Historians in the News

The Lawyer vs. the Historian

by Randy Barnett

A fight over originalism.

Roger Wilkins, civil rights champion in government and journalism, dies at 85

In a career that traversed law, journalism and education, Mr. Wilkins made matters of race and poverty central to his work as an assistant attorney general in the Johnson administration and later as one of the first black editorial board members at The Post and the New York Times.

Ken Burns making documentary on Muhammad Ali

The PBS documentarian announced Tuesday that he and two partners will make a two-part, four-hour film about the former heavyweight champ, who died last June.

Rick Perlstein is asked if Trump’s like Nixon

by Jon Wiener

Well, they both disliked the media, but only Trump was undisciplined enough to come out and say it.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Puts Trump's Health Care Defeat In Historical Perspective

"By going for this crazy, difficult, complicated problem first — without knowing you had your own party behind you — I think it's just gonna cast a shadow on everything else."

Christina Vella, Author of Sizzling Works of Narrative History, Dies at 75

Christina Vella was the author of several colorful works of narrative history, notably “Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba,” a tale of wealth and scandal in 19th-century France and New Orleans.

Christopher Lasch, the late historian/social commentator, is suddenly everywhere

by Kevin Mattson

What we can learn from Lasch — and what we can’t.

Harvard art historian’s interest in black history has roots in her grandfather’s question in high school

He demanded to know "Where are the African-Americans in this history book?"

Human History ‘Will End When Men Become Gods’

And we’re on the verge of doing just that, says Yuval Noah Harari.

Yale’s Timothy Snyder explains to Bill Maher how Trump resembles 1930s fascists — and makes the Russia connection

Snyder told Maher Americans must defend institutions. Many anticipate that “the institution will save us” but Snyder said that this kind of thinking is wrong. “We have to save the institutions."

China Bars Historian at Australian University From Leaving, Lawyer Says

Feng Chongyi, a Chinese-born professor at an Australian university who has often criticized Beijing’s crackdown on political dissent, has been barred from leaving China and is being questioned by state security officers as a suspected threat to national security.

Nell Irvin Painter tells NY Magazine Americans need to stop thinking of the working class as white

It’s part of a larger problem: The assumption that real Americans are white people.

The New York Times celebrates biographer Richard Holmes

Holmes is out with a memoir reflecting on his long career as a biographer of Robert Louis Stevenson, Shelley, and others.

Historians are in demand! (On cruise ships)

Viking Cruises has launched a new Resident Historian Program.

Douglas Brinkley says there’s a "smell of treason in the air"

"This is the most failed first 100 days of any president.”

Mary Maples Dunn, Advocate of Women’s Colleges and President of Smith, Dies at 85

Maples received her bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., in 1954. She earned her master’s, in 1956, and her doctorate, in 1959 — both in colonial American history — from Bryn Mawr College.

Gil Troy says Jews and Israelis are the victims of a “Hate Swarm”

by Gil Troy

He includes among the culprits his own university’s student newspaper, as he writes in an Open Letter.

Eric Foner interviews Matt Karp about his new book on slaveholders

Karp focuses on the international ambitions of slaveholders and their control over foreign policy.

Are historians ignoring the history of originalism?

by Jonathan Gienapp

That’s what this historian thinks.

Mark Noll says evangelicals voted for Trump for lots of reasons, abortion among them

"But I’m worried about the Christian populace at large listening all the time to their media go-to and never being concerned about folks who are trying to see things more broadly."