Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/31/2023
  

  First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs

  The first 17 of nearly 500 interviews with Obama Administration officials was released this week, as part of a Columbia University project. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  5/30/2023
  

  The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth

  by Brentin Mock

  Victor Luckerson looks to the aftermath of the deadly attacks on the Greenwood district to argue that Tulsa's white leadership, in combination with federal highway and urban renewal programs, thwarted the efforts of Black Tulsans who were determined to rebuild. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  6/1/2023
  

  British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"

  Historian Nicolas Bell-Romero found that influential Cambridge backers were happy to learn of the links between the university and famous abolitionists, but not on the university's historical links to an imperial elite that benefitted from the slave trade, part of a broad battle about the politics of British history. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/1/2023
  

  Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking

  At age 12, the historian, with her older sister, was a passenger on a jet hijacked by Palestinian militants. After decades of minimizing the story, her efforts to approach her past as a historian highlight the gaps in documentary records, the contradictory ways memory can fill those gaps, and the varying degrees of distance historians keep from their subjects.

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  5/26/2023
  

  Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"

  The UT-Austin historian previously worked in Wisconsin when Governor Scott Walker went to war with the university system. He discusses the similarities and differences a decade later in Texas. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/27/2023
  

  Stanley Engerman, Co-Author of Controversial History of American Slavery, Dies at 87

  His "Time on the Cross," published with Robert Fogel in 1974, ignited debate by arguing for the economic efficiency of enslaved labor and, critics said, downplaying the violence inherent in the system. 

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  5/28/2023
  

  Professor Helps Rescue "Lost" Asian American Silent Film

  Denise Khor's research on film culture seemed to show that the prints of the 1914 film "The Oath of the Sword" had been lost. But one museum had a decaying copy in a vault, and a restored version has premiered as the oldest known Asian American film. 

• 
• SOURCE: KTVZ
  5/27/2023
  

  Canada Day Festivities Spark Controversy over National History

  The dispossession of indigenous peoples and the exclusion of Chinese immigrants are among the historical episodes that have complicated the celebration of Canadian nationhood in recent years. 

• 
• SOURCE: Associated Press
  5/30/2023
  

  German Government Panel of Historians Begins Inquiry into 1972 Munich Olympics Killings

  The government hopes to address ongoing questions raised by the families of murdered Israeli athletes about failures of security before the attack and as the crisis unfolded. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  5/30/2023
  

  The Other Mothers Fighting the School Wars

  Although Moms For Liberty was the early entrant into the current battles over curriculum, race and LGBTQ policies in schools, other groups have mobilized their identities as mothers to fight the right's efforts. Historians Adam Laats and Stacie Taranto note that school politics have often hinged on who could leverage motherhood as a political force. 

• 
• SOURCE: Religion Dispatches
  5/25/2023
  

  Jeff Sharlet on the Intersectional Erotics of Fascism

  by Annika Brockschmidt

  In an interview with historian Annika Brockschmidt, journalist Jeff Sharlet discusses his new book on the "slow civil war" in America and the need to understand how the far right is sustained by the pleasure of ceasing to resist the tide of anger and instead being carried by it. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  5/23/2023
  

  Scholars Stage Teach-in on Racism in DeSantis's Back Yard

  Yohuru Williams and the Institute for Common Power, directed by Terry Anne Scott, convened a 24-hour teach-in in St. Petersburg to draw attention to the connections between inclusive history lessons and functioning democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: NBC Boston
  5/23/2023
  

  Paul Watanabe, Historian and Manzanar Survivor, Makes Sure History Isn't Forgotten

  The UMass-Boston professor brings students each spring to the California desert to visit the site where his own family was interned for more than four years. 

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  5/23/2023
  

  Massachusetts-Based Historians: Book Bans in Florida Affect Us, Too

  Kellie Carter Jackson and Kerri Greenidge explain how the push to restrict books and teaching on racism in Florida will affect teaching even in blue states. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/18/2023
  

  Deborah Lipstadt's Work Abroad as Antisemitism Envoy Complicated by Definitional Dispute

  U.S. policy is guided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism, though a growing coalition of scholars—including one of its original drafters—argue that the IHRA document is used to stifle criticism of Israel, particularly on campus. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/19/2023
  

  For the Shakurs, Black Liberation Became the Family Business

  Santi Elijah Holley traces the lines connecting Afeni Shakur's Black Panther Party activism to the musical and political messages of her son Tupac. 

• 
• SOURCE: Truthout
  5/18/2023
  

  George Yancy and Joe Feagin on How to Fight Back Against Book Bans

  The sociologist, whose books on racism have been banned, argues "U.S. book banning has been widespread and routinely targeted books with diverse ideas and perspectives for centuries now, especially those challenging white conservative sociopolitical ideas, norms and values."

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/17/2023
  

  A Biography of Writer Lydia Marie Child Exemplifies a Revisitation of 19th Century Women

  by Susan Cheever

  A biography of the writer seeks to rectify a widespread phenomenon: women influential in their own time whose significance has been obscured in later histories. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/22/2023
  

  The Latest Big History Thesis: It's All Nepo Babies

  by Maya Jasanoff

  Maya Jasanoff reviews Simon Sebag Montefiore's history of humanity through its dynastic families, which presents a much bloodier and creepier gloss on "family values" in ancient and modern times. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  5/19/2023
  

  Review: Are Basic Income Programs Captive to the Power of the Market?

  by Simon Torracinta

  Two historians argue that the basic income is an idea that is circumscribed by the assumption that society will be organized around markets. A reviewer says the programs are the starting point for politics that escape that constraint.