Agonizing Dilemmas and the March toward War

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Amy Aronson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
First Child ◽  
The World

In 1916, Crystal Eastman quietly married Walter Fuller, after becoming pregnant with their first child. At the same time, she faced one of the cruelest dilemmas of her political life. It was an election year, and Woodrow Wilson promised peace but not suffrage while his opponent, former New York governor Charles Evans Hughes, promised suffrage but not peace. She chose peace, backed Wilson, and broke with every downtown feminist and militant suffragist with whom she had stood since college. But after Election Day, Wilson’s promises for American “peace without victory” eroded with changing circumstances. Ultimately, the infamous “Zimmerman telegram,” in which Germany promised to help Mexico recover territory lost to the United States in the 1840s if they joined the war on the side of the Central Powers, turned the tide. When Eastman’s colleagues met with Wilson on February 28, 1917, they knew the United States would soon enter the world war.

‘America’ and Europe, 1914–1945

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Ellwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mass Communications ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Stability ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Second World

The First World War cost Europe the leadership of the world. But the United States of Woodrow Wilson was not ready to take its place. The 1920s brought Europe to a crossroads where mass democracy, mass production, and mass communications—the latter two dominated by American innovations— transformed ideas of sovereignty, modernity, and identity everywhere. The financial crash of 1929 destroyed illusions about the United States as the land of the future, and helped legitimize the totalitarians. European democrats looked to the 1930s New Deal as their last best hope. During the Second World War Roosevelt rebuilt the global order, with the United Nations and other new institutions. But the United States was now looking to ‘retire’ Europe from the world scene, and build a new universe based on America’s experience of the link between mass prosperity and democratic stability.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and US Foreign Relations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Cross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

Franklin D. Roosevelt was US president in extraordinarily challenging times. The impact of both the Great Depression and World War II make discussion of his approach to foreign relations by historians highly contested and controversial. He was one of the most experienced people to hold office, having served in the Wilson administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, completed two terms as Governor of New York, and held a raft of political offices. At heart, he was an internationalist who believed in an engaged and active role for the United States in world. During his first two terms as president, Roosevelt had to temper his international engagement in response to public opinion and politicians wanting to focus on domestic problems and wary of the risks of involvement in conflict. As the world crisis deepened in the 1930s, his engagement revived. He adopted a gradualist approach to educating the American people in the dangers facing their country and led them to eventual participation in war and a greater role in world affairs. There were clearly mistakes in his diplomacy along the way and his leadership often appeared flawed, with an ambiguous legacy founded on political expediency, expanded executive power, vague idealism, and a chronic lack of clarity to prepare Americans for postwar challenges. Nevertheless, his policies to prepare the United States for the coming war saw his country emerge from years of depression to become an economic superpower. Likewise, his mobilization of his country’s enormous resources, support of key allies, and the holding together of a “Grand Alliance” in World War II not only brought victory but saw the United States become a dominant force in the world. Ultimately, Roosevelt’s idealistic vision, tempered with a sound appreciation of national power, would transform the global position of the United States and inaugurate what Henry Luce described as “the American Century.”

4. The American century?

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Andrew Preston
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
American Power ◽  
American Century ◽  
The World

Despite rejecting the internationalist marriage Woodrow Wilson had arranged for it with the world, America was still the strongest state in the international system. ‘The American century?’ explains how the myth of isolationism emerged in this period, and why it was so powerful. The Depression did more damage to America’s role in the world than anything in the decades before it, yet in the late 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt began rebuilding the structures of American power. Thanks to Roosevelt, during World War II the United States transitioned from a major, but often peripheral actor on the world scene, to one of the most powerful states the world has ever seen.

Bringing the Real World of Science to Children: A Partnership of the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.

Explosions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Douglas Bomberger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The United States ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
One Step ◽  
Do So ◽  
Laws And Regulations

On 2 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to enter the European war, and Congress voted to do so on Friday, 6 April. On the 15th of that month, Victor released the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s record of “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixieland Jass Band One-Step”; it caused an immediate nationwide sensation. James Reese Europe travelled to Puerto Rico in search of woodwind players for the Fifteenth New York Regiment Band, and the Creole Band ended its vaudeville career when it missed the train to Portland, Maine. German musicians in the United States came under increased scrutiny in the weeks after the declaration of war, as the country prepared to adopt new laws and regulations for wartime.

“Little Plants in the Country”: Henry Ford's Village Industries and the Beginning of Decentralized Technology in Modern America

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 181-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Segal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
New York ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Proximity ◽  
The World ◽  
Word Processors

“Technology Spurs Decentralization Across the Country.” So reads a 1984 New York Times article on real-estate trends in the United States. The contemporary revolution in information processing and transmittal now allows large businesses and other institutions to disperse their offices and other facilities across the country, even across the world, without loss of the policy- and decision-making abilities formerly requiring regular physical proximity. Thanks to computers, word processors, and the like, decentralization has become a fact of life in America and other highly technological societies.

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