Caroline Light is a senior lecturer and the director of undergraduate studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Harvard. She is the author of Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense, which tracks the evolution of American ideals of armed citizenship, from the centuries-old “castle doctrine” to the Stand Your Ground laws that have removed the duty to retreat in a majority of the states. A 10-year anniversary edition of Stand Your Ground—with a preface by historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz—is forthcoming in February 2026.