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Jenkinson.field

Clay S. Jenkinson

Editor-at-Large

Clay S. Jenkinson is a historian and humanities scholar based in North Dakota. He is founder of both the Theodore Roosevelt Center and Listening to America.

Clay received a BA from the University of Minnesota, and an MA from Oxford where he was a Rhodes and Danforth Scholar. He is the author of thirteen books, most recently, The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota. He has appeared in several of Ken Burns’ documentary films.

Clay portrays such historical figures as Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He lives and works on the plains of North Dakota. He is the founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in western North Dakota, dedicated to the digitization of all of Theodore Roosevelt’s Papers.

He can be reached at ltamerica.org.

Bans are an illiberal idea that undermines a long and honorable tradition of making knowledge and ideas widely available, making people free to choose what to read for themselves.
There are few experiences that connect modern travelers to America’s past than on a train. Our resident humanities scholar recounts his journey west in preparation to tell the story of the man called both "The Empire Builder" and "The Devil's Curse."
The former president’s time in France changed him, and changed America. From haute culture to a silly spat over “freedom fries,” the two countries are inextricably linked.
The Corn Palace in South Dakota romanticizes the history of corn in rural America. But the current reality is that corn is now less of a food than an industrial product, raising questions about sustainability.
The outside mosaics of the Corn Palace change every year, the inside mosaics almost never. A committee meets to choose each year’s theme.
There are contemporary lessons to be learned from the way Theodore Roosevelt, then the most popular man in the world, navigated a royal funeral 112 years ago.
In 1990, a quirky campaign run by the then-upstart music channel MTV encouraged its viewers to Rock the Vote. Now, three decades later, we need a similarly audacious bid to have Americans trust the validity of the vote.
The passing of the United Kingdom’s longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, sparks reflections on English history and former British kings named Charles. By George, the House of Windsor may have missed the mark on this one.
Our resident humanities scholar asks, what happens when the glue that holds our society together stops sticking?
Thomas Jefferson thought that each generation should rewrite its own founding document. A constitutional scholar talks about the changes that could have happened if Americans had taken Jefferson up on his challenge.