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“What Would Michael Harrington Say?,” an article by Maurice Isserman, Harrington’s biographer and the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History, appeared in The Nation on April 25. In the article, Isserman described Harrington as “the pre-eminent figure of American socialism” and noted that he was often referred to as the “man who discovered poverty.”

Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History Isserman presented a lecture titled  “The Legacy of Michael Harrington’s The Other America on Its 50th Anniversary” on April 18 at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis.

Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History Maurice Isserman discussed mountaineering on March 8 at the University of Michigan’s Mountaineering Culture Studies Group meeting. He was joined by Stewart Weaver of the University of Rochester with whom he co-authored the award-winning book Fallen Giants:  A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extreme (2008). Isserman and Weaver talked about the origin and evolution of their own work, as well as the future of mountaineering.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Michael Harrington’s The Other America on March 6, the publisher Scribner is releasing a new edition. It includes a new introduction by Harrington’s biographer Maurice Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History.  The publisher calls The Other America “a landmark treatise on poverty in America.” Isserman wrote a New York Times op-ed on Harrington's influence  (March 3, 2012).

Professor of History Maurice Isserman published an op-ed about American Democratic Socialist Michael Harrington in The New York Times (3/3/12). In “The Poverty of An Idea,” Isserman notes that libertarian writer Charles Murray has lately kept alive the idea of a “culture of poverty, the theory that poor people are trapped by distorted norms and aspirations and not merely material deprivation." Yet, Michael Harrington was in the forefront of analyzing poverty as a social problem, Isserman notes.

Dissent Magazine published an article titled 50 Years Later: Poverty and The Other America by Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of History Maurice Isserman in its winter 2012 issue. The article is an adaptation of the prologue of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington, the biography Isserman wrote in 2000. The article included updated statistics and observations.

Maurice Isserman, the James L. Ferguson Professor of History, was quoted in a Nov. 27 Chronicle of Higher Education article about a national campaign of student debt refusal. In “Debt Protesters Denounce Colleges for Broken Promises,” Isserman said the Occupy Wall Street movement has rubbed off on college students, who have taken the protest in their own direction.

Maurice Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History, was quoted in a New York Times front-page article, “Beyond Seizing Parks, New Paths to Influence,” that appeared on Nov. 16. The article concerned the future of the anti-Wall Street protests following the dismantling of the New York Zuccotti Park encampment. Isserman questioned whether “New York City officials might have done Occupy Wall Street a favor ‘by providing a dramatic ending.’” 

Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning with Kerri Miller program featured Maurice Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History, in an interview on the future of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Isserman, co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, compared the current movement with those in past decades during the Nov. 8 broadcast.

Two hundred years of learning is undoubtedly cause for celebration. Yet the charter that Hamilton received in 1812 merely continued a quest for knowledge that had begun two decades earlier with Samuel Kirkland and his Hamilton-Oneida Academy, a secondary school that focused on educating local Iroquois youth. Like so much at Hamilton, the Academy began with a piece of writing: Kirkland’s 1791 “Plan of Education for the Indians,” a 15-page document in which Kirkland outlined his ideas for the new school.