A Day of Tension and Protests on Campus (Johanna Alonso, et al.)

Tensions flared on campuses across the country Thursday as groups of students gathered to show their support for Israelis or Palestinians in the midst of an escalating war between Israel and Hamas. Students for Justice in Palestine declared Thursday a “day of resistance,” calling on individual campus chapters to rally in support of Palestinian liberation. “As …

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Israel’s 9/11 (Peter R. Mansoor)

In the wake of the shocking invasion of southern Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas. “We are fighting a cruel enemy, worse than ISIS,” Netanyahu proclaimed, comparing the attack by Hamas with the Islamic State, whose caliphate was destroyed by U.S., Iraqi, and Kurdish forces in 2017. …

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America must ‘come to its senses’: Conservative judge unveils new group to fight Trumpism (Mathew Chapman)

Former federal judge Michael Luttig, considered to be one of the intellectual founders of the modern conservative legal movement, has unveiled a new organization he co-founded with fellow conservative lawyers George Conway and Barbara Comstock, the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which is intended to be a counterbalance to the Federalist Society’s embrace of …

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State Formation: When and Why States Form (David Stasavage)

There are many theories of state formation. These theories usually adhere to one of the following two views. According to the first view it is socially optimal to have a state. According to the second view, state formation involves domination by one individual or group over others. North (1981) refers to these as the “contract” …

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First States (Khan Academy)

Historians talk an awful lot about states and the people who live in them. It’s a broad term, since states may be kingdoms or sultanates, republics or confederations, tiny city-states or massive empires. Their people may be citizens with many rights, or subjects with few rights at all. But they all live in states. Of …

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State Formation (Science Direct)

Many prominent classical theorists studied state formation and the multifaceted issues surrounding the role and function of states. Theorists such as Machiavelli (The Prince 1988), Rousseau (The Social Contract 1987), Marx and Engels (The Communist Manifesto 1998), and Lenin (State and Revolution 1993) considered the formation and role of the state to be a theoretically interesting issue. More recent …

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