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Michael J Donnelly

Michael J Donnelly

Evanston, Illinois

How Religion Once Structured American Life and Even Separated the Dead

How Religion Once Structured American Life and Even Separated the Dead

A forgotten chapter of American history reveals how the Ku Klux Klan used local government to segregate Catholic burial grounds, turning cemeteries into instruments of exclusion and exposing a hidden system of religious discrimination that historians largely ignored.

Why the Civil War Stopped Exchanging Prisoners and Why It Turned Deadly

Why the Civil War Stopped Exchanging Prisoners and Why It Turned Deadly

The 1863 collapse of Civil War prisoner exchanges transformed POW camps into systems of mass death and exposed a deeper truth about the war: it relied on coercion and fell hardest on those without the means to avoid it.

Big Ten NIL Budgets in 2026: How Much Programs Are Really Spending

Big Ten NIL Budgets in 2026: How Much Programs Are Really Spending

A data-driven breakdown of Big Ten NIL budgets and total player compensation in 2026, including financial tiers and program-by-program analysis.

Why Noise Beats Truth in Modern Politics and How the Attention Economy Drives It

Why Noise Beats Truth in Modern Politics and How the Attention Economy Drives It

In today’s attention economy, politics rewards outrage over truth. This analysis explains how digital incentives amplify noise, distort democracy, and elevate spectacle above substance.