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: Organization of American Historians
  9/25/2020
  

  OAH Statement on White House Conference on American History

  "The history we teach must investigate the core conflict between a nation founded on radical notions of liberty, freedom, and equality, and a nation built on slavery, exploitation, and exclusion." 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/30/2020
  

  The Joke’s on Us

  Communications scholar Whitney Phillips argues that the irony-drenched culture of the internet allowed serious white supremacy, nazism and misogyny to flourish unchecked. From the Klan to the Nazis, the far right has benefitted from sowing confusion about what was serious and what was a joke. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/29/2020
  

  The Persistence of Segregation in South Carolina

  The Supreme Court's artful directive to desegregate with "all deliberate speed" invited many school districts to do so as slowly as possible. Historian Millicent Brown was the first Black student to integrate a white high school in Charleston, South Carolina and has researched a book about the experiences of similar students. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/30/2020
  

  A Counter to Confederate Monuments, Black Cemeteries Tell a Fuller Story of the South

  “We put up these Confederate monuments in public squares as a homage to a lost cause that was really a lie. But the real builders of the cities and the states and the nation, their narrative is still not told.”

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  9/30/2020
  

  Trump’s America Remains Stuck in the Shadow of Reagan (Review)

  A reviewer of Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" stresses that Donald Trump today presides over a corporate oligarchy that Reaganism helped build by drawing new, politically active corporate lobbyists into coalition with social conservatives.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/22/2020
  

  The War Crime No One Wants to Talk About (Review)

  A new book addresses the glaring oversight of sexual assault and abuse of women as an aspect of war and conflict. 

• 
• SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
  9/28/2020
  

  How Mass Incarceration Has Shaped History

  Political forces pushing for mass incarceration have been closely connected to those restricting the power of labor and pressing to keep wages low. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  9/29/2020
  

  Standing up for Professors

  Washington and Lee University offered a strong defense of its faculty when they were vilified in right-wing media and received threats and online abuse. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  9/27/2020
  

  ‘Classic Authoritarian’: How Historians Rate Trump’s Danger to Democracy

  Leading academic scholars suggest parallels from American and world history for the present situation. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/28/2020
  

  Amid the Monument Wars, a Rally for ‘More History’

  “Historians have different views on taking down statues,” said Gregory Downs, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and one of the organizers. “But that debate doesn’t really capture what historians do, which is to bring more history.”

• 
• SOURCE: Golf Digest
  9/29/2020
  

  What’s in a Name? For Some Clubs in the South, Uneasy Ties to the Confederacy

  Historian Adam Domby comments on pressures faced by many golf courses in the South to change their names to remove Confederate associations (he's in favor). 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/28/2020
  

  How a Fight Over a Black Lives Matter Statement Transformed an Academic Association

  Debates catalyzed by a policy statement on the police killing of George Floyd illuminated political and generational rifts in the Puerto Rican Studies Association and led to a turnover of leadership.

• 
• SOURCE: YouTube
  9/29/2020
  

  Bawdy Civil War Letters, In the Style of Ken Burns

  by Katie Hemphill

  Historian Katie Hemphill's recent crash course in video editing for Zoom teaching let her fulfill a longtime goal: set the bawdiest Civil War letters she found in her research to the stirring sounds of documentary music. Content Warning: Cuss Words.

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  9/29/2020
  

  Power, Propaganda And What Justice Might Look Like For Breonna Taylor (audio)

  Historian Keisha Blain joins "On Point" to discuss the decision not to charge most of the police officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor during a botched search warrant at her residence. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/29/2020
  

  Pandemic Imperils Promotions for Women in Academia

  As primary education has gone remote for another term, women professors with children argue that uneven distribution of domestic labor means their scholarly work is at a disadvantage compared to male and childless colleagues. "“I don’t need a clock extension,” Dr. Magdalena Osburn said. “I need an acknowledgment that this year is trash.”

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/26/2020
  

  Re-Watching ‘The Civil War’ During the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd Protests

  by Gillian Brockell

  Ken Burns's Civil War documentary series sparked tremendous interest in history, but the series has a big Shelby Foote problem. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/27/2020
  

  Why New Mexico’s 1680 Pueblo Revolt Is Echoing in 2020 Protests

  Indigenous groups in the Southwest are imbuing their activism this year with commemorations of the 340-year-old Pueblo Revolt, one of Spain’s bloodiest defeats in its colonial empire.

• 
• SOURCE: Outside
  9/28/2020
  

  The Problem of Confederate Statues on U.S. Public Lands

  Governments have recently addressed the problem of memorializing the Confederacy on public land. Why should monuments in cemeteries like Arlington or on Civil War battlefields be treated differently? 

• 
• SOURCE: San Antonio Express-News
  9/22/2020
  

  Alonso Perales May be the Most Important Mexican American Civil Rights Figure that No One Knows

  Alonso Perales may be one of the most influential Mexican Americans of the 20th century who’s still relatively unknown; historian Cynthia Orozco hopes to correct that. 

• 
• SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
  9/24/2020
  

  The Red Scare and Women in Government

  McCarthyite attacks on the political left also pushed women out of policymaking positions in the federal government, the historian Landon Storrs argues.