expand its power in the region.

The removal of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, eliminated one of the most important rivals of Iran, a Shia-majority country. In the political vacuum that followed, Shiite parties and movements—many of which had longstanding ties with Iran—gained prominence in Iraq, Willis says.

“By around 2003, when we have the first beginning of a democratic process in Iraq following the U.S. invasion, it was clear to every policy specialist that any new government would be dominated by Shiite political parties,” he says. Unfortunately for the United States, its leaders weren’t listening to what those policy specialists had to say at the time, he adds.

This development, Willis argues, illustrates the difficulty of predicting how major interventions will reshape regional politics.

Meanwhile, for Sunni-led Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran’s strengthened position was a source of deep concern.

“The 1979 (Iranian) revolution was a popular revolution that unseated a monarch supported by the U.S.,” Willis says. “And in the 1980s, there were a number of local movements within the Gulf regimes’ own Shiite populations inspired by Iran, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. For the longest time, Gulf states had seen Iran as an exporter of revolution, so the rise of the Shiite-led government in Iraq made that threat palpable.”

Two key developments

Meanwhile, the U.S. was not the only government taking action in the Middle East following 9/11 in the name of combating terrorism. Willis says many Arab states quickly recognized that by presenting domestic opposition groups as terrorist threats they could justify crackdowns while avoiding international criticism.

“Effectively, it gave the green light to massive waves of repression across the region,” he says. “Gulf states could not only get U.S. support, but also military and financial aid to combat terrorism when it was, in effect, combating domestic enemies. So, it effectively worked against any form of democratic reform or democratic culture.”

The result, Willis contends, was the strengthening of authoritarian governments across the region.

Beyond the optics of standing with Arab governments pledging to fight terrorism, Willis says the U.S. was in no position to criticize those countries because it directly benefited from those relationships. Specifically, some Arab governments like Jordan helped the U.S. infiltrate al-Qaeda while others hosted CIA-operated “black sites” where security services sought to extract intelligence from al-Qaeda prisoners in ways that would have been illegal in the U.S.

Willis says one of the other key developments that indirectly resulted from 9/11 was that, with Iran’s increased influence in the region following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the existing relationship between Israel and the Gulf countries was effectively brought out into the open.

“I think the U.S. relationship has stayed roughly the same with the Gulf states, with minor exceptions, but I think it did help cement the relationship with Israel and the Gulf states,” he says.

The ‘Arab Spring’ challenge

If the 2003 Iraq War revealed the unintended consequences of intervention, Willis says the ‘Arab Spring’ that gained momentum in 2011 exposed the limitations of a regional order built primarily on security partnerships.

An Arab Spring protest in Egypt. The movement exposed the limitations of a regional order built primarily on security partnerships, says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar John M. Willis. (Photo: MidoSemsem/Shutterstock)

He argues that many U.S. leaders underestimated popular frustration throughout the Middle East. That’s because those leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, tend to equate a country’s leadership with its citizens, when none of the authoritarian governments in power are popular with their citizenry, he says.

In countries such as Tunisia and Egypt, mass movements demanded political reform, greater accountability and expanded economic opportunities. Protesters demonstrated that public opinion remained a powerful force despite oppression, Willis says.

He says the Obama administration had an opportunity to support the 2011 Egyptian revolution that supplanted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a historic ally of the U.S. and Israel, but opted not to. Instead, it tacitly endorsed the military coup in 2013 that removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power.

For Willis, the Arab Spring revealed a fundamental contradiction in U.S. policy.

“Promoting democracy or human rights has never been a priority for the U.S. in the Middle East. It simply hasn’t,” he says bluntly. “If we go to the post-World War II period, when we really see the emergence of the U.S. role in the Middle East, it was about Cold War alliances and concerns; it was the domination of energy resources and military alliances meant to marginalize the allies of the Soviet Union in the region. Post-1967, it was about the strong alliance with Israel more than anything. So, we really don’t see a concerted effort to promote democracy or human rights.”

Willis says he believes U.S. policymakers still have not learned the lesson that security arrangements with Arab governments could prove fragile when the underlying grievances of those countries’ citizens remain unresolved.

A legacy still unfolding

More than two decades after 9/11, Willis believes the consequences of America’s actions after the terrorist attacks continue to shape the Middle East.

He is not confident that the U.S. has learned any lessons from its past military intervention in the region based on the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to join Israel in launching a sneak attack on Iran, seeking to overthrow the Islamic republic’s government by eliminating its top leadership.

Willis says such an action reflects a mindset that has persisted since 9/11: that American military power alone can successfully manage the Middle East’s most difficult challenges. He warns that, historically, such confidence has often produced outcomes very different from those that policymakers originally intended.

Meanwhile, the idea of a Global War on Terror has not gone away—and the repercussions of that exist far beyond the Middle East, according to Willis.

“I think one thing we have not fully contended with here is we’re seeing the growing surveillance state and much harsher responses to civil disobedience and protest,” he says. “It is something that has grown out of this idea of a Global War on Terror, which becomes existential in a way that a war between countries can’t, because it’s not geographically bounded. Terror can exist everywhere and anywhere. It can exist outside the U.S. and in the most American places in the North American continent. I think that still lives with us in the most unfortunate way.”

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Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks, Middle East expert John M. Willis says 9/11 did not fundamentally reinvent policy in the region but did remove political constraints and accelerate changes.

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Top photo: U.S. National Archives

Mao still casts a long shadow

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:00:42 +0000

Mao still casts a long shadow Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/04/2026 - 07:00

Bradley Worrell

Five decades after his death, Mao Zedong remains the face of modern China, yet ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian William Wei argues his rise to power was never inevitable and neither is the verdict on his legacy

Mao Zedong remains one of the most prominent political figures in modern history. Fifty years after his death, his embalmed body still lies in state in Tiananmen Square, his enormous portrait continues to hang over the Gate of Heavenly Peace, his face appears on the country’s currency and Chinese schoolchildren are still taught that he was the founding leader who reunified and transformed the nation.

Mao’s omnipresence can create the impression that his rise to power was inevitable. However, reflecting on Mao’s legacy today—five decades since his death Sept. 9, 1976, at age 82—his place in history was never assured, argues William Wei, a University of Colorado Boulder Department of History professor who is an expert on modern China.

“One of the things I teach my students is that nothing is historically inevitable—and that is certainly the case with Mao’s rise to power,” he says. “If you study Chinese history, you see that his rise to leadership within the Chinese Communist Party unfolded over about a decade. It was driven by a combination of strategic skill, organization building, ideological innovation and, quite frankly, intra-party struggles that involved the purging of rivals.”

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian William Wei studies modern China, including the legacy of Mao Zedong.

Mao’s rise was never guaranteed

In fact, far from being recognized as leader of the communist movement in China initially, Wei says Mao in the early 1930s was sidelined by rivals known as the “28 Bolsheviks”—communist leaders trained in Moscow who adhered more closely to orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine of organizing urban workers to create a revolution.

Wei says the turning point came in 1935 following the Long March—one of the defining episodes in Communist Party history. After anti-communist nationalist forces overran the communist base in Jiangxi Province, Mao led his Red Army soldiers on a grueling 6,000-mile retreat over some of China’s most difficult terrain to escape encirclement and destruction.

According to Wei, the march was devastating from a military standpoint, with communists losing roughly seven-eighths of their forces. “But they survived, and for the Chinese communists, survival was a form of victory,” he adds.

Even then, Wei says Mao’s emergence was not the result of a sudden triumph but a long process. After communist forces under other leaders lost battles to the country’s nationalist forces, Wei says Mao’s rivals effectively ceded military leadership to him.

Mao also distinguished himself through ideological innovation, Wei says. While orthodox Marxists emphasized that the urban working class would form the revolutionary vanguard, Mao instead argued that China’s overwhelmingly rural population made the peasantry the natural engine for revolution. Wei says Mao’s emphasis on rural peasants as the agents of change helped establish an ideological identity known as “Maoism” that was distinct from both his domestic rivals like the 28 Bolsheviks as well as Soviet orthodoxy.

War, occupation and revolution

With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the nationalists and communists largely halted their fighting to focus on combatting the Japanese invaders. While the nationalists tended to engage in pitched battles with the Japanese, Mao’s communists employed hit-and-run tactics associated with guerrilla warfare.

“This strategy preserved the communist party’s strength, as the nationalists bore the brunt of the fighting,” Wei says. “(Nationalists) fought most of the major battles against the Japanese and consequently suffered most of the defeats as well.”

A propaganda image of Mao Zedong from 1967.

By emphasizing guerrilla warfare, recruiting peasants and expanding the party organization throughout rural China, Wei says Mao transformed a weakened movement into a formidable political and military force. Between 1937 and 1940, Chinese Communist Party membership grew from 40,000 to 800,000.

When Japan’s defeat ended World War II in August 1945, the nationalists and communists renewed their fighting. Here again, Wei argues that Mao’s success was never guaranteed.

The nationalists initially held several advantages. They possessed larger forces, better equipment and support from the United States. But Wei says the nationalists were also weakened by corruption, declining public support and incompetence in administering the country’s economy.

The communists, in contrast, entered the conflict stronger than they had been at any point since the Long March, and by the late 1940s the balance shifted decisively in Mao’s favor, Wei says. In 1949, Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with the communist victory marking one of the most remarkable political reversals of the 20th century, Wei says.

Korea and Mao’s emergence as a global leader

Mao’s stature expanded beyond China’s borders almost immediately after the communist victory. The Korean War became the first major international test of the new regime and played a crucial role in shaping’s Mao’s standing at home and abroad, Wei says.

He notes that both Mao and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin were initially reluctant to support North Korean leader Kim Il-sung’s plans to militarily reunify the Korean Peninsula. Kim convinced them that he could strike quickly and that America would not intervene.

However, America did intervene on behalf of South Korea. And once American-led forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur reversed North Korea’s initial victories and advanced toward the Yalu River—the border separating Korea from China’s industrial heartland in Manchuria—Chinese leaders viewed that as an unacceptable threat, Wei says.

Although Chinese forces were poorly equipped and lacked air support, Wei says that by their sheer numbers (more than 250,000 soldiers) and with the element of surprise, they decimated the U.S. Army contingent and pushed American forces back to the 38th parallel. The war eventually settled into a costly stalemate.

Politically, however, the war produced significant benefits for Mao, Wei says. He argues that Mao’s reputation was enhanced because China managed to fight the strongest post-World War II power to a standstill. The conflict elevated not only Mao’s prestige but also the People’s Republic by demonstrating that it could not be dismissed as a weak or a subordinate power, Wei says.

The war also reshaped China’s Cold War relationships. Wei says Stalin’s view of Mao improved after China’s willingness to confront the United States, while the conflict poisoned the country’s relations with Washington for decades, until rapprochement in the 1970s and the normalization of relations in January 1979.

Building a new China

“Mao left behind a complicated legacy,” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian William Wei. “But I stand by my original assertion that he was, to use the Chinese formula, seven parts wrong and only three parts right."

With the victory over the nationalists, Mao was able to impose his stamp on China. Even Wei, who is a critic of Mao, acknowledges his many accomplishments. Mao is remembered for ending what the Chinese call the “Century of Humiliation”—a period during which Western powers and Japan dominated large portions of China. Mao reunified a fragmented country after decades of warlordism, civil conflict and foreign invasion. For millions of Chinese, this achievement alone secured his place in history, Wei says.

The early years of communist rule brought significant social reforms. Perhaps most notably, Wei notes that land redistribution programs transferred land to hundreds of millions of peasants. He also credits the new government with launching a successful industrialization campaign, expanding public health initiatives, increasing access to education and implementing legal reforms designed to improve the status of women. Additionally, the country’s literacy rates improved dramatically, infant mortality declined and new public health programs reached rural communities for the first time.

At the same time, Wei emphasizes that many of these achievements came at an extraordinary human cost. He notes that land reform redistributed property on a massive scale, but at the cost of upwards of a million landlords as well as others targeted as “class enemies.” Meanwhile, industrialization generated rapid economic growth, yet it unfolded within an authoritarian framework that tolerated little dissent.

Twin tragedies

The darkest chapters of Mao’s rule came with the Great Leap Forward starting in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966. Wei describes the Great Leap Forward as a man-made catastrophe, as land collectivization policies, unrealistic farm production quotas and widespread falsification of agricultural data combined to create a disaster that by some estimates resulted in 35 million to 45 million deaths—making it one of the deadliest policy failures in human history.

The Cultural Revolution inflicted a different kind of damage. Initiated after Mao’s standing had been weakened by the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Wei says it was both a political power struggle and an ideological crusade, as Mao sought to eliminate rivals and prevent what he viewed as a drift toward capitalism.

“One of the things Mao believed was in his theory of continuous revolution,” Wei explains. “Permanent revolution believes the revolution never ends, even when you have a seizure of state power, because the party, in this case the Chinese Communist Party, could itself become a new ruling class.”

Wei says the campaign produced persecution and social chaos, as cultural and religious sites were destroyed, schools and universities were shut down and an entire generation lost years of educational opportunity.

For that reason, Wei sharply disagrees with the Chinese Communist Party’s official verdict that Mao was “70% right and 30% wrong.” He reverses that formula, arguing Mao was “70% wrong and 30% right.” While recognizing Mao’s role in reunifying China and advancing certain social reforms, he insists that Mao must be held responsible for the immense anguish caused by his policies.

“Mao left behind a complicated legacy,” Wei says. “But I stand by my original assertion that he was, to use the Chinese formula, seven parts wrong and only three parts right. As a historian, I’m not going to let him escape responsibility for the millions of deaths and all the suffering he caused.”

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Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:18:25 +0000

Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/14/2026 - 17:18

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historians Thomas Andrews and Noah Ramage argue that the seeds of Little Bighorn, which happened 150 years ago, were planted years before Custer’s defeat

The Battle of the Little Bighorn has long occupied a unique place in American memory. Often remembered through images of Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer making a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds, the battle has been mythologized in movies, books and popular culture for nearly 150 years.

But according to University of Colorado Boulder historians Thomas G. Andrews and Noah Ramage, that familiar story obscures a much larger and more complex reality.

Andrews, faculty director of the Center of the American West, says that rather than a simple clash between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, the battle (which many Indigenous people refer to as the Battle of Greasy Grass) emerged from shifting alliances with Native nations amid a backdrop of competition for territory, economic transformation and mounting pressure on Northern Plains tribes. To understand what happened at the Little Bighorn on June 25-26, 1876, Andrews argues that it is necessary to understand the forces that led up to it.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historians Thomas G. Andrews (left) and Noah Ramage (right) argue that the seeds of Little Bighorn were planted years before Custer’s defeat.

At the center of the conflict were several Native nations with different histories and interests, some of which allied themselves with the U.S. government while pursuing their own agendas and some of which violently resisted any efforts by the government to dispossess them of their territories. Among that latter group was a coalition led by Lakotas, joined by Northern Cheyennes and smaller numbers of Arapahos.

“Over the course of the 18th and the first part of the 19th century, the Lakotas really become a kind of great power in the Northern Plains,” Andrews explains.

Their rise was fueled largely by horses, which transformed mobility, trade, hunting and warfare. As Lakota influence expanded westward, Andrews says they moved into territories claimed by other tribes, including the Crow and Arikara. Those longstanding rivalries later helped explain why some Native groups chose to align themselves with U.S. forces, he says.

The United States and the Lakotas had already fought before Little Bighorn, Andrews notes. During Red Cloud’s War in the 1860s, the Lakotas and their allies successfully resisted U.S. efforts to establish the Bozeman Trail through their territory.

“They would actually win,” Andrews says. “They ended up winning a favorable treaty from the United States in 1868.”

That treaty guaranteed hunting rights in the Powder River Country and recognized Sioux sovereignty over vast territories. Yet even as the ink dried on the agreement, a confluence of factors was building that would ultimately lead to renewed hostilities, says Ramage, an assistant professor whose research focus is Native American and Indigenous history.

Expansion, gold and a new federal policy

By the mid-1870s, Native nations on the Plains faced enormous pressures. The completion of railroads accelerated western settlement, while Custer’s 1874 expedition into the Black Hills triggered a gold rush into lands protected by treaty, Andrews says.

“You basically had this huge influx of American squatters essentially moving illegally into territories that the government had recognized as sovereign Sioux territory,” he adds.

‘What my great-grandmother saw at Little Bighorn’

For many Americans, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is remembered as “Custer’s Last Stand”—a dramatic clash of armies on a Montana hillside where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 soldiers of the 7th Calvary were killed on June 25, 1876.

For Rick Williams, an Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne Native, historian, Indigenous rights advocate and University of Colorado Boulder Center of the American West former board member, the battle was never just a chapter in a history book.

It was a story passed down through his family in hushed tones, told by his great-grandmother in her native Lakota and Cheyenne and translated into English for him by his grandmother.

“I’m probably one of the few people living today who has a direct connection with someone who was there,” says Williams. “My great-grandmother was born in 1869 … and she was a little girl in the Cheyenne camp during the Battle of the Little Bighorn; she witnessed what happened.

“Growing up, my grandmother and great-grandmother would tell these stories, but they always warned me not to repeat them. They believed they could still get into trouble, possibly from the public or maybe with the government,” he adds. “Even in the 1950s and 1960s, there was still a fear surrounding (Native American) discussions of what happened at Little Bighorn, because Custer was still revered.”

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Ramage argues those developments reflected a broader shift in federal policy and attitudes toward Native nations. By this time, Ramage says the federal government was becoming increasingly willing to ignore existing agreements. In 1871, Congress stopped making treaties with Native nations, signaling that Washington increasingly viewed itself as possessing unilateral authority over Indigenous peoples and their lands.

“Instead of negotiating with Indian nations as they had in the past, a very aggressive United States starts to dictate policy to Indian nations,” Ramage says, “partially because it views them as inferior.”

He places the conflict within a broader era of American territorial expansion.

“The United States was incredibly ‘grabby’ at this moment,” he says, comparing events on the Northern Plains to a broader period of aggressive imperial expansion in which the United States seized more than half of Mexico’s territory in 1848 (through a treaty) and the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 (without a treaty).

“The U.S. wants to finally monopolize power in the Northern Plains—and to do that it had to finally overcome Lakota power,” Ramage says. He adds, “This is not a war that starts because of some sort of misunderstanding. The U.S. started this war, and it started it with the explicit aim of subjugating the Lakotas.”

Destruction of the buffalo

At the same time settlers poured westward, Andrews and Ramage say another force threatened the foundations of Plains Indian life: the destruction of the bison.

Buffalo were essential to Native economies and cultures. They provided food, clothing, shelter materials, trade goods and spiritual meaning. But industrialization suddenly transformed buffalo hides into valuable commodities, Andrews says.

In 1871, a tanning process was developed that allowed buffalo hides to be converted into belts for industrial machinery.

“It was really kind of this remarkable, literal harnessing of these massive herds of wild creatures on the Great Plains that suddenly could become industrial inputs driving American economic growth,” Andrews says.

The consequences were devastating, Andrews and Ramage agree. Commercial hunters armed with long-range rifles slaughtered buffalo in enormous numbers.

“They were really just hide hunting at that point,” Andrews explains. “Usually, they were not even taking the tongues off of the buffalo that they killed but just stripping the hides off and leaving the carcasses to rot.”

Ramage and Andrews agree that federal officials understood the significance of what was happening.

“U.S. military leaders recognized how profoundly Plains Natives depended on bison,” Andrews says. “They understood that attacking bison would serve U.S. national interests.”

Reservations and resistance

At the same time buffalo populations were collapsing, the federal government was attempting to force Native peoples onto reservations, which were intended not merely as places to live but as mechanisms of control, Andrews says.

“Their main way of trying to do this was by establishing reservations and by trying to use food, the provision of rations, to control Native peoples,” he says.

Native leaders disagreed over how best to respond. Some believed accommodation offered the best chance for survival. Others argued for continued independence.

Sioux veterans of the Battle of Little Bighorn (Photo: Library of Congress)

Initially, many Native people were willing to try reservation life, Andrews says. However, federal corruption, underfunding and bureaucratic failures made reservation existence increasingly untenable, he adds.

“Native people who tried to comply with what the United States wanted usually ended up starving,” he says.

By the summer of 1876, many Lakotas and Cheyennes had left the reservations and gathered in the Powder River Country, where treaty rights still guaranteed hunting access. What emerged was one of the largest Native encampments ever assembled on the Northern Plains, Ramage says.

The Army marches into disaster

As the U.S. Army moved to force these groups back onto reservations, Custer and the 7th Cavalry advanced toward the encampment, relying heavily on Native scouts for tracking.

While those scouts reported that it was the largest gathering of Native peoples that anyone had ever witnessed, Andrews says U.S. commanders failed to grasp the true size of the force they faced. On the fateful day of battle, Custer’s detachment of 7th Cavalry members encountered thousands of Native combatants rather than the few hundred they anticipated, he notes.

“The Americans had so badly underestimated what they were up against,” he says.

Ramage argues that this failure extended beyond Custer himself.

“Little Bighorn was arguably an intelligence failure for the United States as a whole—not just Custer,” he says. He blames federal officials for consistently underestimating Lakota power.

Grave markers at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. (Photo: Victoria Stauffenberg/National Park Service)

“Many U.S. officials incorrectly assumed they were fighting racial inferiors,” he says. “They were consistently over-confident.”

Defeat at the Little Bighorn

The Battle of the Little Bighorn remains one of the most studied and debated engagements in American history. Andrews cautions that key details remain uncertain because most of Custer’s immediate command died in the fighting.

“We don’t have their perspective, and we never will,” he says.

Historians continue to debate Custer’s decisions and the roles played by subordinates Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen, both of whom had contentious relationships with their commander.

“Reno and Benteen both despised Custer,” Andrews says.

What is clear is that the Army encountered a vastly larger and more capable force than expected. Native warriors rapidly mobilized from the enormous village and overwhelmed Custer’s detachment of about 200 soldiers. Andrews says he believes the outcome can be attributed in large part to the Cavalry commander’s ego.

“I think really it’s Custer’s arrogance,” he says.

Ramage cautions that focusing solely on tactical mistakes can distract from the larger strategy being pursued by the Army.

“From my perspective,” he says, “there is a way in which focusing on (Custer’s) strategic blunders … seriously overlooks the fact that the ‘successful’ U.S. military strategy at this moment was often defined by horrific attacks on vulnerable non-combatants.”

For Natives, victory in battle, defeat in war

News of the defeat shocked Americans, Andrews and Ramage agree.

The battle occurred during the nation's centennial year, a period Andrews describes as marked by economic depression, political corruption and uncertainty. The death of a famous cavalry officer and the destruction of his command seemed almost unimaginable, he says.

At the same time, the battle quickly became part of a national mythology. Andrews says the story of “Custer’s Last Stand” helped transform a military disaster into a narrative of heroic sacrifice.

Meanwhile, for Native peoples, their victory proved short-lived.

“The government was dead set on retribution and on securing eventual victory,” Andrews says. He notes that federal authorities intensified military operations, tightened ration policies and increasingly used hunger as a method of coercion.

“The government essentially tries to starve Native peoples into submission,” he says.

By the spring of 1877, most Native groups had surrendered or fled to Canada.

Ramage says the Army’s defeat at Little Bighorn did not change the government’s end objectives.

This is not a war that starts because of some sort of misunderstanding. The U.S. started this war, and it started it with the explicit aim of subjugating the Lakotas."

“The U.S. was deeply committed to its military goals,” he says, “and even a humiliating defeat at Little Bighorn would not and did not change its course in terms of policy.”

Lasting consequences still felt today

With the subjugation of these Northern Plains tribes, the U.S. government reduced the size of the Great Sioux Reservation, seized the Black Hills despite treaty protections and intensified its campaign to assimilate Native peoples.

Even today, the legacy remains unresolved. Andrews notes that Lakotas never accepted the seizure of the Black Hills. While federal courts later approved financial compensation, the Lakotas rejected monetary settlements. “They actually want the land,” he notes.

For Ramage, the ongoing dispute illustrates that Little Bighorn’s significance extends well beyond a single military engagement. The battle occurred during a period when the federal government increasingly abandoned treaty-making and asserted unilateral authority over Native nations—a shift with consequences that are still being debated today.

“This is a war with one very clear aggressor: the United States,” he says.

Meanwhile, the battle’s memory continues to evolve. Once commonly remembered as “Custer’s Last Stand,” Andrews and Ramage say modern historians increasingly place the conflict within the broader context of Native resistance, U.S. expansion and the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty. The historians say tribal histories, oral traditions and Native perspectives have become a more prominent part of the story, challenging earlier interpretations that focused almost exclusively on Custer and the 7th Cavalry.

For Andrews, that continuing conversation is evidence that the battle remains relevant.

“The histories and its legacies are still absolutely active in Indian country,” he says. “There are still so many unresolved issues.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historians Thomas Andrews and Noah Ramage argue that the seeds of Little Bighorn, which happened 150 years ago, were planted years before Custer’s defeat.

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Top painting: "The Custer Fight" by Charles Marion Russell, 1903

‘What my great-grandmother saw at Little Bighorn’

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:49:24 +0000

‘What my great-grandmother saw at Little Bighorn’ Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/14/2026 - 09:49

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Center of the American West former board member Rick Williams shares family insights into the historic battle and offers thoughts on how perceptions have changed over time

It was a story passed down through his family in hushed tones, told by his great-grandmother in her native Lakota and Cheyenne and translated into English for him by his grandmother.

For Rick Williams, an Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne Native, historian, Indigenous rights advocate and previous board member of the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Center of the American West, the Battle of Little Bighorn was never just a chapter in a history book.

With this summer marking the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine recently spoke with Williams, who shared his family recollections and why he’s encouraged to see that American perceptions of the battle and Native Americans have changed over the years.

Question: What did your great-grandmother tell you about the battle? What details differed from historical accounts?

Williams: According to my great-grandmother’s account, she and a cousin had been playing near the river when (Cheyenne) scouts warned them to return to camp. Instead, they stopped where they could watch what was happening. …

According to those accounts, warriors were concealed along the river and ambushed Custer’s force as it crossed. The attack created immediate confusion and disorganization. Some soldiers were thrown from their horses and others fled up nearby draws and ridges.

As soldiers attempted to retreat uphill, another group of Lakota or Cheyenne warriors arrived from a different direction after hearing the gunfire. That left Custer’s men with no avenue of escape. That’s why the traditional image of a carefully organized ‘Last Stand’ doesn’t fit some Native accounts. The soldiers never had the opportunity to establish an effective defensive formation.

There are many versions of what happened, and every story seems to have several variations. But one thing is clear: The battle was far more complicated than the traditional narrative suggests. …

One story my great-grandmother told me was children at the camp going among the dead cavalry men after the battle. The children would open the soldiers’ money belts and throw the contents into the air. She said, ‘I didn’t know it was money. If I had known, I would have saved some.’

These were oral stories I learned firsthand.

Later, I told that story at a history conference in Billings. A prominent historian said it couldn’t be true. He argued that Custer’s men wouldn’t have been carrying that kind of money in the field.

By then, I had done extensive research in military archives. I learned that every military post kept monthly reports called post returns. When I examined the records from Fort Lincoln, I found that just before the expedition left, Custer had drawn two months’ pay for his men. The records also noted that the money was distributed before moving into the campaign area. So, the documents supported my great-grandmother’s story.

Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn

But according to University of Colorado Boulder historians Thomas G. Andrews and Noah Ramage, that familiar story obscures a much larger and more complex reality.

Learn more

Question: Are there other notable details from your grandmother’s account or from your own research on the battle that differ from the traditional narrative?

Williams: Part of my research suggests a gap between the public narrative and what Native people remember. For example, there was a claim that Custer’s body was not mutilated because he was respected by Native people. However, accounts passed down in my family tell a different story. …

The Cheyenne knew who Custer was. Unlike some other groups, they had prior history with him, particularly after the Washita campaign. There was an old story that after the peace ceremony, a Cheyenne spiritual leader emptied pipe ashes onto Custer’s boots and warned him never to come among their people again or he would be killed.

According to Native accounts, Custer was shot in the river (at Little Bighorn) … and a Cheyenne warrior then cut out his heart, held it up and declared that (the spiritual leader’s) warning had finally been carried out. You’ll never find that story in most written accounts. It’s an oral tradition that was passed down within families. …

Another thing that often gets overlooked in history is Native intelligence and military skill. The military capabilities of the Native nations were routinely underestimated. Yet, at Little Bighorn, they demonstrated superior knowledge of the terrain, superior scouting and effective coordination.

History is complicated. If you really wanted a complete understanding of Little Bighorn, you’d need accounts from the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Crow scouts (for the cavalry), (Custer’s subordinate Captain) Reno and everyone else involved. No single narrative tells the whole story.

Question: Why do you think the accounts of Native Americans who were present at the battle were not given the same credence—at least initially—as secondary accounts regarding Custer and his men, who did not live to tell their stories?

Williams: For many years, historians largely ignored or dismissed Cheyenne accounts. One reason was simple: The Cheyenne used a different directional system. Their cardinal directions were based on Bear Butte—one of their most sacred landmarks. When historians translated Cheyenne stories using conventional directions, the stories seemed inaccurate.

In the 1980s, after a fire at Little Bighorn exposed new archaeological evidence, archeologist Richard Fox studied the battlefield extensively. Working with researchers familiar with Cheyenne traditions, he found that when the directional references were properly understood, Cheyenne accounts matched the archeological evidence remarkably well. In some cases, they were more accurate than any other version of events.

Question: Do you think American public perceptions of the battle have changed in your lifetime?

Williams: Absolutely. Fifty or 60 years ago, criticizing Custer publicly was difficult. Many people viewed him as a heroic figure, and there were passionate defenders of that interpretation.

I think that’s one reason my grandmother cautioned me not to repeat certain stories; there was a real concern about how people would react.

Over the years, Native perspectives have gained greater recognition. The interpretation at the battlefield itself has changed, and the visitor center now presents a more balanced story.

From a Native perspective, outsiders were entering and occupying someone else’s homeland. History sounds very different when viewed from that angle."

The archeological work done after the battlefield fire was especially important because it challenged longstanding assumptions. At the same time, Native voices became harder to ignore.

Question: Are there still elements of the historical narrative regarding western expansion before and after the battle that you think are largely unchanged in American culture?

Williams: One issue that still bothers me is the language some people use when talking about western expansion. The traditional story often describes settlers moving peacefully into empty territory and being attacked by savage tribes. But native people lived on that land already.

From a Native perspective, outsiders were entering and occupying someone else’s homeland. History sounds very different when viewed from that angle.

Question: If Little Bighorn had ended differently, do you think the history of the West would have changed substantially?

Williams: That’s difficult to answer. The battle took place in 1876—the nation’s centennial year. Because of that timing, the event became highly symbolic. It captured the nation’s attention in a way that few other battles could have.

Had the outcome been different, perhaps some things would have changed, but larger forces were already in motion. There was tremendous pressure for western expansion. Public attitudes toward Native people were deeply entrenched. Government policies were already moving in certain directions. Even without Little Bighorn, many of those forces would still have existed.

For generations, Native nations experienced policies designed to assimilate, relocate or absorb Native peoples into mainstream society. Those policies affected nearly every aspect of life.

Even today, many tribes remain constrained by federal systems that affect their ability to govern themselves and develop their economies.

Question: Some 150 years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, do you have thoughts on how the American public views Native Americans?

Williams: Despite everything, I believe one thing has improved dramatically: People don’t view Native Americans the same way they did 50 or 60 years ago. For much of earlier American history, Native people were often portrayed as enemies, obstacles or relics of the past.

Today, more people are willing to listen. They’re looking at the historical record and saying, ‘We didn’t get this completely right.’ That’s encouraging.

I hope the next 50 years involve more than simply acknowledging mistakes. I hope they include real efforts to rebuild communities and create opportunities.

People sometimes talk about reconstruction efforts in other parts of the world after wars and disasters. Native communities have often needed similar investments but have rarely received them. There is still a great deal of work to be done.

But for the first time in a while, I think more people are willing to have an honest conversation about history—and that’s a good place to start.

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Center of the American West former board member Rick Williams shares family insights into the historic battle and offers thoughts on how perceptions have changed over time.

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Top image: "Indian Memorial" by Colleen Cutschall, a senior Oglala-Sicangu Lakota artist originally from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. (Photo: National Park Service)

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:46:05 +0000

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/08/2026 - 19:46

The two-day workshop will bring together scholars and students from around the world to assess the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s

The University of Colorado Boulder is co-sponsoring an international conference assessing the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s, discussing achievements, shortcomings and prospects.

Along with Technische Universitat Berlin (Technical University of Berlin) and the Barenboim–Said Akademie in Berlin, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� will help welcome students and scholars of the Holocaust from around the world to a two-day workshop Tuesday and Wednesday at the Barenboim–Said Akademie.

What: Assessing the State of Holocaust Studies in the Mid-2020s: Achievements, Shortcomings, Prospects

When: June 9-10

Where: Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, Germany

Learn more

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, professor and Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of History, will give the workshop opening lecture, focusing on practicing Holocaust studies in times of uncertainty.

A central focus of the conference is an awareness that while Holocaust studies, over the past 50 years, had developed from a marginal field into a vibrant international discipline, the last Holocaust eyewitnesses will be passing in coming years. With this passing, conference organizers note, contemporary history is becoming history, while at the same time the field faces new challenges: from politicized debates and attacks on scholarship to the reverberations of wars and conflict, which are prompting scholars worldwide to partially reassess the Holocaust in both its historical and contemporary dimensions.

The workshop aims to bring together leading international researchers at various career stages to assess the current state of Holocaust studies critically, asking: What has been achieved? What remains unresolved? What new directions are emerging?

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� involvement in the workshop continues to build on international collaborations that saw, in Fall 2025, the creation of a tri-university graduate course on modern German-Jewish ego-documents, or autobiographical writings, team-taught by faculty across ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, the Open University of Israel (OUI) and the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University Berlin (TU Berlin).

The course brings together students and professors from the United States, Israel and Germany to partner on collaborative research, including an intensive, eight-day in-person seminar in Berlin.

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The two-day workshop will bring together scholars and students from around the world to assess the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s.

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A new era of gunboat diplomacy?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:33:22 +0000

A new era of gunboat diplomacy? Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/17/2026 - 15:33

Tony Wood

Trump’s coercive tactics in Latin America evoke an earlier era of U.S. policy—and the rise of anti‑imperialism it helped spur

In Latin America, as in other parts of the world, the second Trump administration has adopted an increasingly aggressive policy.

From drone strikes on purported drug traffickers to increased tariffs on imports, and from the blockade on fuel shipments and threats of invasion in Cuba to the Jan. 3 military incursion into Venezuela, the U.S.’s more coercive approach to its hemispheric neighbors evokes an earlier period of U.S. foreign policy.

Many commentators have found echoes of the 1989 capture of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Others highlighted the longer history of U.S. interventions in Latin America stretching back through the Cold War. That includes the Nixon administration’s support for the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile or the CIA-sponsored removal of Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954.

Tony Wood, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� assistant professor of history, specializes in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

Yet as a historian of early 20th-century Latin America, I believe the Trump administration’s approach to Latin America more closely resembles an older pattern of U.S. policy. Between 1900 and the mid-1930s, U.S. forces intervened in one Latin American country after another. This practice was often justified by the Roosevelt Corollary, President Theodore Roosevelt’s addition to the Monroe Doctrine. In cases of “chronic wrongdoing,” Roosevelt said in 1904, the U.S would find itself compelled to exercise an “international police power” in defense of U.S. interests.

But crucially, how Latin Americans responded to the U.S. exerting its dominance in the early 20th century may hold some lessons for the present day. One of the major side effects of the U.S.’s so-called gunboat diplomacy was an upsurge of resistance and anti-imperialist thinking in the region’s political life.

The roots of anti-imperialism

In the 30 years after Roosevelt asserted the U.S.’s right to intervene across the hemisphere, U.S. forces occupied Cuba three times—in 1906-09, 1912 and 1917-21. They also occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. In Nicaragua, the U.S. deployed the Marines from 1912 to 1925 and then again from 1926 to 1933, waging a counterinsurgency in which it used aerial bombardment for the first time.

Across much of the region, then, this was a time when the U.S. was quick to resort to force, unburdened by any concerns for Latin American countries’ sovereignty.

Yet this era of external intervention also coincided with a period of remarkable political ferment, which I describe in my recently published book, Radical Sovereignty.

In one place after another, from Buenos Aires to Mexico City and from Havana to Lima, movements sprang up that put forward sharp critiques of U.S power. Many of them grew out of student organizations in the late 1910s, while others drew on the rising strength of labor unions and newly formed leftist political parties.

In 1923, rural workers in the Mexican state of Veracruz formed a Peasant League. From the outset, they saw local issues as closely interwoven with international ones, and they argued that there was a compelling reason for this. As the league put it, “Our internationalism is not the child of a crazed enthusiasm for empty phrases … but of the need to take preventive measures, to bolster ourselves against the enemy,” which they identified as “the imperialism of North America.”

Many of Latin America’s radical movements at this time were inspired by the recent example of the Mexican Revolution. The new Mexican Constitution of 1917 had nationalized the country’s land and natural resources, putting it on a collision course with U.S. companies and landowners.

Emiliano Zapata (seated, center), was a Mexican revolutionary who employed guerrilla tactics during and after the Mexican Revolution (Photo: Library of Congress)

Others still were energized by the global repercussions of the Russian Revolution. This, of course, included several brand-new communist parties across the region. But at the time, many others in Latin America saw the Bolsheviks as part of a global anti-colonial wave.

Mexico City as activist hub

My book explores the key role Mexico City played as a gathering point for these different political tendencies.

They included groups ranging from Mexican peasant leagues to the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, an anti-imperialist movement formed by Peruvian exiles. Many of these organizations converged under the umbrella of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas. Founded in Mexico City in 1925, it soon had chapters in a dozen more countries across the region.

Between them, these movements brought into focus the novel features of U.S. power. As the Cuban student leader and communist Julio Antonio Mella saw it in 1925 – at a time when his native country was highly dependent on the U.S. but formally sovereign—the U.S. was distinct. Unlike European empires, it largely refrained from direct control of territories, though it had pressed the Cubans to include in their 1901 constitution a provision allowing it to intervene in the island at will.

In Mella’s view, the U.S. was clearly an empire, one that mainly exercised its dominance through commercial or financial pressures. For him, the dollar and Wall Street were as central to U.S. power as the halls of government in Washington, D.C.

For Ricardo Paredes, an Ecuadorean doctor who founded the country’s Socialist Party in 1926, a new term was required to capture Latin American countries’ contradictory position. Formally sovereign, they were not colonies as such. Yet they were economically and politically subordinated to Washington and Wall Street—“dependent countries,” as he phrased it in 1928.

For the Peruvian poet Magda Portal, a leading member of the anti-imperialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, U.S. dominance played out differently in different parts of Latin America.

Fidel Castro (standing, center left) was influenced by the anti-imperialist upsurge of the 1920s and ’30s. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In a series of lectures she gave in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in 1929, Portal divided the region into zones. While countries such as Argentina or Brazil were mainly sites for U.S. investment, Mexico and the Caribbean were regularly subjected to U.S. military force. Or, as Portal put it, “Here imperialism wears no disguise.”

Portal concluded her lectures with a phrase that combined her analysis of U.S. dominance with a resonant appeal for unity: “We have a single and great enemy; let us form a single and great union.”

United states of resistance?

Yet while there was much Latin American anti-imperialist thinkers could agree on, there were also profound divergences between them. This included questions of strategy as well as issues of principle. What role should different classes play in their movement? How radical a transformation of society were they pushing for? And what kind of state should emerge from it?

Over time, these differences turned into deep rifts that pitted revolutionaries against democratic reformists, internationalists against nationalists, and pro-Soviets against anti-communists. These disagreements played an important role in Latin American politics over the rest of the century.

While many of these rifts became especially prominent during the Cold War, they developed out of earlier divisions over how best to counter U.S. dominance.

The anti-imperialist upsurge of the 1920s and ’30s was formative for a generation of Latin American radicals. Several of those who entered political life during these years went on to play key roles in major events of the 20th century. Raúl Roa, for example, who served as foreign secretary for Cuba’s revolutionary government from 1959 to 1976, was first politicized in the island’s anti-imperialist movement of the 1920s.

The men and women whose political visions were formed in the interwar period carried those ideals forward into the Cold War era. In important ways, the 1920s and 1930s laid vital groundwork for later and better-known radical movements.

Past is, of course, not always prologue. It is impossible to predict what the long-term consequences of current U.S. policy in Latin America will be, especially given the rightward tilt that is currently unfolding across the region.

But looking at the region’s anti-imperialist traditions does point to one possible outcome: The U.S.’s newly aggressive stance will, sooner rather than later, fuel a resurgence of anti-imperialist sentiment as the organizing principle for a new generation of activists.

Tony Wood is an assistant professor in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of History specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump’s coercive tactics in Latin America evoke era of gunboat diplomacy—and the rise of anti‑imperialism it helped spur.

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Remembering victims of the Holocaust by speaking their names

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:01:42 +0000

Remembering victims of the Holocaust by speaking their names Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/08/2026 - 15:01

Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, will be observed on ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� campus Tuesday with a public reading of the names of Jews killed in the Holocaust

The University of Colorado Boulder community will observe Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, on campus Tuesday with a public reading of the names of European Jews murdered by the Germans and their allies during the Holocaust.

Chancellor Justin Schwartz will begin the reading at 10 a.m. at the Dalton Trumbo Fountain Court in front of the University Memorial Center, and the reading will continue until 3 p.m.

Event organizers encourage members of the campus and broader communities to participate in the readings. Prospective participants may sign up here.

In 1980, the U.S. Congress established the Days of Remembrance, an eight-day period which includes Yom HaShoah, as the nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1993, leads the nation in observing Days of Remembrance and encourages observances throughout the United States.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

What: Public readings on Yom HaShoah

When: Tuesday, April 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Where: Dalton Trumbo Fountain Court in front of the University Memorial Center.

The main event takes place at the U.S. Capitol, often attended by the president. In Israel, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah in Hebrew) is a national day of commemoration on which the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are memorialized.

It begins at sunset on the 27th of the month of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish calendar, and ends the following evening, according to the traditional Jewish custom of marking a day. Established in 1953 by a law from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, it falls close to the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust.

During Yom HaShoah ceremonies in the United States, Israel and elsewhere, people read the names of Jews murdered by the Germans and their allies during World War II.

“The events of the Holocaust are given meaning only by remembering the individuals who died during that time,” writes Sharon L. Sobel, a Reform rabbi currently serving Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, NC. “We gather as a community, we remember the names of those who died, and we affirm their lives by how we choose to lead our lives. So, names, indeed, are very powerful. ... we honor those who came before us and those who perished during the Holocaust by giving our names—and their names meaning through our actions and aspirations and the way we fulfill them.”

The ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� event is presented by the Program in Jewish Studies. It is co-sponsored by the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of History and Center for Humanities and the Arts.

Though the reading of names occurs each year, those names “have not lost any of their meaning and significance,” says Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, the Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. “On the contrary.”

For more information on the Days of Remembrance and Yom HaShoah commemoration, please contact Pegelow Kaplan at thomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.

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Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, will be observed on ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� campus Tuesday with a public reading of the names of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

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The real Regency: What history says about Bridgerton

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:18:56 +0000

The real Regency: What history says about Bridgerton Rachel Sauer Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:18

“I’m in favor of showcasing history and literature via pop culture. To make a case for why our research matters, a key step is convincing non-academic audiences to care about our research and the history.”” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright. (Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix)

Cody DeBos

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright notes that Bridgerton demonstrates how fantasy can illuminate real history

With part two of Bridgerton’s fourth season arriving on Netflix this week, fans are once again swooning over romantic duels, dramatic ballroom vistas and whispered scandals.

But beneath the spectacle, many viewers wonder how much of the world on-screen comes from real history and how much is dressed up in empire waistlines for our streaming pleasure?

For Nicole Mansfield Wright, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder, that question is more than an idle inquiry. A scholar of British literature from the “long 18th century” (roughly 1688 to the 1830s), she specializes in understanding how literature and other imaginative media can help people either reinforce or question their beliefs about society.

Nicole Mansfield Wright, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of English, is the author of Defending Privilege: Rights, Status, and Legal Peril in the British Novel.

Her verdict on Bridgerton?

“Bridgerton is a ‘Disney-fied’ version of history. Historical accuracy isn’t the point of the show—it’s escapist by design. Yet, its packaging as an escapist diversion makes its moments of tacit political critique all the more potent,” Wright says.

The real Regency

The British Regency era in which Bridgerton is set was a time of both grandeur and unrest.

“For Britain, the Regency period was an era of rejuvenation: the Prince Regent took the place of his father, King George III, who was no longer fit to govern,” Wright explains. “Great Britain was ascendant after Napoleon was vanquished. With its military might, it continued to expand its empire as a world power.”

However, it also was a time of deep inequality.

“Much like today, there was increasing resentment over inequality. The most elevated members of society reveled in opulence and conspicuous consumption, which was made possible by the desperate poverty and deprivation of rights for others,” Wright says.

Pressure for reform was growing. Labor movements gained traction. Most concerning, although the transatlantic slave trade had been abolished in 1808, was slavery’s persistence in the British colonies.

What the show gets right

Bridgerton’s aim isn’t to capture gritty realism, but within its stylized depiction of the Regency era, it occasionally lands close to emotional truths about the period.

“Some of the portrayals of gender dynamics are among the most faithful elements of the series,” Wright says.

She points to a moment when Lady Featherington and her daughters wait in silence for suitors who never come. (When some young men finally arrive, they are calling on the girls’ cousin instead.)

“In its representations of race, the series indulges in fantasy. At a time when diversity is decried as ‘woke’ and the numbers of students of color are plummeting at some colleges, Bridgerton dares to persist in envisioning a thoroughly integrated world,” says Nicole Mansfield Wright, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of English. (Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix)

“The bright chatter that pervades the rest of the episode lapses into heavy silence; and the composition of the shots seems cramped and restrictive, as opposed to the joyous ballroom panoramas from earlier in the episode,” Wright notes.

“At such points, the series suggests, the mothers’ concern is not trivial. The mothers want the best for their daughters. Marrying well—or marrying at all—could mean the difference between comfort and constant struggle.”

Even seemingly small moments, like when a young woman is told to stop reading because it will “confuse your thoughts,” have historic precedent.

“It reflects actual 18th-century hostility to women’s supposed susceptibility to being misled by fiction,” Wright adds.

But what about the fashion?

Bridgerton has been praised for its stunning on-screen visuals and lavish costumes. Wright says that, although most of the colors and costumes are chosen for their “pop” on screen, and a number of styles are taken from other eras, some elements are faithful to Regency history.

“Some looks, including empire waists, align more with the styles of the era.”

The fantasy behind Bridgerton’s world

The show’s multiracial aristocracy, egalitarian romances and modern slang might be a far cry from what history buffs hope for in a period piece. However, Wright sees them as deliberate choices that add meaning to the story being told.

“In its representations of race, the series indulges in fantasy,” she says. “At a time when diversity is decried as ‘woke’ and the numbers of students of color are plummeting at some colleges, Bridgerton dares to persist in envisioning a thoroughly integrated world.”

She points to how the show “defamiliarizes” issues of race and often gender. In presenting them this way, it allows viewers to think more critically by decoupling them from today’s headlines.

“The first season of Bridgerton aired in 2021, at the dawn of a different federal administration. For the primary demographic the show reaches—young women—the national mood was hopeful,” Wright says.

“Now, watching the show feels different in an era when Black history is being erased and the lives of people of color are at risk.”

In this light, Bridgerton’s cultural impact isn’t thanks to perfect authenticity. Rather, mingling with the show’s entertainment value is an imagining of the kind of harmonious world that could have existed at the time and, albeit with much fewer corsets, still could today.

Pop culture as a gateway to scholarship

Despite its liberties with historical accuracy, Wright believes Bridgerton and other popular period dramas can serve as important entry points to a deeper understanding of history.

“I’m in favor of showcasing history and literature via pop culture,” she says. “To make a case for why our research matters, a key step is convincing non-academic audiences to care about our research and the history.”

She’s not alone in this belief.

“Bridgerton can be a gateway for students to become more interested in historical scholarship. I just heard this yesterday when I attended a webinar on ‘Teaching the 18th-Century Beyond the Academy’ by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,” she says.

Scholars at the event shared how even loosely accurate portrayals like Bridgerton can open doors for rich classroom discussions. In modern academia, where curriculum cuts and attacks on the humanities are becoming more common, those conversations matter more than ever.

Stories still untold

When asked if she could suggest a future Bridgerton subplot, Wright’s mind didn’t venture to more galas or scandalous letters. She’d like the show to dig into one of the Regency’s darker truths: military impressment, which had ramped up from earlier times.

“This was a violent Regency-era military recruitment method. Men were ‘pressed’ into service, or forced to join the British Royal Navy, through physical attacks and intimidation,” she says. “Focusing on impressment would be a good way to explore more intensively the valuation of self-determination vs. the (supposed) greater good that’s at play even in some of Bridgerton’s frothier storylines.

“As a bonus, seafaring vignettes would be a refreshing change of scene and would furnish some large-scale vistas of the kind that make the show a feast for the eye.”

As Wright sees it, whether in Bridgerton’s ballrooms or a future epic on the high seas, popular storytelling doesn’t have to choose between fantasy and critique. In fact, when done well, she says, the fantasy itself can be the critique.

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright notes that Bridgerton demonstrates how fantasy can illuminate real history.

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Top photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:52:38 +0000

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/22/2026 - 15:52

The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice

This spring, the University of Colorado Boulder Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of History, together with the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, present the traveling exhibition “Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories” in the Macky Gallery.

The exhibition, open now through March 15, was created by California-based artist and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina and honors the legacy of one of the most influential movements in Black American history.

As part of Black History Month programming, the exhibition will be accompanied by a panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside Lamaina and CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka, on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549). The discussion will focus on the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party and its relevance in today’s political climate.

Living history

Hear firsthand accounts of the history of the Black Panther Party and the 1960s Black Freedom Struggle—along with their legacies in Trump's America. The program is part of the accompanying events for the traveling exhibit "Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories" that is on display through March 15 in the Macky Gallery.

What: A panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12

Where: Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549)

Learn more

Additional programs featuring former Panthers will take place throughout that week on campus.

The “Revolutionary Grain” exhibition features a social-documentary photographic essay of portraits and personal narratives from more than 50 former members of the Black Panther Party. Lamaina spent five years traveling across the United States to interview and photograph participants, offering them the opportunity to tell their own stories.

“This work is meant to spark conversation,” Lamaina explained of the project, noting that the exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding and ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States. The exhibition situates the movement’s history in what Lamaina describes as a new phase of the Black Freedom Struggle in contemporary America.

Founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California, by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party initially focused on addressing police violence in Black communities. By the late 1960s, the party had become a national and international symbol of resistance, establishing nearly 50 chapters across the United States and an international presence in Algiers, North Africa.

“Putting on the Black Panther uniform and committing our lives to the liberation struggle changed the purpose and meaning of our entire identities,” Dixon wrote in his 2012 memoir My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. “It was a liberating experience. Societal restriction and conformities dropped by the wayside, leaving a fearless, defiant, powerful human being. We no longer looked at ourselves in the same way, nor did we look at the system and its representatives in the same manner. We were the freest of the free.”

In addition to its revolutionary political stance against capitalism, imperialism and fascism, the party launched “survival programs” that provided free breakfasts, medical services and other essential resources to thousands of Black Americans. Despite its community-based activism, the Panthers were frequently targeted by federal authorities, with the Nixon administration labeling the party “the greatest danger to the internal security” of the United States. A number of its members, among them Fred Hampton in Chicago, died at the hands of police officers.

The exhibition seeks to counter decades of misrepresentation by bringing first-person accounts from former members to the foreground, connecting their experiences to present-day debates over racism, police violence and political organizing.

“At a time during which the Trump administration and its supporters are rewriting history and representing versions of the past that downplay or even erase the critical significance of the Black Liberation Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s—of which the Panthers were an integral part—it is all the more important to shed light on the movement’s complexities and give our students, faculty and the community one more opportunity to engage with aging Panther members in meaningful ways," says Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, a professor of history and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. "This is a university campus, and it is a celebration, but also a reappraisal, with the help of key actors, of a complex struggle that has also problematic chapters. History is messy, but our students deserve better than what many in Washington have in store for them.”

The exhibition is co-sponsored by the departments of English, Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies and the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

All events are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. For more information, contact Thomas Pegelow Kaplan at thomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.

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The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice.

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Top image: Former Black Panther Party members Emory Douglas (left), Kathleen Cleaver (center) and Barbara Easley Cox (right). (Photos: Suzun Lucia Lamaina)

Sanctuary brims with happy tales (and tails)

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Sanctuary brims with happy tales (and tails) Rachel Sauer Tue, 12/02/2025 - 07:30

Clint Talbott

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary, founded and run by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� alumna Jess Osborne and her husband, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Myles Osborne, gives unwanted or neglected animals a safe, comfortable forever home

Why did this chicken cross the road? No one knew. And this was no joke.

Late last month, the chicken was strutting on Magnolia Road in the mountains near Nederland—a place inhabited by coyotes, fox and other canines. Three passersby stopped to help, and, together, they captured the bird by wrapping it in a shirt, whereupon one good Samaritan drove the bird to Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary.

Friends of the sanctuary posted the news to the local Facebook group, called Nedheads, hoping to find the chicken’s owner. No one claimed the bird.

Myles (left) and Jess Osborn founded Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary to rescue "unwanted and discarded animals and provide them with high-quality food and medical care to live out their natural lives.” (Photos: Clint Talbott)

It’s possible that the chicken wandered away from its home, through the forest, to this road. It’s also possible that the bird, which appears to be a rooster, was dumped on the side of the road because it won’t produce eggs. (Discarding roosters is common.)

Jess and Myles Osborne, who founded the sanctuary, have adopted the rooster and named it Chamonix, after the resort town in France. Like his namesake, Chamonix is striking, but why name a bird after a town? Thereby hangs a tale.

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit launched in 2021 by Jess, who graduated in 2005 from the University of Colorado Boulder with degrees in communication and fine arts, and Myles, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of history.

The sanctuary, just south of Magnolia Road west of Boulder, aims to rescue “unwanted and discarded animals and provide them with high-quality food and medical care to live out their natural lives.”

On the sanctuary’s 23-acre parcel, more than two-dozen animals—horses, pigs, goats, ducks, dogs, plus a cat, yak, donkey, turkey and, now, chicken—enjoy lives they otherwise would not have had.

And an oink-oink here…

Consider the pigs, named Bolton and Berlin, which a friend of the Osbornes noticed wandering on another roadside near Nederland. The pigs had broken out of their home because they were starving and didn’t have water, and their owner gave the OK to take the pigs. Bolton and Berlin now sleep, snort and snuffle, in the sanctuary’s loving embrace.

Each animal has a backstory.

Wilbur, a dog named for Wilbur, Washington, came to the sanctuary after his foster family refused to put him down, against the advice of three veterinarians, to join his biological brother, Ziggy, named after Zagazig, Egypt.

Chamonix the (suspected) rooster came to Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary in October after being found strutting alone on Magnolia Road near Nederland; attempts to find an owner were unsuccessful.

The brothers were both born with the same neurological disorder. Wilbur also has a dog version of Wilson’s disease, which makes him retain excessive amounts of copper. He takes medicine to remove copper from his blood.

Wilbur was in a wheelchair but now can walk, though unsteadily. Ziggy suffers from spells resembling seizures that prevented him from walking or standing at least 30 times a day. He often had to be carried.

Wilbur and Ziggy are clearly happy, though, and Jess dubs them the “wiggle brothers.”

Talkeetna (Alaska), a yak usually called “Tallie,” was born prematurely and was unlikely to survive. She was donated to the sanctuary, which took her to Colorado State University and gave her a shot at survival. These days, Tallie is hale and hearty and hangs around with the goats. She seems to enjoy gently headbutting people who walk by.

London and Brooklyn are mini horses who had been awfully neglected. Both had severely overgrown hooves when they were rescued from a kill pen at auction. Brooklyn had suffered some kind of trauma when she was younger, and her left eye has been removed once at Tails to give her the same standard of care as humans and dogs.

Both mini horses love being taken for walks and chomping as much roadside grass as possible in the broad meadow that sits under a stunning vista featuring James Peak, South and North Arapahoe Peaks.

A herd of elk often gathers nearby, drawing curious glances from many of the animals, perhaps none more than Rio, a 2,000-pound draft horse whose head is higher than the eaves of the sanctuary.

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary provides a loving home and high-quality care to animals in need and creates a welcoming place for humans to experience the love, joy and healing of connecting with animals.

When Tails adopted her from a rescue in Montana, Rio had a crooked foot and still needed extensive veterinary care to make sure she was comfortable and could walk comfortably. Now, she’s playful and mischievous, sometimes inadvertently crushing pieces of the aluminum fencing around the horses’ area.

Animals soothe the human psyche

Jess Osborne has always loved animals. As a kid in Gunbarrel, she collected the critters her mother could afford (and their home could accommodate): frogs, geckos, chickens and dogs.

Animals helped her feel better, much better. She has grappled with ADHD and anxiety since childhood. As she speaks, her focus can drift into several sometimes-related topics.

Jess Osborne with Tallie the yak (left) and Wilbur the dog.

But focusing on animals is no problem. “Even though I can’t remember history or make it through any of Myles’ books without falling asleep, when it comes to medicines and animal care and stuff like that, I go down the hyper-focusing tunnel,” she told The Colorado Sun.

And the animals helped other people, too, Jess noticed. Nine years ago, when she was working at a nursing and memory-care facility in Boulder, Jess brought her dogs Dublin and Brisbane. The residents loved the dogs.

After adopting Brisbane and Dublin, who died in 2023, Jess and Myles adopted a bunny and, later, the mini horses.

This was the seed of an idea: Elderly people often can’t care for (or aren’t allowed to have) pets. Unwanted and abused animals need forever homes where they can live their best lives. And rescued animals can bring comfort and joy to people who—for many reasons—don’t have animals in their lives.

This was true for Jess’ grandmother, whom Jess and Myles took care of and who died in 2021. It was also true for a neighbor’s boy, who was on the autism spectrum.

He rode and brushed the horses to build core strength and fine motor skills. Occupational and physical therapists have shown that movement and interaction with horses can improve physical, cognitive and emotional well-being in people with varying conditions.

In the career world, Jess had not found her place, but launching an animal sanctuary was her calling. She and Myles bought the sanctuary’s current home, which is large enough to allow the sanctuary to help more animals and humans. There, they have room for large horses and the rest of the menagerie.

But what to call the sanctuary? Happy Tails wasn’t quite right. Given Myles’ extensive travel and his English background, Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary seemed to fit, even though the place is not Dickensian.

The name reflects the fact that both Jess and Myles love to read and travel.

Of course, the place, which had been a regular home with a two-car garage and a large deck, had to be converted to serve its primary residents, the animals. The garage was turned into a barn, and an additional shelter for the goats was built adjacent to the newly fashioned barn.

Myles Osborne with several of the eight goats, who often lounge on the sunny deck and fall asleep, snoring.

A sunny enclosure next to the deck serves as a warm spot for the pigs and sometimes the eight goats, who often lounge on the sunny deck and fall asleep, snoring.

Below the deck, the chicken, Chamonix, the newest feathered child, and ducks (Louise, Abe and Albie, after Lake Louise and Lake Abraham, Canada, and Lake Albert, Uganda) have their own petite house called the Duck Tails Saloon, which resembles an Old West bar, next to a small fenced area.

Jess, Myles and sanctuary volunteers build and mend fences, string electric fencing (which keeps big horses in and bears out), fashion goat playgrounds, and spend their days raking muck, preparing special food for two-dozen different palates and attending to the animals’ medical needs.

Being as bold as your dreams

It’s a lot of work and, no doubt, a fair amount of stress. As he talks about this, however, Myles’ demeanor remains steady and calm, just as it does when he discusses the history of colonialism in Africa, the necessary steps to refashion a horse fence or his attempted climb of Mount Everest, which he abandoned in the “death zone” to save a man’s life.

Myles suggests that the decision to start a sanctuary was a no-brainer:

“If you have a dream and something that you are excited about, you have to lean into it. And if you are in your early 40s and financially secure, if you're not gonna do it, then when are you gonna do it?”

He observes: “I do think that generally when people are brave and people lean into things that seem intimidating, it works itself out. … And why not be brave? Why not go for it? And it clearly is Jess’ passion in life. It's what she was put on the earth to do, very clearly. So it wasn't that tough of a decision.

“Now, keeping the numbers reasonable is a bit more of an ongoing conversation,” he adds. There are bills for veterinarians, racks of hay, tons of animal feed, walls of sawdust (for sleeping and padding) and more. The operation is 40% self-funded (down from 70% self-funded last year).

But it’s worth it, they say.

The couple still visit elder-care facilities in which there will be 25 or 30 people in wheelchairs in a circle. “And we just release 2,000 pounds of goats and yak and the dogs. And they all know exactly how to behave, how careful they need to be. And (the animals) will walk around the circle, they will greet everybody, everyone pets them.”

Tallie the yak was born prematurely and given scant odds of survival, but these days she is hale and hearty and hangs around with the goats. She seems to enjoy gently headbutting people who walk by.

Myles also relates a story about a blind woman who came to the sanctuary and walked onto the deck. Goats quickly crowded around her. The woman petted them and marveled aloud that four goats were pressing into her.

Myles told her there were actually six goats. Goats (seeking treats) can become pushy around fully able-bodied people, but they took it easy on this visitor.

“And then we said to her that there has actually been a 500-pound yak who has been two yards away from you for the past 15 minutes, who clearly understands that you have some issue that she's not familiar with and she's holding back and she's waiting.”

The animals, he adds, “understand instinctively when people are old or disabled or young or blind or something, they get it.” And for the woman, the experience was “profound.”

The next horizon

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary has more its leaders hope to do. Chief among them is to build a “proper” barn that has more room for the animals, whose design facilitates feeding, cleaning, visitors’ experiences and volunteers’ work.

While that’s on the horizon, more immediate tasks remain. On a recent evening, Myles and three volunteers worked to rearrange and refashion the fence that keeps the horses from wandering away and separates the minis from the large horses and Murphy, the donkey.

As Myles worked here and there, tools usually in hand, Stanley, the turkey (named for Istanbul), followed Myles around.

Stanley came from a backyard homestead whose owners didn’t have the heart to slaughter him. And no wonder. Jess describes him as “the friendliest turkey on Earth.”

Stanley’s gobble, a cheerful trilling song, often punctuates the background sounds of barks, whinnies, bleats, clucks and snorts. Stanley tends to follow people around the sanctuary.

With Myles in the horse pen, Stanley performed some “turkey dances,” with Myles’ gentle encouragement and praise.

So there they were, human and animal, working and strutting, talking and gobbling. Two tales as one.

Learn more about Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary at this link.

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