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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.

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    10/28/2020

    Grin and Bear It: On the Rise and Rise of Neo-Stoicism

    by Hettie O'Brien

    "Stoic practices may allow us to live more easily in the world as it is. But politics is as much about conflict as consensus, and depends, at least in part, upon people getting angry."

  • SOURCE: Politico
    10/27/2020

    How Democrats Can Learn Hardball From the Republicans of 1861

    The Antebellum slave power suppressed democracy and abolitionism through control of the institutions of American government, from the Senate to the courts to the postal service. Only after secession and the start of civil war did the Republican Party fight back successfully with hardball tactics.

  • SOURCE: NPR
    10/22/2020

    Throughline: How We Vote

    In this episode, the process of voting; how it was originally designed, who it was intended for, moments in our country's history when we reimagined it altogether, and what we're left with today.

  • SOURCE: Saturday Evening Post
    10/26/2020

    The Conspiracy Theory That Spawned a Political Party

    "The question of the Anti-Masonic Party’s legacy is anything but settled among political historians. Was it all a righteous democratic force for justice or a cynical conspiracy cult?"

  • SOURCE: Public Books
    10/23/2020

    Thomas Frank On How Populism Can Save America

    "The consensus intellectuals of the ’50s plucked the term from 19th-century obscurity and redefined it. It is their redefinition that is still with us today."

  • SOURCE: Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick

    The American Contest: Featuring Heather Cox Richardson (Podcast)

    Regardless of the outcome of the election, the Supreme Court has already entered a new era. Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Heather Cox Richardson for a big-picture conversation about what that means: minority rule and the court’s role, past and present, in changing visions of democracy. 

  • SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center
    10/23/2020

    Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote (Virtual Event, 10/26)

    Speaker Ellen DuBois will be joined by panelists Kimberly A. Hamlin and Marcia Chatelain to discuss the history of Woman Suffrage for the Washington History Seminar, hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center and the National History Center. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    10/22/2020

    The Supreme Court Is Helping Republicans Rig Elections

    by Adam Serwer

    Historian Lawrence Goldstone supports the argument that today's Roberts Court is continuing the jurisprudence of the post-Reconstruction era by denying the racism of restrictions on voting even as nonwhite voters are disenfranchised. 

  • SOURCE: PBS
    10/20/2020

    Frontline: Whose Vote Counts?

    Jelani Cobb investigates the Wisconsin primary election as a lens onto the ongoing struggle to protect voting rights.