The US is facing a border crisis unlike anything in its history.

In an era where conspiracy theories get national attention, disinformation spreads on social media, and some politicians trade on a mythologized version of America’s past, it’s fascinating to look back at a hoax that captured many imaginations at the turn of the 20th century: the Kensington Runestone. The Runestone was “discovered” in 1898 and purportedly told the story of Viking missionaries who traveled to Minnesota in 1362, more than a century before other Europeans reached this continent.

Stefan Helmreich & Heather Paxson on Perils & Potentials of Microbial Abundance, February 2011

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus sits on both banks of the Mississippi River, one of the world's great waterways. The river has sustained the land, plants, animals, and peoples who have lived on it for millennia, yet too often it remains a blue line on a map, or "just water," a minimizing of its power, necessesity, and history. In the spring of 2015, the Institute for Advanced Study, along with the River Life program, presented a symposium entitled "The Once and Future River: Imagining the Mississippi in an Era of Climate Change," which was funded by the Andrew W.

The impacts of climate change can be very rapid, as with the unexpected and precipitous decrease of arctic ice in recent years, erosion of low-lying coastal areas, and increased weather instability impacting traditional crops. While the planet is reckoning with the fastest climate change effects in its history, human impact on the environment has been occurring for millennia, and newer technologies can help scientists and historians discover, investigate, and make conclusions about ancient calamities.

The effects of climate change range from nearly imperceptible to immediate and undeniable, though the rapidly increasing pace of those changes means the undeniable effects are more and more common across all human experience, no matter what climate you live in.

You may have been hearing a lot about a progressive “Green New Deal” in the news lately, but the concept has been circulating for longer than you might think. In fact, during President Obama’s first term, Obama and others promoted a Green New Deal to address the financial crisis as well as climate change.

Since our regular programming has ended for the academic year, we'll be bringing you a weekly series of events from our extensive archives! Every Throwback Thursdays "event" will feature a talk from the past ten years of the IAS, paired with new commentary, trivia, and other interesting details! We hope you'll enjoy the opportunity to revisit some of the fascinating talks and panels we've presented over the past decade, and look forward to sharing our Fall 2019 IAS Thursdays schedule with you when it's ready!

On July 16, 1945, the United States, in cooperation with numerous global allies, successfully detonated the first atom bomb. The test was the result of the six-year Manhattan Project, created with the express intention of developing a functional atomic bomb before Adolf Hitler and the Axis Powers developed their own.

In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on national television. The legislation prohibited racial discrimination and outlawed segregation, and was widely hailed as a tremendous achievement in human rights. However lofty the aims, in reality, the Civil Rights Act has not created the kind of fundamental change its supporters, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, hoped.