John W. Hill Chair of European History, Indiana University, Bloomington

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

September 7, 2021 • by Maria Bucur and Kristen R. Ghodsee

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania. “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

Democracy

Domestic Violence as Pandemic

July 13, 2020 • by Maria Bucur

The resources available for victims of domestic violence vary greatly from place to place. Democracies generally tend to provide greater support to victims. This has changed with the pandemic. Implementation of national emergencies have resulted in the suspension of regular public services, and shelter-in-place orders have confined people to their ...

Sex & Gender

Gender as Proselytism

Romania’s education law hits a new low

June 16, 2020 • by Maria Bucur

Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States stated through a 6-3 majority decision that gender and sex are not the same thing. To discriminate against sex as the body parts one has is not the same as discriminating against a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. How did we get ...

Gender

Time and the Virus

The Gender Norm Challenge

March 27, 2020 • by Maria Bucur

Two weeks is a long time. Most people around the world think this now. Two weeks is fourteen days of not doing what we were supposed to do. It is enough time to put the largest economy in the world in recession. Clearly, it is enough time for catastrophe to ...

Europe & Central Asia

Romania in 2020

Fighting Corruption Just Got Harder because of Trump

December 6, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

The big unknown for Romania moving into 2020 is its relationship with the United States. Though Romanians have become more anti-American in the last few years, they are still the second most pro-American post-socialist state in Europe (Poland is in first place). Since 1990, the U.S. ambassador has played a ...

Europe & Central Asia

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

Populism on the retreat

December 5, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Romania was one of the post-communist countries to join the neoliberal bandwagon slower than the Visegrad group and made it to EU membership just when the 2008 global crisis was about to break. For over a decade after the end of the brutal Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship, old communist apparatchiks together ...

The Romanian 2019 Presidential Elections

North America

The America of Small Things

“A Song for You”*

July 8, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

But I love to celebrate all those things that make the United States the place I love. Most of those “things” are the people in their beautiful diversity, with their words, looks, and especially songs. My family and I spent a good part of the July 4th holiday week with dear ...

Feature

A Ray of Hope

Romania’s Results in the EU Elections

June 12, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

In the case I know best, Romania, the elections demonstrated a sustained and even rising commitment to the principles of rule of law, the EU as a democratic institution, and trust in the possibility of launching new political parties. It is a case worthy of attention because it offers hope ...

Feature

Statues for Predators

Poland struggles with the entanglements of the Catholic Church and Solidarity

March 13, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Less than two years ago, the Charlottesville alt-right march and various other white nationalist rallies threw into renewed spotlight the racist aspects of the politics of commemoration in the United States. Communities across the country, from Baltimore to New Orleans, began to assess more openly and more critically the value ...

Feature

Policing the Womb 2.0

Why Hungary and Poland’s pro-natalist policies won’t work

February 28, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Fifty years ago, neo-Malthusian demographers and politicians warned that overpopulation would wipe out all efforts to modernize the world, especially the postcolonial Global South. Rapid population growth in India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Iran were depicted as impediments to development. Republicans (Richard Nixon) and Democrats (Lyndon B. Johnson) worked with Planned ...

Feature

Socialism and the Future of Gender Justice: Part 2

A Dialogue about Feminism in the Marketplace of Ideas

February 15, 2019 • by Kristen R. Ghodsee and Maria Bucur

On August 12, 2017, Kristen Ghodsee published an op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Why Women Had Better Sex under Socialism.” The piece was due to appear in print a few days later, but the editors published the online version on that date. Coincidentally, the late night of August 11th and the morning of August ...

Feature

Socialism and the Future of Gender Justice

A Dialogue about Feminism in the Marketplace of Ideas

February 14, 2019 • by Kristen R. Ghodsee and Maria Bucur

On August 12, 2017, Kristen Ghodsee published an op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Why Women Had Better Sex under Socialism.” The piece was due to appear in print a few days later, but the editors published the online version on that date. Coincidentally, the late night of August 11th and the morning ...