Roundup

Source: The Daily Beast
10/8/19

The Deep State Conspiracy Is About to Go Into Overdrive

by Ronald Radosh

The American right has advanced nutty conspiracy theories for decades. But the one we’re about to see play out will make Joe McCarthy look like an amateur.

Source: Washington Post
October 8, 2019

The Supreme Court must extend the Civil Rights Act’s protections to LGBTQ employees

by Katherine Turk

It shouldn’t be legal to fire somebody for their sexual orientation or gender identity.  

Source: The New York Times
October 6, 2019

Why America Needs Whistle-Blowers

by Allison Stanger

In accusing the intelligence community whistle-blower of partisanship and treason, President Trump has redefined whistle-blowing to serve his private interests rather than the rule of law. In the American tradition, whistle-blowers expose illegal or unconstitutional acts that the powerful want to keep secret.

Source: Vox
10/7/19

The difference between Nixon and Trump is Fox News

by Nicole Hemmer

Fox News shields President Trump. But his love for their conspiracies might bring him down.

Source: TIME
10/2/19

How the Vaping Industry Is Using a Defensive Tactic Pioneered Decades Ago by Big Tobacco

by Sarah Milov

Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History, argues "the most dangerous aspect of vaping might not be what it does to the body, but rather what it does to the body politic."

Source: Time
10/4/19

'God Is Not Going to Put It in Your Lap.' What Made Fannie Lou Hamer’s Message on Civil Rights So Radical—And So Enduring

by Keisha N. Blain

Hamer’s bold message to “get up and try to do something” was one that all Americans committed to change needed to hear

Source: CNN
10/2/19

Historians on Trump: We've never seen anything like this

by Elizabeth Cobbs, Kyle Longley, Ken Osgood, Jeremi Suri

We are historians who have researched every president since George Washington, and we've never seen anything like this.

Source: NY Times
September 27, 2019

She's Rising from the Depths of Soviet Music History

by Gabrielle Cornish

Interest is building in Galina Ustvolskaya, the reclusive Russian composer born 100 years ago whose nickname was “the lady with the hammer.”

Source: Washington Post
10/1/19

For 25 years, Operation Gatekeeper has made life worse for border communities

by Pedro Rios

The policy of ‘prevention through deterrence’ has been deadly.

Source: The Atlantic
October 1, 2019

The Constitution Needs Reform

by Sanford Levinson

The system is rigged, and it’s the Constitution that’s doing the rigging.

Source: Black Perspectives
9/12/19

Revisiting the Talented Tenth: On Black Ivy League Activism

by Zebulon Vance Miletsky

A discussion of W.E.B. Du Bois and the "talented tenth" in contemporary America.  

Source: Washington Post
9/27/19

How war forced the United States to rethink the politics of oil

by Chris Dietrich

A historian explains how President Trump’s approach to oil is a relic of a previous era that isn’t likely to work.

Source: New York Times
September 30, 2019

The Forgotten History of America’s Worst Racial Massacre

by Nan Elizabeth Woodruff

Hundreds of black citizens were killed in Elaine, Arkansas, a century ago this week.

Source: The New York Times
September 27, 2019

400 years later, America still has so much to learn about its racial history

by Lonnie Bunch

Slavery was central to the country’s formation: its economy, its government, its identity, its entire way of life. Without a systemized, entrenched slave trade, America would not have grown to the extent it did. During the past 400 years, the fault lines created in our foundation by a fundamentally dehumanizing system have periodically cracked wide-open. From the Civil War to the violent backlash in response to Reconstruction; from the segregation of Jim Crow laws to persistent inequities in economic outcomes, housing policy and the criminal-justice system, the specter of 1619 continues to haunt us.

Source: The Conversation
9/30/2019

Why historians are fighting to save Thomas Cook’s enormous archive

by Stephanie Decker

With this 178-year-old firm, its heritage is about to be lost and a number of business historians – myself included – are fighting to save it.

Source: The Washington Post
9/29/19

Even as President Trump slams the door on refugees, there is reason for hope

by Julia G. Young

More than a century after the first World Day of Migrants and Refugees, communities continue to resist nativism and fight for immigrant rights

Source: Washington Post
10/01/2019

Why Donald Trump is much more dangerous than Andrew Johnson

by Sidney M. Milkis and Daniel J. Tichenor

While both presidents are demagogues who faced impeachment, today’s political reality means that Trump can do more damage

9/27/19

Roundup Top 10!

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

Source: Chicago Tribune
9/25/19

Like Watergate all over again? In some ways, yes, but there are stark differences

by Jon Marshall

Echoes of Watergate could be heard in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement Tuesday that the House of Representatives will begin a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. But how similar is this path to what the nation experienced 45 years ago?

Source: Naked Capitalism
9/24/19

The Failure of Higher Education: A Tale of Two Diplomas

by David Barber

In the face of this disaster, our university faculty refuse to take any stand against the strangling of education in this country.