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Columbia University faces one of the most consequential choices of its nearly three-century history this week. The Trump administration has given the school a deadline of tomorrow to make a series of concessions in exchange for keeping $400 million in federal funding.

At this year’s South by Southwest festival, in Austin, film premieres weren’t the only major events. The buzziest affair, arguably, took place inside a truck: a facsimile of the Criterion Collection’s fabled office closet, bursting with select editions of its deep and idiosyncratic film catalog. For three minutes each, movie lovers could enter the Criterion Closet truck to rifle through the company’s expansive archive of canonical works, plucking DVD and Blu-ray copies to purchase and take home.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
One of the great weaknesses of the Donald Trump presidency is its failure to learn or heed history. (If you are or know a member of the administration, consider spending some time in our archive!)
“His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S.

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As a younger man, I had an elderly family member who was, on the face of it, extremely kind and generous. Whenever she visited, she brought a thoughtful gift; she was always eager to have you over for your favorite meal; if you were sick, she would be at your bedside with chicken soup. But she had the strange habit of never accepting any favors from others.

The first time that Mehmet Oz was questioned by the Senate, in June 2014, the atmosphere was not inviting. He’d been hauled in to defend his habit of promoting unconventional supplements for weight loss, including green coffee beans, raspberry ketones, and an Asian tropical fruit called garcinia cambogia, on his daytime-television talk show. “I don’t get why you need to say this stuff,” Claire McCaskill, the Missouri senator who chaired the hearing, told him. “Because you know it’s not true.