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Summer Session Internship

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I am applying for the Summer Session internship at Lapham's Quarterly. I have a passion for history, am conversant with the history of ideas, and experienced in writing and publication. Lapham's philosophy of using history as an instructive guide to the challenges of the present is consistent with my own. Working for Lapham's would be an excellent opportunity for me to apply my skill set and verve, learn, and contribute to a proper appreciation of history. I believe ideas matter. While not solely the engine of the march of history, they are more consequential and determinative than often realized. One of the most emphatic declarations of this notion was made by Lord Acton, who averred that the function of the historian is to "keep in view …show more content…

I graduated magna cum laude and Phi Alpha Theta with a degree in history and was awarded the Sister Hugh Cunningham Prize for History, Mercy College's highest honor for history graduates. I have already made a modest contribution to discourse as a published author. I have written for such publications as CounterPunch, and appeared a few times on television and radio to discuss my book Fall of the Arab Spring: From Revolution to Destruction, a trenchant appraisal of America's democracy promotion in the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region in the era of Obama. The book developed from a research project undertaken when I was a college junior as part of the McNair Scholars Program, a Department of Education initiative designed to give minority and low-income students research skills and steward their entry into graduate school. I now know vastly more about government, American republicanism and democracy, foreign policy, and even good writing than I did when I wrote and successfully published the book; but the student of history is a perpetual student. What I have learned from legendary historian Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University on the study of historical processes (particularly his The Evolution of Civilizations) is that it is possible to make history scientific: rather than sclerotic adherence to received notions as gospel, it should be constantly advancing and subject to revision. "Science is a method and nothing else," he averred. "From week to week, even from day to day, the body of knowledge to which we attribute the name science is changing, the beliefs of one day being, sooner or later, abandoned for quite different beliefs." I have learned my own assertions and ideas must be periodically reviewed and revised, and this is a microcosm of the role of the historian in society that I will continue to

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