Mary Ellen Foley was organizing opposition to U.S. support for the military dictatorship in El Salvador, where three nuns and a laywoman had been murdered by death squads the year before.
I thought I knew all I needed to know about the hardships my Irish ancestors endured during the infamous potato famine that brought millions of starving, desperate folks to these shores in the mid-1800s. But when I stumbled on a typical-seeming summary of that history, I was awestruck.
In late July, the College Board, the administrators of the SAT and Advanced Placement exams, issued new guidelines for teaching AP United States history. One change was to add a section on “American exceptionalism,” a concept as old as the country itself that the United States is qualitatively different – and, arguably, better – than…