News
History Department's Ernest Freeberg Publishes New Book with Harvard University Press
Ernest Freeberg, associate professor of history and associate head of the History Department, has just published "Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent," his second book. It was released by Harvard University Press on May 15. Eugene Debs, socialist leader and critic of capitalism\'s excesses, was sent to prison for his opposition to America's involvement in WWI. "Democracy's Prisoner" not only tells the remarkable story of Debs' campaigning for the presidency from his cell, but, more importantly recounts the intense public discussion that ensued over the limits of free speech in the United States, and describes the widespread opposition that soon developed to Debs' imprisonment, all this eventually leading to his release. Freeberg argues that this public debate was really the beginning of the 20th-Century's long discussion of civil liberties.