The Joint Center for Economics brings a quantitative approach to economic history.
In May 1968, the university’s students wanted to change the world. Left-thinking ideologies like Maoism and socialism were in their minds, and “Vietnam” was on their lips. They went on strike, skipping classes and exams. They rioted and clashed with police. One student was killed, 900 arrested.
If this sounds like a scene from Kent State, where student demonstrators were killed two years later, that is because the May 1968 unrest at the University of Dakar in Senegal was part of the same general mood around the world that moved students to protest, says Omar Gueye, professor of history at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. Gueye spent six months at Harvard during the 2013-14 academic year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History (WIGH), a program premised on the belief that events like these not unlike the seemingly contagious uprisings of the Arab Spring can
people and ultimately, with the very eloquent help of abraham lincoln, redefined it into a document that served a very different purpose. c-span: early on in the book you tell a story about two summers ago 1995. guest: yes. c-span: you were at a woodrow wilson scholars seminar and you walked across the street to the national archives. guest: exactly. c-span: for what purpose? guest: i wanted to look at what they were advertised as our precious national documents, documents which i hadn t seen and which, in fact, scholars don t need to look at normally. there are so many facsimiles that works our does our pur serves our purpose perfectly well. but i wanted to see what the display was in the national archives. c-span: and we re looking at that right now. guest: we are. yes. c-span: you said something about an altar. guest: it looks like an altar. it looks like a church. it s it s ma it s encased in the declaration of independence stands where the tabernacle or a monst
states for a new start of life after two failed marriages, and went to pennsylvania the crystal became an editor and a little over a year after he arrived he published this pamphlet common sense which suddenly got americans talking about independence which had been the forbidden topic, wanted to deny that this where they were going. he made a positive argument and also laid down a klan for how to go forward. how to found a new government we might design. .lead common sense as a transitional document. it ends it doesn t end, but it marks the beginning, almost the end of the debate over who s responsible in england, can we ever, you know, patch things up and go on. basically, he says, that s a very bad idea. and then the whole new debate that came in with how do we design our own institutions, how do we write constitutions, how do we design the governments that are outlined in constitutions? and that became the whole new issue. host: professor, did common sense get ou
the government. host: how did we get from the glorious revolution of 1688 to the american revolution of 1776? guest: a. [laughter] and the idea is that informed the glorious revolution cited to justify it. and for americans to justify their revolution? there was real continuity the ideas expressed from one the familiar% or other writers of the 17th century as they carried on and they were basic political truthsy. for the 18th century. host: what were cahal some of those ideas?sn t itsy when the government is not determined by got and together and associate with each other and form compaq s and society and government and appointir officials to serveas their events. the idea is summarized veryla neat the in the declaration of independence that all men lived in aat a world where they weree we equal and every man was his own keying and the inconvenience of that world p or the desire to protect people s rights brought people together to form a government and to protectrot th
expressed by a familiar person, john locke, other writers of the 17th century and popularizes the 18th century and they became basic political truths for americans of 18th century. what were those ideas? the government isn t determined by god. people come together, associate with each other, form compacts, to create society and governments and that they ash points officials, to serve their end, and the ideas are summarized neatly in the second paragraph of the declaration of independence. that all men lived once in a world where they were equal and there were no kings and every man was his own king and the inconveniences of that world, or the desire to protect people s rights, in a more durable way, brought people together, to form governments, and governments are created to protect those rights. to serve the people s security and their interests, and, if the government fails to do that, it is the right of the people to reform them or replace them. now, in your first bo