Clay S. Jenkinson
GOVERNING
North Dakota, United States
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Past articles by Clay:
The Dammed Rivers That Shaped America’s West
Concrete, steel and turbines play an outsize role in the past and future of water in western states. → Read More
The Early Republic Was Stress Tested for Times Like Ours
Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson and the struggle for a more perfect union. → Read More
Greener Acres: A Journey from San Francisco to Iowa
A journalist and her husband leave California and head east to take over the 530-acre family farm. → Read More
The Promises and Pitfalls of a Modern-Day Boomtown
A decade ago, Williston, N.D., became a magnet for desperate men, thanks to oil in the Bakken Formation. In an interview, author Michael Smith talks about life in an oil patch and the human cost of fueling the nation. → Read More
From Wounded Knee to Pipeline Access, the Lakota’s Enduring Power
The recent Senate confirmation of the first Indigenous American, Deb Haaland, to lead a Cabinet department gives us reason to rethink our assumptions about First Nations’ relationship to power. A new book can help. → Read More
Nicholas Christakis and Understanding Our Year With COVID-19
An important new book, Apollo’s Arrow, precisely targets what America got right in its COVID-19 response, and where it must do better next time. And there will be a next time. → Read More
Living Through the Pandemic: A Review One Year Later
The author of a new book on the coronavirus discusses how political expediency and an immature public have impaired America’s ability to meet the challenges and what we have learned as a country and what we have not. → Read More
Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: A Tale of Two Revolutions
The printing press and social media democratized communication in their respective times. They both turned the order of things on its head — for good, for ill, and forever. → Read More
America, Rome and the Slow Erosion of Republics
Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson and Professor Ed Watts explore what insights can be gained studying the last years of the Roman Republic and whether that has particular relevance in our own time. → Read More
Why Did John Adams Skip Thomas Jefferson’s Inauguration?
The election of 1800 was the first time power was transferred from one political party to another. Hoping for a smooth transition involving prominent Founding Fathers, the country ended up with a constitutional crisis. → Read More
The Electoral College Explained: Its History and the Tensions of Democracy
Presidential elections, your vote, and the quest for legitimacy. Unlike Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, President-elect Joe Biden appears to have won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. → Read More
Amy Coney Barrett Is in an Impossible Position. So Are We.
If Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee is confirmed by the Senate, there is no guarantee she will continue to hold views congenial to the president. But does America still want its justices to be unelected and unaccountable? → Read More
How Did America Lose Its Confidence?
Great nations have shared values, shared aspirations and a shared historical narrative. That does not mean everyone agrees, but there has to be at least a baseline understanding of our national purpose that we can agree on. → Read More
America and Race: When Sports Players Refuse to Play
Most Americans would prefer not to mix sports and politics. But when NBA players protested by canceling playoff games, they brought the issue of race relations to the forefront better than any politician or protest group. → Read More
A Lesson from Jefferson on How the Nation Can Heal
If we are genuinely searching for national healing and reconciliation, look at the aftermath of the election of 1800, which was as angry and mean-spirited as any in our history. → Read More
Let Us Now Praise the U.S. Postal Service
It is deeply imbedded into the idea of what we expect from our national government. Able to reliably deliver letters, prescriptions and ballots anywhere in the country, the Post Office has become more important than ever. → Read More
James Earle Fraser and the Legacy of His ‘Vanishing Indian’
Who was the man who sculpted the controversial statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the Museum of Natural History? He was no racist, but the messages of his famous figures have become problematic. → Read More
The Very First Fourth of July
Thomas Jefferson was not the first choice to write the Declaration of Independence. He accepted the assignment reluctantly, but he brought genius to the project, including the 35 most important words in the English language. → Read More
Smallpox and Indians: When Pandemic Warnings Go Unheeded
We’re at the height of this epidemic, so the collapse of the Mandan Indian Nation in North Dakota in the late 18th and early 19th centuries from outbreaks of smallpox is a reminder of how ignorance can be so deadly. → Read More