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Category: Research
Webinar #8: Presidential Character from Clinton and Cable to Trump and Twitter
This morning, CARP Lab hosted a conversation between Sergei Samoilenko and Dr. Stephen Farnsworth. Dr. Farnsworth is a professor at the University of Mary Washington and the director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies. The conversation spanned political party affiliation, the importance of authenticity in campaigning, and the impact of policy and character …
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Character Assassination: The Historical Perspective [Part 2]
By Martijn Icks In my previous blog, I argued for the importance of historical perspectives on character assassination. However, historical research also comes with its own challenges and limitations. Let’s have a look at some of these. Perhaps the most obvious challenge is the danger of anachronism: we should be very careful not to assume …
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Character Assassination: The Historical Perspective [Part 1]
By Martijn Icks “History is bunk,” American business man Henry Ford famously said. It’s a beloved quote, especially among historians, who like nothing better than arguing against it. Others have opined that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. And then there’s the sentiment that history doesn’t repeat itself, but …
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The Tetris Model of Character Assassination
By Sergei A. Samoilenko Character assassination comes in many shapes and forms. Character attacks vary in their complexity across time and cultures at interpersonal, intergroup, and international levels. The traditional view of CA, grounded in social psychology, sees a CA event in terms of cause-and-effect relations between the attacker and the target. Their relationship is …
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The Character of Thomas Jefferson: Then and Now [Part 2]
Today, the most notable character attacks of Thomas Jefferson derive from widely-circulated newspapers, campus protests, or national figureheads. But Jefferson’s character is also questioned in students' history texts. This has not always been so. In the mid-nineteenth century, instruction books devoted considerable space to Jefferson, casting him in a favorable light. Publications from 1835, 1842 …
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CARP Welcomes Undergraduate Researcher Mikayla Knutson
The following is a brief summary of Mikayla's research experience in her own words. You can find her very first contribution to the CARP blog, part of an ongoing research project focusing on the character of Thomas Jefferson, here. We look forward to reading more of her research in the future! I have loved history and …
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The Character of Thomas Jefferson: Then and Now [Part 1]
By Mikayla Knutson In recent years, research into Sally Hemings’ life highlighted the experiences of slaves at Monticello and prompted questions of Thomas Jefferson’s apparent hypocrisy: the Founding Father who penned that “all men are created equal” and hold “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” was a slave master. As part of …
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Highlights from Perspectives on Character Assassination
By Sergei Samoilenko This past Friday, Jennifer Keohane, Eric Shiraev and I participated in a panel on the topic of “Perspectives on Character Assassination at the Institute of World Politics in the historic red brick Marlatt Mansion just a few blocks from the White House. Our event was apparently “sold out” online, and we had …
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New Book Announcement
By Jennifer Keohane I want to use this post to share a bit of exciting news. I have a new monograph, released with Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield. The book is available now on the Rowman website or Amazon. This project is the culmination of 6 years of archival research at the …
Character Assassination and Reputation Politics Research Lab 