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: New York Times
8/28/2020
Reports by historian David Kertzer that documents in the Vatican archives reflect on the antisemitism of Pope Pius XII and his advisors have sparked countercharges by church historians that reports based on newly available sources will give priority to sensational findings.
Source: The New Yorker
9/1/2020
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat argues that Trump's seeming endorsement of militia and other armed citizen groups is a dangerous step toward the establishment of paramilitary groups that occurred under Mussolini in fascist Italy.
Source: New York Times
8/26/2020
A host of reactionary forces let by southern segregationists and big businesses mounted a last-ditch campaign to thwart the Nineteenth Amendment, raising false accusations of bribery and corruption against state officials who supported the amendment. When that failed, they took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, to no avail.
Source: New York Times
8/28/2020
by William Briggs and Jon Krakauer
The Colfax Massacre, sparked by white supremacists' refusal to accept a state election result, set in motion a series of legal rulings that made it virtually impossible for the federal government to prosecute civil rights violations by private citizens, ensuring that mob violence and racial oppression would continue.
Source: NPR
8/31/2020
Historian Philip Rubio comments on the historic importance of public employment, especially in the postal service, for Black Americans to avoid hiring discrimination and achieve economic security--gains threatened by plans to privatize the Post Office.
Source: Black Perspectives
8/31/2020
An interview with historian Simon Hall examines the links between revolutionary Cuba, anticolonial rebellion, and civil rights militancy in the United States as revealed by Fidel Castro's 10-day visit to Harlem and the United Nations in 1960.
Source: Aeon
9/1/2020
by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman of UC Berkeley discusses the theories of Reinhart Koselleck, who sought in the years after World War II to model historical research that would not support the great totalitarian ideologies of Nazism or Stalinist communism.
Source: New York Times
9/1/2020
Carolyn Forché reviews Roberto Lovato's book "Unforgetting" on the transnational history of the Salvadoran people.
Source: Legal History Blog
8/30/2020
Anne Fleming is remembered as an outstanding scholar and generous colleague.
Source: NPR
8/29/2020
Historian David Kertzer has published work based on newly available documents from the Vatican's archives, which suggests Pope Pius XII was motivated by political concerns to accept persecution of Europe's Jews and obstructed the reuniting of Jewish orphans with their families after the war.
Source: Politico
8/28/2020
The 1972 National Black Political Convention sought to chart a path for Black empowerment that reflected both protest and institutional politics. Its history has lessons for organizers today.
Source: Washington Post
8/27/2020
by Michael Bobelian
Rick Perlstein's latest history of American conservatism is reviewed as a lens on today's aggrieved conservatism.
Source: New York Times
8/29/2020
Eric Foner, who led an internal research project to help Columbia assess its historical relationship to slavery, described Samuel Bard as a "pretty significant slave owner by New York standards."
Source: Politics and Prose Bookstore
8/31/2020
Education historian Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz discusses the ways that public policy undermines teachers' authority and blames them for systemic problems with education, sponsored by Politics and Prose bookstores. Live at 6:00 PM Monday, August 31.
Source: JSTOR Daily
8/30/2020
Today's biggest news stories are often told through data visualization. Telling stories through data-based pictures has a surprising source.
Source: American Historical Association
8/31/2020
The American Historical Association has canceled its annual meeting in January 2021; the organization will work to develop virtual programming in the next several months.
Source: Huffington Post
8/28/2020
American Studies scholar Nick Estes argues that the acceptance of vigilante groups by the police reflects a long history of cooperation between official law enforcement and informal groups to defend white supremacy.
Source: Bloomberg
8/28/2020
Art historian and "art crime" expert Erin Thompson offers insight into the history of iconoclasm and why social change makes arguments about statues and public memorials inevitable.
Source: Harvard Gazette
8/28/2020
Tiya Miles is professor of history and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the new director of the Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard. She discusses the practice, teaching, and value of public history as "a boisterous, crowd-sourced endeavor."
Source: Inside Higher Ed
8/28/2020
Professors are planning a work stoppage and virtual, public teach-in on police violence and racism next month.
