Jonathan Zimmerman

Race, police and the twin fallacies of American politics

So New York Mayor Bill de Blasio needs to warn his son to be wary of police officers. And his remarks on race and the police make him res ...

10 years ago

Shutterstock " title="shutterstock_110739182" width="1" height="1"/>

How Hanukkah made Jews American

“Merry Christmas . . . and Happy Hanukkah.” Wherever I go this time of year—the subways, the streets, ...

10 years ago

Listen

Shutterstock ) " title="shutterstock_gun" width="1" height="1"/>

The real danger of toy guns

A few years ago Walmart stopped selling candy cigarettes, which had led generations of American youngsters into a ve ...

10 years ago

Listen

From ‘mashing’ to street harassment women still face lewd comments

A hundred years ago, men who made lewd comments to female passersby were known as “mashers.” In 1913, an Omaha judge drew ...

10 years ago

Listen

The President versus the Senate: A struggle steeped in history

President Obama has played over 180 rounds of golf since he came to the White House. But only once has he asked a Democratic member of th ...

10 years ago

Listen

Fear of the sick stranger

Last week, I was playing tennis when I overheard a discussion on an adjacent court about the Ebola crisis. “We should just k ...

10 years ago

Listen

In defense of war re-enactors

For the past 30 years, I’ve been urging my students to put themselves in the shoes of people who lived in the past. So why do we ma ...

10 years ago

Listen

Naming rights and the erosion of public space

For the past 20 years, I’ve been taking the train to the Market East Station. So do lots of other people here at WHYY, which is loc ...

10 years ago

Listen

Shutterstock. " title="football-injury" width="1" height="1"/>

The myth of ‘safe’ football

In 1893, Theodore Roosevelt published an article in defense of college football. As player injuries mounted, some critics had called for ...

10 years ago

Listen

Shutterstock . " title="campus-assault" width="1" height="1"/>

Sexual assault in the hook-up era

When I was a college newspaper editor, in the early 1980s, I ran a series of stories about a student who had been sexually abu ...

10 years ago

Listen

The myth of a kinder, gentler execution.

Did Joseph Wood suffer when he was executed in Arizona last month? Some witnesses reported that Wood gasped over 600 times during ...

10 years ago

Listen

A man ins arrested at 22nd Street and Columbia Avenue. (Courtesy of Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs Collection)

50 years later the legacy of 1964 riots lingers

On August 28, 1964, African-Americans began three nights of rioting in Philadelphia. It was exactly a year to the day after Ma ...

10 years ago

Listen

BBC Newshour

Listen Live

1A

Jonathan Zimmerman

More from the Contributor