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Confronting the Roots of American-Style Fascism in One Family's History

by Julie Carr

What led Populist Party founder  Omer Madison Kem, the author's great grandfather, on a path from economic radicalism to eugenics? 

Bipartisanship Once Took Flight—To Protect Birds

by Will McLean Greeley

Senator George McLean's successful effort to pass the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, one of the most important conservation laws in American history, reflected two virtues in short supply in Washington today: bipartisan cooperation and humility. 

We Pay the Price for Failing to Treat Ex-Presidents as Ordinary Citizens

by James D. Robenalt

Deferential treatment given to Richard Nixon after his resignation, including not only his pardon but also lenient treatment by the Watergate grand jury, set precedents for impunity that the nation suffers from today. 

Despite Popular Opposition, The Death Penalty Marches on Unabated

by Rick Halperin

A commitment to human rights cannot coexist with capital punishment. Political leaders must heed the growing public opposition to the death penalty and move to abolish it. 

Jimmy Carter's Human Rights Legacy: A Lifetime in the Making

by Richard Moe

We should remember Carter as arguably the most consequential one-term president, because of his insistence on taking the long view through a moral lens. 

Annelise Orleck on "Storming Caesar's Palace" and the Lessons of the Welfare Rights Movement

by Michan Connor

A leading historian of poor people's activism joins HNN for a discussion of the new edition of her acclaimed book on the Las Vegas Welfare Rights movement, which is the basis for a documentary now streaming on PBS. 

If Universities are a Culture War Battleground, it's Time for University Workers to Fight Together

by Jeff Kolnick

"If higher education loses out in the culture wars, so too will American democracy. Our only hope is to enter the fray with our own culture in mind, and to insist on respect. If we stay on the sideline, we will lose."

The Power and Betrayal of Cross-Ethnic Solidarity in the 1903 Oxnard Beet Strike

by Frank P. Barajas

The Japanese Mexican Labor Association overcame the deliberate ethnic division of the farm labor force in Oxnard, California to win a major strike in the sugar beet fields in 1903, overcoming violent repression. Anti-Asian prejudice in the broader labor movement ended this successful experiment to the detriment of generations of workers. 

SCOTUS Arguments in Debt Relief Cases Show the Fracturing of the Bipartisan "Education Myth"

by Jon Shelton

Two Justice's preoccupation with the fairness of relieving student debt proclaimed a concern that the government not pick economic winners and losers. But the student debt crisis reflects a decades-long bipartisan sales pitch, backed by policy, that college is the individual's path to prosperity. That pitch is now wearing thin. 

O'Hanlon: Policymakers Need to Know More History

by James Thornton Harris

"Studying war in this way should humble us about our ability to control and contain it in the future," says the Brookings Institution scholar, who urges security policymakers to read as much history as they can. 

The "Madman Theory" Was Quintessential Nixon

by Zachary Jonathan Jacobson

Richard Nixon's famed foreign policy ruse—encouraging adversaries to think him capable of seemingly insane decisions—had one essential component: Nixon himself, and his commitment to the tightrope-walking performance. 

ChatGPT Wants to Join SEIU in Breakthrough for Organized Labor

by Jim Castagnera

Business owners looking to replace workers with automation beware; ChatGPT is a union bot. 

The History of State Interposition Shows Federalism is a Deliberative Process, not a Set of Rules

by Christian G. Fritz

The efforts of state legislatures to oppose federal law have been varied. In sum, they show that the Supreme Court cannot dictate the distribution of power under federalism; Americans will have to keep figuring it out as we go, through political deliberation.

H.W. Brands on Ben Barnes's "Revelation" about the Iran Hostage Crisis

"In effect, Connally and Casey were telling the Iranians not to do something the Iranians had no intention of doing."

The Nixon Library's Vietnam Exhibition Obscures the Truth about the War's End

by Brian Robertson

The exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords chooses its sources selectively to present the negotiations as the product of Nixon's grand strategy, ignoring the role of domestic political machination. 

Keri Leigh Merritt on the Politics of Grief and the Power of Historians' Witness to COVID

Three years since the public became aware of the seriousness of the COVID pandemic, a recent collection of essays turns the skills of historians toward reflection on grief, survival, and connecting understanding of the past to a better collective future.

Another Casualty of the Academic Job Market? The Relatable Professor

by Elizabeth Stice

As the academic job market demands a degree of excellence and achievement in young scholars that was unknown for earlier generations of faculty, are the shrinking ranks of the faculty being filled with professors who struggle to relate to their students? 

The Defiant Woman at the Center of New York's First Abortion Battle

by Alan J. Singer

Carolyn Ann Trow Lohman, better known as Madame Restell, defied the authority of the medical establishment and moral crusaders to help women obtain abortions. Justice Alito's misuse of history to justify the Dobbs decision shows the need to remember her. 

What Airports Can Tell Us About Histories of Regional Development

by Eric Porter

From the perspective of travelers, airports appear as generic "non-places." But for people who aren't just passing through—entrepreneurs, activists, and especially workers—their particularity makes them sites of struggle that shape the life of a region. Historians have much to learn from them, too. 

Kara Walker Disrupts the Visual History of the Civil War in New Exhibition

by Allison Robinson and Ksenia M. Soboleva

The artist Kara Walker's 2005 series of prints merged the historical illustrations that shaped Americans' understanding of the Civil War in its immediate aftermath and in the 1890s with her original subversive take on the tradition of silhouette art to highlight the erasure of Black experiences of war. Two curators are putting Walker's work in context in a new exhibition.