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: Gilder Lehrman Institute
  9/29/2022
  

  Misha Matsumoto Yee is Gilder Lehrman's History Teacher of the Year

  “I enjoy witnessing students see themselves represented in their nation’s history. Through learning about groups and communities they identify with, they become passionate learners and understand the importance of learning history.”

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/26/2022
  

  Aaron Burr: The Highest Ranking US Official to be Charged with Treason – So Far?

  For most people, attempting to hijack a presidential election and killing the first Treasury Secretary in a duel would be capstones to a career of infamy. Not Aaron Burr. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/25/2022
  

  When Italian Immigrants were Tricked into Debt Peonage in the Jim Crow South

  A labor agency in Mississippi experimented with a creative, if evil, solution to the problem of Black demands for labor rights at the turn of the 20th century: trick Italian farmers to sign contracts that shackled them with debt to their employers.  

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/28/2022
  

  Joshua Tait: Will Thiel-Backed Extremists Torpedo GOP Senate Hopes?

  Scholar of the right Joshua Tait discusses the prospects of JD Vance and Blake Masters with Post columnist Greg Sargent. Can they put a moderate face on full-blown Trumpism? 

• 
• SOURCE: Civil Eats
  9/26/2022
  

  Marcus Weaver-Hightower on the Politics of School Lunch

  The scholar discusses researching school lunch policies in the U.S., U.K., and Australia – and in his own household—and how nutrition policy relates to inequality, health, and learning. 

• 
• SOURCE: News Talk
  9/25/2022
  

  British and Irish Historians Discuss Oliver Cromwell

  Patrick Geoghegan talks all things Cromwell with a panel of historians. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/25/2022
  

  The Constitution's Support for Oligarchy

  Jonathan Gienapp says that the Framers made deliberate choices to make the Constitution a bulwark against what they saw as the danger of broad-based democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: Worcester Telegram & Gazette
  9/26/2022
  

  Clark U. Prof Models Culturally Sensitive Approaches to Teaching about Slavery

  Raphael Rogers of Clark University notes that even in Massachusetts there are multiple possible "land mines" that social studies teachers need to navigate in lessons dealing with slavery. 

• 
• SOURCE: KERA
  9/26/2022
  

  Historians Evaluate the "1836 Project" Pamphlet Texas Wants to Give to All Drivers License Applicants

  Historians concur that while the task of condensing the state's history into a dozen pages is a difficult task, the choices made by the state commission aim at preserving patriotic myths favored by the right. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/23/2022
  

  COVID Shows the US as a Country Kept from Grieving

  Historians Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, and Yohuru Williams have edited a new collection of essays putting the pandemic in historical perspective, with contributors showing how the pandemic robbed us of both life and time. 

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  9/26/2022
  

  Education or Trauma: Debating the Movie Presentation of "Till"

  Despite the violence and brutality of the subject matter, historian Keisha Blain calls the upcoming Emmett Till film essential viewing in a time when it can't be assumed that everyone knows the story. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/21/2022
  

  Sergey Radchenko on Putin's Mobilization Speech

  Putin's cautious declaration of a partial mobilization reflects his increasingly desperate military situation and the growing unpopularity of the Ukraine war in Russia. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/20/2022
  

  A Finnish Historian's Ambitious Rethinking of Native American History Draws Praise and Criticism

  Pekka Hamalainen describes a four-centuries long continental war between settlers and indigenous Americans during which the indigenous frequently won. Critics, including Native historians, contend he doesn't reckon with the ultimate consolidation of conquest. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/20/2022
  

  National Archives Exhibition Challenges the Meritocratic, Democratic Myths of American Sports

  Sports have long served as a means of inculcating the values of the dominant groups in American society, and sometimes to challenge them. The first sports-related exhibition at the National Archives Museum curates documents and artifacts to tell the story. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/21/2022
  

  The Defeat of Identity Politics

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argues that the rhetoric of diversity has allowed an "elite capture" of racial justice movements that strips those movements of the impulse to transform society. Historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor reviews his new book of essays.

• 
• SOURCE: War on the Rocks
  9/16/2022
  

  How Ideology Shapes America's View on the World

  Christopher McKnight Nichols, Raymond Haberski, Jr., and Emily Conroy-Krutz join host Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas, Austin to discuss what ideology is, and explore the ways in which it has shaped, and continues to shape, America’s role in the world.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  9/17/2022
  

  Eric Foner on the Study of History and Democracy

  "I’m always interested in the connections between past and present. The questions that interest me historically tend to come out of the moment I’m living in."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/15/2022
  

  Is Biden Really the Most Pro-Union President?

  Labor historian Erik Loomis says Biden is spending limited political capital to support workers and strikers, and that the bar for pro-labor presidencies is set extremely low. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  9/16/2022
  

  Walter Lippmann's "Public Opinion" at 100

  Concern about what happens to democracy when a society buried in information gives up on the truth and embraces alternate realities is nothing new. What does the work of Walter Lippmann tell us today? 

• 
• SOURCE: Christianity Today
  9/20/2022
  

  "Passion Plays": The Overlap of Sports Fandom and American Christianity

  by Paul Emory Putz

  A reviewer notes that a new book by a leading interpreter of American evangelical culture may raise important awareness about the wonderment and faith inherent in sports fandom, but leaves out some discussion of how sports support an increasingly masculinist Christianity.