Historians in the News

Historian Ken Burns: Trump’s America is a ‘retrograde moment’ — white guilt ‘metastasizes into darkness’

“[W]e can’t pretend now that a phenomenon of the kind of racial innuendo that’s happening right now is somehow new and we’re shocked, shocked that this is happening.”

Anita Brookner, art historian and Booker prize winner, dies age 87

Author and first female Slade professor of art published 24 novels including Hotel du Lac, which won her the Booker prize in 1984

The Shrinking Humanities Major

Number of bachelor's degrees awarded fell 8.7 percent between 2012 and 2014, study finds.

Canadian historian subject of a sex harassment investigation

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, acting associate dean of graduate studies at Brock University, is accused of getting a female student drunk and taking advantage of her.

NYT hails the Lincoln papers project

by NYT Editorial

But the Times says in an editorial it’s in jeopardy because of Illinois’s budget woes.

In an interview Eric Foner is asked if he thinks the Republican Party is likely to break up

This was his answer.

Syracuse professor has impersonated women’s movement leaders for 38 years

Sally Roesch Wagner said the appeal of the impersonation for students is the ability to engage firsthand with the material.

Fukushima disaster prompts history professor to investigate Japan

The 2011 Fukushima disaster prompted Katsuya Hirano, a history professor, to investigate what he thinks is purposeful coordination between the government, major media outlets and energy companies to profit from nuclear energy despite the risks.

Gettysburg history professor leads protest against Confederate Flag rally at historic battlefield

Scott Hancock, a history and Africana studies associate professor at Gettysburg College, recently helped galvanize opposition to an inaugural Confederate flag rally at the historic Gettysburg battlefield near the school.

Political scientist Fawaz A. Gerges has written a history of ISIS

by Fawaz A. Gerges

He warns it poses a serious ongoing threat to the West.

The Historians’ Group of the Communist Party – Ten Years that Reshaped History

by Gil Shohat

It wasn't Howard Zinn who came up with the concept of people's history.  It was these folks:  Marxists.

What? James Axtell is writing now about education?

The celebrated author of books about Indian-white relations says he’s returning to an old love.

Duke Flags Lowered: Longtime Duke Historian Robert Durden Dies at Age 90

“His scholarship helped illuminate the history of Duke University from its founding to the present, while his books on the American South informed a generation of American historians."

Book claims Pancho Villa’s raid on a New Mexican town was the “first act of terrorism on U.S. soil"

by Mitchell Yockelson

The book is by Mitchell Yockelson, an archivist at the National Archives.

How Not to Write a History of the Holocaust

by Omer Bartov

Timothy Synder’s Black Earth collapses under the sheer weight of his ambitions.

Arlington teacher will walk from Nebraska City to Chicago, retracing path of former slaves — or 'freedom seekers'

Barry Jurgensen is making the journey both to honor the two women and to raise awareness about modern-day slavery, in the form of sex trafficking.

UNC Chapel Hill professor publishes new book on the historical Jesus

Bart D. Ehrman’s latest book is “Jesus Before the Gospels."

Our drones kill hundreds of wedding party civilians and no one notices?

by Tom Engelhardt

This is outrageous says TomDispatch historian Tom Engelhardt.

UCLA community protests professor's punishment for sex harassment: $3,000 fine and 11-week suspension

Students and other members of the UCLA community gather on the Westwood campus to protest the university's handling of sexual harassment complaints made against history professor Gabriel Piterberg.

Historian Thomas Foster says we desperately need a national women’s history museum

by Thomas A. Foster

"My new book, Women in Early America , features 11 new essays by leading historians, all of which testify to the remarkable lives that we are still only just beginning to uncover."