Roundup

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: Washington Post
  3/19/19
  

  When bad actors twist history, historians take to Twitter. That’s a good thing.

  by Waitman Wade Beorn

  Engaging with the public isn’t pedantry; it’s direct engagement. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  3/18/19
  

  Americans don’t believe in meritocracy — they believe in fake-it-ocracy

  by Niall Ferguson

  This illegal “side door” into college came into existence because the back door of a fat donation — like the $2.5 million paid by Jared Kushner’s father to Harvard — isn’t 100 percent reliable.

• 
• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  3/15/19
  

  Who’s the snowflake? We tenured professors, that’s who

  by Anita Bernstein

  Our freedom to say what we want is not only tolerated but celebrated.

• 
• 3/14/19
  

  Roundup Top 10!

  This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  3/12/19
  

  Video of the Week: Julia Child from WW2 Agent to Legendary Chef

  Before she became a world-famous chef, Julia Child worked for a top-secret U.S. intelligence agency, where she helped devise a recipe for shark repellent.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/8/19
  

  The real history of women wouldn’t look quite so nice on a tote bag

  by Laurie Penny

  “Empowerment” has always been more palatable and easier to sell than the idea of women simply taking power, and it’s more cheerful than the reality that plenty of women’s history has been defined as much by frustration and pain as by perky self-actualization.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/12/19
  

  Why the College-Admissions Scandal Is So Absurd

  by Alia Wong

  For the parents charged in a new FBI investigation, crime was a cheaper and simpler way to get their kids into elite schools than the typical advantages wealthy applicants receive.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/9/19
  

  Woodrow Wilson and ‘the Ugliest of Treacheries’

  by Erez Manela

  After World War I, America was supposed to lead the fight against colonialism. What happened?

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/13/19
  

  The government effort to make FOIA “as bad as possible”

  by Nate Jones

  The Department of Justice's historical effort to weaken the Freedom Of Information Act and why Congress must strengthen the law. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/12/19
  

  How presidential empathy can improve politics

  by Jeremi Suri

  The legacy of FDR and his fireside chats. 

• 
• SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  3/10/19
  

  God once opposed interracial marriage, too

  by Jonathon Zimmerman

  The Methodist Church turned away from human equality last week. It's on the wrong side of history, but it will right itself soon enough.

• 
• SOURCE: Seattle Times
  3/8/19
  

  The Constitution must be our ‘political religion’: Remembering Lincoln’s words

  by Eli Merritt

  President Lincoln's words remind us that to survive as a democracy we must transcend our racial, religious, regional and party affiliations, and embrace the Constitution and the rule of law.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/9/19
  

  The Black Gun Owner Next Door

  by Tiya Miles

  I’m an African-American historian and, on most issues, decidedly liberal. Could I rethink my anti-gun stance?

• 
• SOURCE: Informed Comment
  3/11/19
  

  America’s Long History of Hysteria about Women’s Veils: Jeanine Pirro and Ilhan Omar

  by Juan Cole

  In fact, nothing is more American historically than veiling and debates on veiling. 

• 
• SOURCE: Society for U.S. Intellectual History
  3/10/19
  

  Getting the Right History vs. Getting the History Right

  by L.D. Burnett

  An excellent summary of recent popular critiques of historians--and a rebuttal. 

• 
• SOURCE: Perspectives
  3/7/19
  

  What's Behind the Lamentations Over History?

  by James Grossman

  Max Boot’s questions imply change over time. But we can’t know why something has declined if we don’t know what conditions have changed.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/7/19
  

  The Case for Reparations

  by David Brooks

  A slow convert to the cause.

• 
• 3/7/19
  

  Roundup Top 10!

  This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

• 
• SOURCE: Time
  3/5/19
  

  Women in Ancient Rome Didn’t Have Equal Rights. They Still Changed History

  by Barry Strauss

  If we look hard at the history, we discover some women who made their mark, either working within their prescribed gender roles as wives, lovers, mothers, sisters or daughters, or exercising so much political, religious or, even in a few cases, military power that they smashed those roles altogether and struck out on their own. 

• 
• SOURCE: New Yorker Magazine
  3/6/19
  

  Five Reasons Why Republicans Won’t Abandon Trump Like They Ditched Nixon

  by Ed Kilgore

  There are five reasons a broader Republican backlash like the one that helped push Nixon out of office won’t happen if Mueller’s suggestions of law-breaking are limited to obstruction of justice.