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History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup Top 10!

A Belated Recognition of Genocide by the House

by Samantha Power

For too long, Turkey bullied America into silence. Not anymore.

Impeachment Wasn’t Always This Fair

by Buckner F. Melton, Jr.

For more than half of the country’s history, potential impeachment defendants had wildly different rights from the ones they have today.

The ‘Deep State’ Exists to Battle People Like Trump

by Margaret O’Mara

A merit-based system for hiring federal employees was created in reaction to the rampant corruption of the Gilded Age.

What we get wrong about Ben Franklin’s ‘a republic, if you can keep it’

by Zara Anishanslin

Erasing the women of the founding era makes it harder to see women as leaders today.

A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves

by Nell Irvin Painter

An assault at a New Jersey high school football game had an unexpected cast of characters.

The United States Overthrew Iran’s Last Democratic Leader

by Roham Alvandi and Mark J. Gasiorowski

Despite a campaign of historical revisionism in Washington, the archival record makes clear that the U.S. government was the key actor in the 1953 coup that ousted Mohammad Mosaddeq—not the Iranian clergy.

What Tenured Faculty Could Do, if They Cared About Adjuncts

by Herb Childress

Here are 11 things they can do right now that would make a difference.

What the Dismantling of the Berlin Wall Means 30 Years Later

by James Carroll

As the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cold War approaches, it should be obvious that there’s been a refusal in the United States to reckon with a decades-long set of conflagrations in the Greater Middle East as the inevitable consequence of that first American invasion in 1990.

Recalling Purple Hands protests of 1969 on Halloween

by Marc Stein

Halloween has long been one of the queerest of holidays, but on October 31, 1969, San Francisco LGBT activists found new ways to confront their terrifying fears of media misrepresentations and police violence.

Career Diversity and the Crisis of Grad Student Mental Health

by Erin Leigh Inama, Sarah Stoller, and James Vernon

The myth of the academy as a meritocracy that rewards the smartest and most talented often generates anxiety and depression.