History | Penn Today

British opera and Jewish vocal artists in the 18th and 19th centuries

Katz Center fellow Uri Erman on the intersection of opera and the fraught experience of assimilation for British Jewish populations.

Three people stand in front of a bookcase full of books in burgundy binding, the man on the left is wearing judge robes and has his right hand in the air, the woman on the right is in judge robes and has her right hand in the air and left hand on a bible and a man in the middle wears a suit and tie, is holding the bible and is looking at the woman

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s legacy

Three Penn experts—Annenberg Public Policy Center director Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Marci A. Hamilton of the School of Arts & Sciences, and former Penn Carey Law School dean Ted Ruger—share their thoughts on the history-making justice.

Cupped hands holding a tea light candle.

Finding light in dark times

Professors Deven Patel and Steven Weitzman in the School of Arts & Sciences discuss why Diwali and Hanukkah, both festivals of lights, can act as symbols of hope.

Us & Them: Diminished trust in science

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education says that skepticism about science is almost built into the DNA of the U.S., in part because of its form of government.

Harun Kucuk shakes hands with people on Locust Walk

Locust walks: Making connections and bridging differences

Harun Küçük, faculty director of the Middle East Center, and Joshua Teplitsky, director of the Jewish Studies Program, started walking and talking as an act of campus diplomacy in the wake of the violence in Israel and Gaza.

The ten best history books of 2023

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education says that America has lost a shared national narrative.

Biden says ‘vermin’ rhetoric by Trump echoes Nazis

Anna Berg of the School of Arts & Sciences says that Donald Trump calling his political enemies “vermin” is intended to rile up his supporters.

Controversial PragerU videos are catching on in a handful of states

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education says that PragerU videos are highly inaccurate and shouldn’t be incorporated into schools’ curricula or embraced by school districts.

Left: Book cover for “The Remnants or Race Science,”; right, Sebastián Gil-Riaño.

How the modern story of postwar anti-racism ignored the Global South

In his new book, science historian Sebastián Gil-Riaño explores the lives of scientists who shaped one of the first international efforts to combat racism—and then got left out of the story.

Penn’s ‘long tradition’ as a center for the study of African American history

New hires like Marcia Chatelain and Vaughn Booker in Africana Studies and William Sturkey in the History Department are bolstering Penn’s position as one of the best places for the field of African American history.

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