Jonathan Zimmerman

Open Forum: Are public schools ‘inclusive’? Not for those who oppose abortion

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Children need to learn how to discuss abortion — and other controversial political questions — in a fair and mutually respectful way. And that won’t happen if the adults in the room tell them the right answers, right off the bat.

Jonathan Zimmerman says colleges are failing young Trump supporters

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Students who back the president are afraid to speak up. Professors should encourage them to break their silence.

Jonathan Zimmerman says universities wrongly ignore teaching

by Jonathan Zimmerman

"The best thing that could come out of the online revolution is a renewed focus on teaching, no matter what the medium."

Jonathan Zimmerman says Donald Trump should be given a pardon in exchange for resigning

"Mike Pence should make Donald Trump an offer he can't refuse: Full pardon if he resigns the presidency and ends our national nightmare."

Jonathan Zimmerman asks: What’s So Bad About Ken Burns?

by Jonathan Zimmerman

There’s one big reason that academic historians turn up their noses at his popular documentaries: sour grapes.

Jonathan Zimmerman steps into the debate over a law professor denounced as racist

by Jonathan Zimmerman

While we may not agree with what she says, we in academe should defend her right to say it, he argues.

Jonathan Zimmerman is joining the growing ranks of liberal historians alarmed by college speech codes

by Jonathan Zimmerman

"I'm a liberal Democrat. But I'm also an advocate for unbridled free speech, which makes me a ‘conservative' on many college campuses these days."

Jonathan Zimmerman: What I’m Reading

by Tiffany April Griffin

His 3 favorite historians? Frederick Jackson Turner, Richard Hofstadter, and John Hope Franklin.

Jonathan Zimmerman: After A-Rod Doping Penalty, Don't Expect Meritocracy in Baseball

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).So here’s a quick quiz for all of the baseball fans out there: Which of the following players have taken performance-enhancing drugs? a. Barry Bonds b. Alex Rodriguez c. Henry AaronThe answer might surprise you: all of them. You surely guessed Mr. Bonds, who used steroids during his pursuit of Aaron’s home-run record. And everyone knows about Mr. Rodriguez, who has admitted that he took steroids earlier in his career. Rodriguez was suspended on Monday for the rest of this season – and all of the next one – for  allegedly taking PEDs again. Rodriguez appealed the suspension, which will allow him to play until an arbitrator rules on his case.

Jonathan Zimmerman: In Defense of Sex Scandals

Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned: I cheated on my wife. I brought shame and dishonor to her, and to my children. But I have asked them to forgive me.And now I’m asking voters to forgive me, too.Welcome to our political culture of sexual confession. Pioneered by Bill Clinton, who groveled on TV after his affair with Monica Lewinsky was exposed, confession has become an invaluable weapon for leaders who are caught with their proverbial pants down.Witness the fates of Clinton’s fellow Southerners David Vitter and Mark Sanford. Vitter won re-election to his Louisiana Senate seat in 2010 after admitting a “serious sin” involving prostitutes. Earlier this year, former South Carolina Gov. Sanford captured a House seat after acknowledging an extramarital affair.

Jonathan Zimmerman: For Obama, Bush, Reagan, No Vacation from Politics

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and taught this summer at NYU's study-abroad site in Accra, Ghana. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).When William Howard Taft was president in the early 1900s, a cartoon showed a senator stuffing a bill into the mouth of a GOP elephant while a happily unaware Taft played golf. Mr. Dooley, the imaginary Irish-American bartender created by cartoonist Finley Peter Dunne, quoted Taft as saying, “Golf is th’ thing I like best next to leavin’ Washington.”Taft actually combined these passions, taking frequent golf vacations out of town, as Paul F. Boller, Jr. recounts in his book "Presidential Diversions: Presidents at Play from George Washington to George W. Bush." Taft's trips sparked mirth in the national press, which reported that the famously corpulent president could not bend over to tee up his own ball. But they also drew accusations that Taft was neglecting his official duties, and for a rich man’s sport at that.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Children are Sexual Creatures

Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of education and history at New York University. He is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory and three other books. In 1985, the founder of modern American sex education gave a controversial speech about erections in fetuses. To Mary Calderone, who had started the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States back in 1964, new evidence about arousal in male fetuses demonstrated once and for all that children were sexual beings.Nonsense, said conservatives. To critics of sex education, childhood was — or should be — a time of sexual innocence. Racy movies, TV shows and magazines made kids prematurely interested in sex. And so did sex education, which robbed them of their natural virtue and replaced it with tawdry thoughts and feelings.I thought of this debate as I read the comments by Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, during the House debate on Monday over a bill that would ban almost all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. According to Burgess, fetuses do not simply experience sexual arousal; they actively arouse themselves.

Jonathan Zimmerman: What Happened to Plain Old Summer Camp?

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."I went to three different summer camps when I was a kid, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I swam, hiked and played sports (badly). And sometimes, I did nothing at all. That’s what summer — and camp — were all about.But times have changed. About 20 years ago, so-called “specialty camps” began to replace the general-interest kind that I attended. So today you can go to camps that stress particular activities, from cooking and computers to robotics and rocketry.Even at general-interest camps, meanwhile, kids are much more likely to receive professional athletic coaching, top-of-the-line art and music instruction, or even SAT-prep classes. Camp isn’t just for fun anymore. It’s about building a resume, a skill-set, a profile, a future. Like school, camp now prepares young people to win the great Race of Life.Why?...

Jonathan Zimmerman: Protecting Children and Faith

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in suburban Philadelphia. He is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (Yale University Press).In 1907 Mark Twain published a scathing attack on Christian Science, which held that all illness lay in the mind. In his trademark satirical style, Twain congratulated the religion for providing “life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease.”The other kinds of disease were real, Twain insisted, and their victims required medicine – not prayer – to get better. But Twain also condemned the growing movement to prosecute faith healers and parents for withholding medical care from children who died.A century later, we know much more about what makes people sick and well. As Twain understood, though, we still need to balance the protection of children with the religious liberty of their parents. And that’s why we should retain narrowly crafted laws exempting parents from child-abuse charges if they resist medical care for religious reasons....

Jonathan Zimmerman: Protect the Watchdog Press – from Obama

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).Did the White House misrepresent the Benghazi, Libya, attacks to cover up its own ineptitude? Did the Internal Revenue Service purposefully target conservative groups for scrutiny?Americans rely on journalists to cast light on these thorny issues. But if reporters can’t do their jobs, everyone else will most likely remain in the dark about serious government mistakes.That’s why all Americans should be deeply alarmed about the Obama administration’s recent investigations of news organizations, which have drawn far less ink than the Benghazi or IRS scandals. And that’s exactly backward. The most worrisome threat right now is to the people who actually produce the ink: US journalists.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Politicizing the IRS is a Bipartisan Tradition

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).Does the Internal Revenue Service scandal conjure “unpleasant echoes” of Richard Nixon?Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee said last week that it did. So did a host of other GOP critics, who linked the recent targeting of conservative groups by the IRS to Nixon’s use of the agency as a weapon against his “enemies list.”Liberals quickly replied that President Obama had pledged to root out political bias from the IRS, offering his full cooperation in the ongoing investigation. And whereas Nixon expressly ordered the IRS to harass his foes, there’s still no evidence that Mr. Obama himself even knew about the IRS practice until media outlets reported it.But both sides are ignoring the sordid politicization of the IRS before Richard Nixon, when Democrats – not Republicans – were in power. Despite what you may have heard, no single party owns an historical monopoly on IRS-related sleaze. And that’s precisely why we all need to be vigilant in guarding against it....

Jonathan Zimmerman: This Graduation Season, Let's Remember the Twentieth Century

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).Aim high. If you fall, pick yourself up. And, most of all, follow your dreams.Welcome, college graduate, to your 2013 commencement exercises. The speeches are all about you! You should find something that makes you passionate; you should pursue it, as far as you can....But education should help us get beyond ourselves, to transcend the narrow particulars of our interests and wishes and ambitions. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing your passions, of course. But the real question is how they’ll affect the people around you.

Jonathan Zimmerman: The Prom -- An American Relic

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is writing a history of sex education around the world.In 1954, American Girl magazine published a book of beauty tips for young women. It included helpful suggestions about preparing for the ultimate American beauty contest: the high school prom.“This is the moment to slip into your dress . . . Put your hair in place again, fasten your necklace or bracelet, and step into your pumps,” the book advised. “And wheee! Look now! There really is another you in the mirror. A you that is practically exuding a subtle new fascination, a wonderful femininity.”I’ve been thinking about this passage as I watch my own daughter get ready for prom, which seems like a relic from another age. And maybe that’s the whole point of it. In a time of enormous flux and ambiguity in gender relations, this ritual returns us to a time when men were men and, yes, women were women.The first recorded reference to a prom is from a student at Amherst College, who wrote in 1884 about attending prom at nearby Smith. But as more Americans joined the middle class, prom left the elite precincts of private colleges and filtered into the nation’s burgeoning secondary schools....

Jonathan Zimmerman: Boston Marathon, Long a Melting Pot for Good

Jonathan Zimmerman, author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory," is a professor of history and education at New York University.A Chinese graduate student, killed by one of the explosions. An immigrant from Costa Rica, clad in a cowboy hat and assisting a victim who lost his legs. An Indian-American surgeon, charging toward the injured after completing the race himself.And two Chechen brothers, suspected of causing all of this mayhem.These images have haunted and inspired us since last Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon. Lu Lingzi was studying statistics at Boston College. Carlos Arrendondo, who was handing out flags at the race, lost a son in Iraq. Dr. Vivek Shah is an orthopedic surgeon at New England Baptist Hospital, where he returned to work just a day after bandaging several of his fellow runners....

Jonathan Zimmerman: Colleges as Country Clubs

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."My daughter is a junior in high school, so I've spent part of this spring making that upper-middle-class pilgrimage known as "the college tour."But as we were led across sweeping lawns by tour guides walking backward, I found myself thinking less about my daughter's looming college experience and more about how different her life will be after she graduates.I've also been thinking about "Girls," the television series about four young women trying to make ends meet in New York. Three of them are depicted as recent graduates of Oberlin, which is also the alma mater of "Girls" creator and lead actress Lena Dunham.