The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference of eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, and in football, in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The term Ivy League is used more broadly to refer to the eight schools that belong to the league, which are globally-renowned as elite colleges associated with academic excellence, highly selective admissions, and social elitism. The term was used as early as 1933, and it became official in 1954 following the formation of the Ivy League athletic conference.
The G.I. Bill, formally known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans. The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, but the term "G.I. Bill" is still used to refer to programs created to assist American military veterans.
Andrew Dickson White was an American historian and educator who co-founded Cornell University, one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States, and served as its first president for nearly two decades. He was known for expanding the scope of college curricula. A politician, he had served as New York state senator and was later appointed as U.S. ambassador to Germany and Russia.
Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21 and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson and his supporters, it became the nation's dominant political worldview for a generation. The term itself was in active use by the 1830s.
David Talbot is an American journalist, author, editor, activist and independent historian. Talbot is known for his books about the "hidden history" of U.S. power and the liberal movements to change America, as well as his public advocacy. He was also the founder and former editor-in-chief of the early web magazine Salon.
Frank Harold Trevor Rhodes was the ninth president of Cornell University from 1977 to 1995.
Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Robert Sean Wilentz is an American historian who serves as the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979. His primary research interests include U.S. social and political history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written numerous award-winning books and articles including, most notably, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Stephen Frederick Starr is an American academic. He is a former president of Oberlin College.
David Brion Davis was an American intellectual and cultural historian, and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, and founder and director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
Austin Sarat is an American political scientist who is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also a Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor. He has written, co-written, or edited more than fifty books in the fields of law and political science. Professor Sarat received a B.A. from Providence College in 1969, and both an M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970 and 1973, respectively. He also received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1988.
Stuart Taylor Jr. is an American journalist, author, and lawyer. He has served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun from 1971 to 1974; The New York Times from 1980 to 1988, covering legal affairs and then primarily the Supreme Court; wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989 to 1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has coauthored two books.
Jodi Magness is an archaeologist, orientalist and scholar of religion. She serves as the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously taught at Tufts University.
George Braziller was an American book publisher and the founder of George Braziller, Inc., a firm known for its literary and artistic books and its publication of foreign authors.
Richard J. Samuels is an American academic, political scientist, author, Japanologist, Ford International Professor of Political Science the former Director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jonathan Sperber is an American academic and historian who is a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri and author of modern European History.
Annabel M. Patterson is the Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University.
Glenn Adamson is an American curator, author, and historian whose research and work focuses on the intersections of design, craft, and contemporary art. Adamson is currently editor-at-large of The Magazine Antiques, editor of Journal of Modern Craft, a freelance writer and a curator. Adamson has held previous notable appointments as the Director of the Museum of Arts and Design, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and as Curator at the Chipstone Foundation.
Caroline Levine is an American literary critic. She is the David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities at Cornell University. Her published works are in the fields of Victorian literature, literary theory, literary criticism, formalism, television, and climate change.
The Kings County Colored Mens Association of Brooklyn, New York, in the United States, was a Reconstruction-era political advocacy group. The group, seemingly led by Rev. A. N. Freeman, held regular meetings and debates, elected convention delegates, and endorsed candidates, namely Ulysses S. Grant for president. In 1866 the group met to discuss the progress of civil rights legislation and the conversation turned to the allegiances of President Andrew Johnson.
I am opposed to President Johnson. He is in my way, and in the way of my people, and I don't believe he means to do us justice ... Do you recollect how David prayed for his enemies? I believe he prayed they might be sent to hell...I didn't pray to have Andy Johnson sent to hell. I prayed that he might be taken out of my way; and I thought if the Lord sent him to hell, it would be on his own responsibility. [Laughter]
