Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Cover of "The Power of Black Excellence" by Deondra Rose

20 HBCU graduates that have shaped America [slideshow]

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are dedicated to empowering students and alumni with the tools to drive significant civic and cultural change. Through their intentional focus on leadership, advocacy, and excellence, HBCU graduates have made remarkable strides in political, legal, cultural, and artistic fields.

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Cover of "Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague" by Mark A. Drumbl and Barbora Hola

Informers: secrets, truths, and dignity

Over 100,000 individuals acted as secret informers reporting to state security police in Czechoslovakia during the Communist years. The contents of all their reports were saved in extensive police files. Similar dynamics occurred throughout all of Eastern Europe.

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Israel, Palestine, and reflections on the post-9/11 War on Terror

How can the United States best help Israel defend itself against terrorist atrocity? Obviously, sustaining the alliance and friendship with the United States is vital for Israel and its security. Equally clearly, the scale and nature of Israeli violence in Gaza since October 2023 has placed new and great strain on the US relationship.

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A chronology of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China [timeline]

In Wuhan: How the COVID-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control, Dali L. Yang scrutinizes China’s emergency response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, delving into the government’s handling of epidemic information and the decisions that influenced the scale and scope of the outbreak. This timeline adapted from the book walks through the day by day chronology of the initial outbreak and explores how both the virus and information spread.

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Is it democratic to disqualify a popular candidate from the ballot?

That a popular candidate could be disqualified from running and removed from the ballot might, at first glance, seem at odds with the very idea of democracy. For that reason, despite his evident role in instigating an insurrection, many Republican senators demurred and chose not to impeach former President Donald J. Trump on 13 January 2021.

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The rising power paradigm and India’s 2024 general elections

India, the world’s largest democracy, is holding its national elections over a six-week period starting 19 April. The elections to the 543-member lower house of the parliament (Lok Sabha) with an electorate, numbering 968 million eligible voters, assumes critical importance as India is going through both internal and external changes that are heavily linked to its rising power aspirations and achievements.

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The origins of the war in Ukraine [timeline]

The fall of the Soviet Union meant independence for Ukraine, and radically altered the shape and power structures of Eastern Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the culmination of a number of growing fissures and collisions in the region—between Russia and Ukraine, but also between Europe and Russia, and Russia and the United States. Michael Kimmage, a historian and former diplomat who served on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State where he handled the Russia/Ukraine portfolio, looks at the origins of this conflict dating back to 24 August 1991.

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Analysis of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Agenda

In a context of intensifying great power competition and deep divergences of view between nuclear and non-nuclear powers on the urgency of nuclear abolition, ‘nuclear risk reduction’ has gained renewed attention as a pragmatic framework for managing and reducing nuclear dangers.

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Less-than-universal basic income

Ten years ago, almost no one in the United States had heard of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Today, chances are that the average college graduate has not only heard of the idea, but probably holds a very strong opinion about it.

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The Oxford Comment podcast

A spotlight on Native American language and religion [podcast]

On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, the last for 2023, inspired by the themes in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, and in celebration of National Native American Heritage Month in the United States, we spotlight two aspects of Native American culture that transcend tribe and nation and have been the recent focus of OUP scholars: language and religious beliefs.

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The Oxford Comment podcast

Infrastructure, public policy, and the Anthropocene [podcast]

On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we discuss the state of human infrastructure in the Anthropocene with a particular focus on how research can best be used to inform public policy.   First, we welcomed Patrick Harris, co-editor-in-chief of the new transdisciplinary journal, Oxford Open Infrastructure and Health, to speak about the aims and […]

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International Affairs journal published by Oxford University Press

Where there’s a will, there’s a way? Germany and the EU leadership quest

As the EU confronts multiple challenges, many question whether Germany has finally shed its reluctance to become a leading power in the region. In this blog post, Magnus G Schoeller and Olof Karlsson highlight the key obstacles standing in the way of Germany’s leadership aspirations, its policy implications, and how the country can overcome them.

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