Senior Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Sam is a historian of early America with a particular interest in religion and politics. He was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and has been a faculty member at the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo and at Columbia University in New York City. He was a Senior Executive Producer at Al Jazeera America and is the author of The Origins of American Religious Nationalism (paperback, 2016). @samhaselby
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History
Muslims of early America
Muslims came to America more than a century before Protestants, and in great numbers. How was their history forgotten?
Sam Haselby
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Nations and empires
These should be the end times for American patriotism
Sam Haselby
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History
American secular
The founding moment of the United States brought a society newly freed from religion. What went wrong?
Sam Haselby
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Economics
Who bears the risk?
Under the guise of empowerment and freedom, politicians and business are offloading lifethreatening risk to individuals
Suzanne Schneider
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Political philosophy
The battles over beginnings
Niccolò Machiavelli’s profound insights about the violent origins of political societies help us understand the world today
David Polansky
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Religion
Inventing Hindu supremacy
Vinayak Savarkar ridiculed Gandhi, preaching that anti-Muslim violence was the only means to unite India into a nation
Mihir Dalal
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Sports and games
The moral risks of fandom
Players, coaches and team owners sometimes do terrible things. What, if anything, should their fans do about that?
Jake Wojtowicz & Alfred Archer
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Economics
The cruelty of crypto
Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and loads risk onto the poor
Rachel O’Dwyer
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History
The mythos of leadership
How the biblical King David and Machiavelli’s Prince can help us understand the dominant view of leaders as individualists
Moshik Temkin
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Global history
One ship, many stories
How a single, unglamorous, workaday merchant vessel tells the history of the 19th-century world in many violent chapters
Boyd Cothran & Adrian Shubert
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Global history
Reconstructed hemisphere
In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction
Evan C Rothera
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Global history
The Asian world order
Before modern Europe existed there was a grand, interconnected political world, rich in scientific and artistic exchange
Ayşe Zarakol
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History of science
The missing conversation
To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue
Lorraine Daston & Peter Harrison
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Religion
Indomitable Sufis
Once a centre of Afghan culture, Sufism seems to have disappeared in the maelstrom of war and upheaval. But still it survives
Annika Schmeding
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Stories and literature
Saved by Infinite Jest
Bereft and suicidal, I lay on my sofa. Only David Foster Wallace’s novel kept me tethered to life, and still does
Mala Chatterjee