Historians in the News

Highlights of the Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians: 2018

What happened at the annual meeting held in Sacramento.

Holocaust writer Richard Rashke chides historians for focusing on Nazi documents instead of the survivors

by Tzipora Baitch

Rashke is the author of the book on Sobibor that was made into a movie that garnered worldwide attention. 

Yale’s Timothy Snyder says Russia pioneered “fake news”

And then used it to sow chaos in America.

Historians Want to Be Cited in the Media

Here’s why it matters, as a story about Oprah Winfrey shows.

An Anti-Trumper Evangelical Weighs in on Trump's True Believers

Historian John Fea on faith, fear, and politics.

Professor says it's past time for a scholarly textbook history of Texas

by Cynthia Orozco

"The Texas State Board of Education must approve Mexican-American studies for Texas schools." – Historian Cynthia Orozco

Is it ok for a professor to use the word "Negro" when discussing black history in the 1960s?

by Peter Feinman

A student at Columbia answered that it's wrong.

Presidential historian Gil Troy: Donald Trump has committed “a crime against the American people”

Troy says it’s not too late for Trump to change — but history will judge his enablers harshly.

John Lewis Gaddis Tells the NYT What He’s Reading Now

Whom would you want to write your biography? "The first Yale student to get into my voluminously indiscreet diary when it’s opened for research a hundred or so years from now."

This Historian Gave Up an Ivy League Professorship

Now Nell Painter Says She Is "the Uncoolest Artist in the World.”

Steve Fraser: On writing personally about class in America

by Steve Fraser

"If class is embedded, often undetected, in the marrow of the national experience, then it should show up in the everyday lives of ordinary people as well. I am an ordinary person and I show up in my own book, in every chapter."

Polish historian says he was forced to switch jobs because of his Holocaust research

Adam Pulawski may have fallen foul of Poland's new Holocaust law.

What Was Missing From Memphis on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination?

by Simon Balto

Historian Simon Balto says it was references to Black Lives Matter and other successors to the Civil Rights Movement. 

Historian tells the forgotten story of America’s first female Egyptologist

Missouri University's Kathleen Sheppard painstakingly spent two years transcribing the scholar's letters.

Russian Historian Who Exposed Soviet Crimes Is Cleared in Pornography Case

Yuri A. Dmitriev, gained renown in 1997 for discovering the remains of more than 9,000 victims of Stalinist purges buried in communal pits in Sandarmokh, a forest in northwestern Russia.

Alfred Crosby, ‘Father of Environmental History,’ Is Dead at 87

In the eyes of many of his peers, Alfred W. Crosby was the father of environmental history.

Gil Troy says Jews need to reclaim the word Zionism

by Gil Troy

Even if it doesn't poll well. 

Will Fitzhugh points out a weakness in Common Core

by Will Fitzhugh

"The Common Core, thanks to [David] Coleman [and the College Board], has promoted the message that History, too, is nothing but a collection of 'texts.' "

Stanford’s Sam Wineburg takes historians to task for failing to measure what their students are learning

by Sam Wineburg and Joel Breakstone and Mark Smith

Shocking findings suggest even juniors and seniors who major in history don’t know how to put events into historical perspective.

‘We Were Madly, Madly in Love’: The Untold Story of MLK’s White Girlfriend

by Patrick Parr

In a new book, writer Patrick Parr explains how he tracked down Betty Moitz.