Dollarization is in the news again. Sure, if you’ve lived in certain countries over the past 25 years–for whom “currency substitution” has been a daily reality–it never stopped being news to you.
Here’s another installment of my “digital history” companion project to my academic research, and “specialty,” in the History of the
At Harvard certain students are treated guilty–automatically–often for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Unfortunately, I have been one of those students, multiple times. This is no coincidence.
I’ve had a few people approach me with the suggestion that I share a bit about my scholarly work. For those of you who don’t know what I “do” (or what I’ve been trying to do) it’s, in short, a History of the United States Dollar. More generally, my area of “expertise” is a history of United States currency, American imperialism, and the methods the United States have used to expand its influence across the globe–especially in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
We already know Harvard University treats certain students one way, and others another way. It comes down to this: there’s a Harvard for the haves, and another Harvard for the have nots. It’s about where you come from, what you look like, what your parents did or do for a living. It’s if you’re the kid of a wealthy donor, or “just” the kid of factory worker or nurse or janitor.
Harvard University treats its working-class and minority students differently. This is the beginning of telling my story of confronting this injustice, which Harvard works so hard to keep quiet–at any cost. But we’ve all watched the news.
