The Latest 
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The Future of History in the Pandemic Age
Michael Creswell
Historians need to consider and prepare for changes to the profession that will follow the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The Troubling History of a Black Man's Heart
Chip Jones
What Virginia doctors saw as a triumphant achievement was a devastating indictment of medical racism and institutional disregard for the dignity of a Black man and his family.
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Debates Are Unpredictable
Ron Faucheux
In a close election, a debate can matter, and debates are lost more than they are won. Some examples from the television era of campaigning should give viewers a sense of how to judge Biden and Trump on Tuesday night.
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Anti-racist Lens Distorts History on New Jersey “Freeholders”
Tony Fels
Beginning in 2021, New Jersey county officials will no longer be known as "freeholders." Although the author concedes the term is archaic, and "county commissioner" is a more informative descriptor, the term "freeholder" is not a relic of past racism.
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Where Does the Democratic Party Stand on War, Peace, and International Relations?
Lawrence Wittner
While moving from a party platform to a change in policy is difficult, especially where the Pentagon is concerned, the Democrats seem to recognize a broad-based desire to return America to international cooperation and allocate resources to other national priorities like public health.
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An Open Letter to Congressman French Hill on the 1919 Elaine Massacre and the Dangers of “Patriotic” History
Guy Lancaster
Historian Guy Lancaster found a letter of praise from his Congressman tough to take in light of the elected representative's disregard for racial justice.
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Blog
Inspiration from the Banks of the Indus River: A Conversation with Nibir K. Ghosh
Robin Lindley
Indian professor of literature and public intellectual Nibir Ghosh discusses his recent book examining the ability of writing to cross borders and speak to universal issues of human dignity, a call...
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Trump’s Comments on History Point Down a Stalinist Road
Walter G. Moss
During the 1930s, Stalin directed historians and schools to teach patriotism to help convince Soviet citizens that, like earlier Russian leaders such as Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great, he was defending Russian interests.
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Donald Trump's "1776 Commission" for "Patriotic Education"
HNN Staff
A compilation of HNN coverage of Donald Trump's call for a "1776 Commission" to enforce the teaching of "patriotic" history.
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Was Charles Lindbergh a Man Who Got Away?
Lise Pearlman
A new book reexamines the possible role of Charles Lindbergh himself in the 1932 kidnapping of his son, once the "crime of the century."
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The Roundup Top Ten for September 25, 2020
The week's top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web.
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Trump's "Patriotic Education" Commission Yet Another Battle Over the Meaning of Those Words
Ben Railton
In practice, as we see today with Trump and company, American celebratory patriotism has often been wedded to a second and far more divisive form: exclusionary mythologizing patriotism. There are alternatives that also deserve recognition as patriotism.
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The Second Amendment has Never Covered Kenosha Shooter Kyle Rittenhouse
Noah Shusterman
If his lawyer wants to argue that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in the spirit of those eighteenth-century militias which went outside the law and defied their state government, and especially those who did so in the interest of promoting white supremacy – his case would be historically solid. It would not, however, be an exoneration.
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Breaking Lincoln's Promise
Shannon Bontrager
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address demanded that Americans keep the memory of both the Union dead and their cause alive and "hot." The cooling of that memory has enabled backlashes against justice through history, and today.
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Woody Guthrie's Communism and "This Land Is Your Land"
Aaron J. Leonard
The author of a new book on the FBI's surveillance of folk musicians argues that Woody Guthrie did join the Communist Party, though he was at odds with leadership over discipline. The affiliation is reflected in the lyrics of his most famous song.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Helped Shape the Modern Era of Women’s Rights – Even Before She Went on the Supreme Court
Jonathan Entin
A former clerk recalls Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a pioneering legal strategist who laid the groundwork for significant legal challenges to sex discrimination.
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Historians Respond to the Death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The passing of the long-serving Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prompts reflection on her legacy as a lawyer and jurist, the future of the court, and the impact of a nomination fight on the election.
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Nostalgia and the Tragedy of Trump's Speech at Mount Rushmore
John Bodnar
Trump's July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore, like his attacks on historians this week, embodied an escapist nostalgia that purges injustice, conflict, and violence. Abraham Lincoln's brand of nostalgia is more worthy of embracing.
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Dwight Eisenhower Built up American Intelligence at a Crucial Moment
Steve Vogel
Dwight Eisenhower oversaw an aggressive building of American intelligence capability toward the USSR, moving espionage to a more prominent role in Cold War foreign policy. This included ordering the CIA to tunnel into East Berlin to tap Soviet phone lines.
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Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980
James Thornton Harris
Rick Perlstein's latest volume in his study of the rise of the conservative movement focuses on the coming of Reaganism, but sheds light on how we got Trump.
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Unlike the Germans We Have Failed to Recognize and Atone for Our Holocausts
Walter G. Moss
Reconciling America's racial divisions requires honest reckoning with the past, and teaching history as a search for the truth, not an effort to inclulcate patriotism, placate parents, or pander to censorious textbook commissions.
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Blog
The Religion of Patriotism
Steve Hochstadt
"Patriotic rituals were designed to indoctrinate young and old with the belief that the racist, sexist, antisemitic America of the 20th century was already perfect, that critic...
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Dirty Politics, Then and Now
George Herring
Political mudslinging by presidential surrogates is nothing new. But Trump digs in personally to his social media smears in a way that is unprecedented and degrading to the office and the nation.
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“We Are Ourselves”: Review of For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton
Eric Laursen
Maurice Brinton--the pseudonym of a British neurologist--authored an influential series of works of radical political thought that urged the British left to move away from rigid party structures and doctrinal disputes toward social movements.
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Is This the Most Important Election?
Donald J. Fraser
President Donald Trump may indeed be right, this is the most important election in our history. Just not for the reasons he believes.
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The Roundup Top Ten for September 18, 2020
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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The Pentagon is Missing the Big Picture on "Stars and Stripes"
Mark T. Hauser
The Pentagon's plan to scrap funding for the Stars and Stripes newspaper isn't just an attack on a historic military institution. It's ignoring the lessons the paper's history offers for efficient operation and integrating military operations with the economic life of the nation.
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Native Actors Outside the Frame
Liza Black
Liza Black's new book traces the lives of prominent and anonymous Native actors, examinng the way that Hollywood films exploited their labor and images while spinning narratives that justified the historical conquest of Native lands.
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The Garbage Troop: Segregation, Primatology, and Republican Rhetoric
Guy Lancaster
Donald Trump and his Republican Party are not afraid that Joe Biden’s election will destroy America. They’re afraid that it won’t.
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Twenty-One Days Later: Ventura County's Participation in the Chicano Moratorium of 1970
Frank P. Barajas
Police responded brutally to the 1970 Chicano Moratorium protest march in East Los Angeles, including killing journalist Ruben Salazar. This news spread to smaller Chicano communities in the state and beyond and sparked a politicial movement for justice that echoes today.
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The "Noble Dead": Warren Harding and the Resting Places of the WWI Fallen
James D. Robenalt
Just as Americans visit and revere the graves of those in Arlington and other national cemeteries in the United States, it is important to remember that the nation made a solemn compact with the families of those who were lost in the First World War.
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Richard Haass on the Need for Historically Informed Policy in a Changing World
David O'Connor
"A democracy requires that its citizens be informed, and it was evident far too many citizens in the United States and other countries could not be described as globally literate."
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Making History with Music
Jason Burt
PFC Richard Burt played the trumpet in a military band tasked with raising morale in the fight to retake the Philippines before a career as a music teacher. His grandson, a history teacher, wants to make him and his bandmates posthumous recording stars.
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Blog
A Conversation with Seattle Author Dr. Lawrence Matsuda on His Debut Historical Novel "My Name is Not Viola"
Robin Lindley
Dr. Lawrence Matsuda's debut historical novel traces the history of Japanese Americans in they years before, during and after World War II and examines the effects of discrimination and internm...
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How an American TV Mini-Series Helped the Germans Acknowledge the Holocaust
Robert Brent Toplin
An American television minseries overcame initial skepticism by German authorities to rouse public conscience about the Holocaust and the complicity of ordinary Germans with persecution and genocide. Americans hesitant toward "political" popular culture should consider its contributions to truth and reconciliation.
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Fried Ice Cream and Steak: A Personal History of Hong Kong
Ron Steinman
For a journalist on leave from Vietnam, a Hong Kong restaurant was a brief reprieve from the demands of war coverage and the tumult of rebellion in Hong Kong.
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Prop 16 and the "Chinese Virus" Bring Two Views of Asian American History into Conflict
Hao Zou
Many Chinese Americans oppose California's Proposition 16, which would reinstate race-based affirmative action in state university admissions. This support stems from a meritocratic interpretation of Chinese American experiences that is challenged by the xenophobic "Chinese Virus" discourse around COVID-19.
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Roundup Top Ten for September 11, 2020
The top opinion writing by historians and/or about history from around the web this week.
News
- The Quiet 2013 Lunch That Could Have Altered Supreme Court History
- It’s Not Anti-Catholic to Ask Amy Coney Barrett About Her Religious Group “People of Praise”
- The Incredible Influence of James A. Baker III
- ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Star, and His Fans, Are Taking Indigenous Studies
- Amy Coney Barrett and the Triumph of Phyllis Schlafly
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