05/22/2026
A recently published article in The New Yorker by Ruth Marcus discussed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ views against Progressivism and Progressives. Christopher McKnight Nichols, Mershon Center Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies and Arts and Sciences at Ohio State Professor of History, was quoted in the story. An excerpt from the article is below.
Christopher Nichols, a historian of the Progressive Era at the Ohio State University, said of Thomas’s account, “It’s a deeply problematic reduction of Progressivism to its most negative elements,” including racism and support for eugenics. Thomas’s speech, Nichols continued, “absolutely mistakes and conflates figures like Stalin and Hi**er and Mussolini as Progressives, none of whom would have defined themselves as such, or were defined in their eras as such.
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In 1991, during his confirmation hearings, Clarence Thomas assured senators that he would be an impartial jurist. In a recent speech, the Justice made clear that he views Progressivism, past and present, as anti-American.
