Historians recap, discuss American political corruption

By Nick Ngo

Historians’ Roundtable met once again on Monday discussing political scams through the perspective of history. History instructors Pat Casey and Elizabeth Milliken led the event.

The focus for this presentation was to do a quick overview of some of the political corruptions and scams that happened in the past.

Participants touched upon some of the famous scams such as Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, Teapot Dome and the Watergate scandal. They discussed the elements of these scandals, and what caused the events to happen.

Also, what is happening currently is more or less what happened back then. Looking at current events through a historical perspective. However, current political scams were not the main topic of what they were discussing, said Casey.

“Our focus is the good old days,” Casey said.

Casey said that there was a good amount of people that showed up for the event. According to Casey, the audience was few less then usual, but there have been times where there was less attendance.

“One thing we never know is how many people are going to be there,” Casey said. “Sometimes there are three or four, sometimes there are 40 or 50.”

The standard format of every Historian’s Roundtable presentation is each of the speakers will lecture for five minutes. When they are done the panel takes questions.
Casey said he liked how the audience asked specific questions, for example, some asked comparison questions about current issues and historic events.

The next Historians’ Roundtable presentation will be on Monday, Feb. 27, at noon in the Town and Gown Room. The topic they are going to discuss is are we in “The New Guilded Age”