This article seeks to illuminate the relationship between two of the most important figures in American political thought: the pragmatist philosopher William James, and the pioneering civil rights leader and intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. As Harvard's first African American PhD, Du Bois was a critical figure in theorizing about race and identity. His innovative take on double consciousness has often been attributed to his contact with James who was one of Du Bois's most critical graduate professors at Harvard. But beyond the view of the two thinkers as intellectual collaborators, is the fraught history of liberal racial fraternal pairing and its role in shaping national identity. This article examines Du Bois and James's relationship in the context of that history, one marked by troubled associations between friendship and race.

In memory of Alan Rosenthal There have been two periods in American political development where governors and their particular brand of politics have held sway in the White House. The first period, occurring during the Progressive Era, was marked by presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who brought their state‐honed reform agendas with them to the presidency. Three‐quarters of a century later, their push for greater federal authority over big business, machine politics, and ineffective direction of public policy at the local level, was met by fierce resistance from a different breed of governor‐presidents. Hailing from the Sunbelt, these governors sought to overturn the “Hudson” progressive model. The conservative (and at times moderate) presidential politics of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush exemplified a brand of outsider governance dedicated to ending “big government.” Among their accomplishments was the confirmation of the American governorship as a distinctly powerful institution for shaping presidential behavior. This article examines this latter cohort of governor‐presidents and the meaning they brought to “outsider” politics.

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