Departments

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Howard Zinn

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    1/26/20

    Missing Zinn

    by Cornel West an Mordecai Lyon

    On the tenth anniversary of radical historian Howard Zinn’s death, Cornel West opens up about their friendship and what Zinn would have made of the decade—including whether he would have voted for Bernie.

  • SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
    5/17/19

    Reclaiming History From Howard Zinn

    by Naomi Schaefer Riley

    The left’s portrait of America’s past has triumphed thanks to the abdication of serious historians. Wilfred M. McClay offers an antidote.

  • SOURCE: Slate
    9-16-18

    Howard Zinn’s Anti-Textbook

    by Sam Wineburg

    Teachers and students love "A People’s History of the United States." But it’s as limited—and closed-minded—as the textbooks it replaces.

  • SOURCE: Indianapolis Star
    8-18-13

    Mitch Daniels wanted to replace Howard Zinn with Bill Bennett in history curriculum

    When former Gov. Mitch Daniels was pushing to keep liberal historian Howard Zinn’s readings out of Indiana classrooms three years ago, he had a definite idea of what should be there instead: conservative education leader Bill Bennett’s review of American history.News that the new Purdue University president tried to have Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” kept from classrooms has sparked a surge in demand for the 1980 book at Indiana libraries. It also put Daniels on the defensive over the past month, drawing condemnations from academics nationwide and having him reiterate his support for academic freedom in higher education even as he is steadfast in his belief that Zinn is wrong for lower grades.Emails obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request show Bill Bennett had much more favor among Daniels and his advisers. In January 2010, when Daniels discovered the board of education had changed the state’s textbook rules to allow Bennett’s book, he quickly asked how soon his advisers could get copies of “The Last Best Hope” in classrooms....

  • SOURCE: WSJ
    8-12-13

    David J. Bobb: Howard Zinn and the Art of Anti-Americanism

    David J. Bobb, director of the Hillsdale College Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship, in Washington, D.C., is author of "Humility: An Unlikely Biography of America's Greatest Virtue," forthcoming from Thomas Nelson. Upon the death of the Marxist-inspired historian Howard Zinn in 2010, eulogies rang out from coast to coast calling him a heroic champion of the unsung masses. In Indiana, then-Gov. Mitch Daniels refused to join the chorus and instead sent emails to his staff wondering if the historian's "execrable" books were being force-fed to Hoosier students. The recent revelation of these emails provoked an angry backlash....For Americans stuck in impoverished communities and failing schools, Zinn's devotion to history as a "political act" can seem appealing. He names villains (capitalists), condemns their misdeeds, and calls for action to redistribute wealth so that, eventually, all of the following material goods will be "free—to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation." The study of history, Zinn taught, demands this sort of social justice....

  • Zinn and Daniels Both Guilty of Sacrificing Nuance to Politics

    by Sam Wineburg

    Emails recently obtained by the Associated Press have revealed that Indiana's former Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, now president of Purdue University, tried to ban Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States from Indiana schools. His attempt, though perhaps clumsy, wasn't all that surprising.If history tends to be written by the victors, Zinn's alternative take on America's past sought to give voice to the vanquished, telling the story of U.S. history from the perspective of slaves, Indians, laborers and women. The book brought the Boston University historian (who died in 2010) acclaim from many on the American left. But conservatives have had him in their sights for years.

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    8-5-13

    Robert Cohen and Sonia Murrow: Who's Afraid of Radical History?

    Sonia Murrow is an assistant professor of education at Brooklyn College. Robert Cohen is a professor of social studies and history at New York University.A recent Associated Press expose—drawing on e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act—revealed that in 2010, Mitch Daniels, then Indiana’s Republican governor, covertly set out to ban Howard Zinn’s best-selling A People’s History of the United States from Indiana’s classrooms. Daniels had privately responded to Zinn’s death that year with unseemly glee; “This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away,” he crowed. Daniels attempted to banish Zinn’s book on the grounds that it was “a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page…. How do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?” When Daniels’s education adviser replied that A People’s History was being used in a social movements course for teachers at Indiana University, the governor insisted that “this crap should not be accepted for any credit by the state,” sparking a proposed statewide review of university courses designed to “disqualify propaganda” from Indiana’s curriculum.

  • SOURCE: Lafayette Journal-Courier
    7-29-13

    Sam Wineburg: Mitch, Here's Where We Split Ways on Howard Zinn

    Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and History at Stanford University and the author of Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Dear Mitch, I hope you don’t mind the informality. I’ve felt like we share something in common ever since learning that you not only read my article about Howard Zinn but quoted from it approvingly in your press release.

  • SOURCE: Indianapolis Star
    7-27-13

    Sam Wineburg: “How could I possibly agree that ‘banning Zinn’ makes sense when I assign him in my own classes?”

    ...[Former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels] upset Stanford University professor Sam Wineburg by invoking Wineburg’s criticisms of Zinn to defend his own stance. Wineburg objected to Daniels using his work to rationalize a ban on the textbook.“This is not about Zinn, per se,” Wineburg told the Star. “This is about whether in an open democratic society we should be exposed — whether you’re in ninth grade or seventh grade or a freshman at Purdue — whether you should be exposed to views that challenge your own cherished view.”In a tweet directed at Daniels, Wineburg wrote: “How could I possibly agree that ‘banning Zinn’ makes sense when I assign him in my own classes?”...

  • SOURCE: NYT
    7-29-13

    NYT: Historians defend Zinn against Daniels

    The historian Howard Zinn won a dubious prize of sorts last year when his best-selling “People’s History of the United States” came in second in an informal online poll to determine the “least credible history book in print.”But now some of Mr. Zinn’s strongest scholarly critics have rushed to his defense, following the revelation that former Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana had, while in office, sent e-mails to a state education official asking for assurance that Mr. Zinn’s “truly execrable, antifactual piece of disinformation” was “not in use” in Indiana classrooms....