Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  9/21/2022
  

  Sergey Radchenko on Putin's Mobilization Speech

  Putin's cautious declaration of a partial mobilization reflects his increasingly desperate military situation and the growing unpopularity of the Ukraine war in Russia. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/20/2022
  

  A Finnish Historian's Ambitious Rethinking of Native American History Draws Praise and Criticism

  Pekka Hamalainen describes a four-centuries long continental war between settlers and indigenous Americans during which the indigenous frequently won. Critics, including Native historians, contend he doesn't reckon with the ultimate consolidation of conquest. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/20/2022
  

  National Archives Exhibition Challenges the Meritocratic, Democratic Myths of American Sports

  Sports have long served as a means of inculcating the values of the dominant groups in American society, and sometimes to challenge them. The first sports-related exhibition at the National Archives Museum curates documents and artifacts to tell the story. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/21/2022
  

  The Defeat of Identity Politics

  by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

  Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argues that the rhetoric of diversity has allowed an "elite capture" of racial justice movements that strips those movements of the impulse to transform society. Historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor reviews his new book of essays.

• 
• SOURCE: War on the Rocks
  9/16/2022
  

  How Ideology Shapes America's View on the World

  Christopher McKnight Nichols, Raymond Haberski, Jr., and Emily Conroy-Krutz join host Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas, Austin to discuss what ideology is, and explore the ways in which it has shaped, and continues to shape, America’s role in the world.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  9/17/2022
  

  Eric Foner on the Study of History and Democracy

  "I’m always interested in the connections between past and present. The questions that interest me historically tend to come out of the moment I’m living in."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/15/2022
  

  Is Biden Really the Most Pro-Union President?

  Labor historian Erik Loomis says Biden is spending limited political capital to support workers and strikers, and that the bar for pro-labor presidencies is set extremely low. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  9/16/2022
  

  Walter Lippmann's "Public Opinion" at 100

  Concern about what happens to democracy when a society buried in information gives up on the truth and embraces alternate realities is nothing new. What does the work of Walter Lippmann tell us today? 

• 
• SOURCE: Christianity Today
  9/20/2022
  

  "Passion Plays": The Overlap of Sports Fandom and American Christianity

  by Paul Emory Putz

  A reviewer notes that a new book by a leading interpreter of American evangelical culture may raise important awareness about the wonderment and faith inherent in sports fandom, but leaves out some discussion of how sports support an increasingly masculinist Christianity. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/16/2022
  

  Natasha Lightfoot on the British Commonwealth's Future after Elizabeth

  Will other former British colonies follow the recent example of Barbados and dissociate from the postcolonial Commonwealth? 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/16/2022
  

  DeSantis's Martha's Vineyard Stunt Echoes "Reverse Freedom Rides" of Civil Rights Era

  The segregationist White Citizens Councils hoped to use the media to dunk on northern liberals by sending poor African Americans north with false promises of jobs, housing and services. 

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  9/17/2022
  

  Does Ken Burns's Holocaust Doc Face Thorny Questions about U.S. Actions?

  by Olivia B. Waxman

  Historians involved with the PBS project wrestle with the question of whether the United States could reasonably have done more to offer asylum to Europe's Jews or to stop their mass-scale murder. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  9/16/2022
  

  Inside Riotville: How the Military and the Police Prepared for Domestic Rebellion

  by Bench Ansfield

  “Riotsville” was the name the Army gave to the training grounds it built, beginning in 1967, to school police departments and military personnel in the art of domestic counterinsurgency. Sierra Pettengill's new documentary tells its story. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/16/2022
  

  Isaac Chotiner Interviews Deborah Lipstadt

  Is partnership with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia a good strategy to reduce antisemitism in the Middle East? 

• 
• SOURCE: NBC News
  9/12/2022
  

  The Slave Dwelling Project Pushes History of Slave Rebellions to the Public

  Joseph McGill Jr. links the history of the Stono Rebellion and subsequent slave uprisings to the current effort to suppress so-called Critical Race Theory in schools. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/8/2022
  

  Steven Shapin on the Trust Inherent in Science

  The historian of science has examined the social relationships of credibility that must prevail for scientific expertise to exist, and also critiqued the evolving conventions of wine-tasting terminology from "Old BS" to "New BS." 

• 
• SOURCE: American Scholar
  9/14/2022
  

  Review: The Architecture of Despair

  A Belgian poet took on a morbid project: a book about 13 buildings that, as matters of fact or fable, drove their architects to suicide. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  9/15/2022
  

  Minor League Baseball Union Part of a Long History of Organizing

  Along with baristas and warehouse workers, minor leaguers are organizing to fight back against poor pay and a lack of respect on the job, says labor historian Peter Rachleff. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/11/2022
  

  Queen Elizabeth's Leadership and the Future of the Monarchy

  Historian Arianne Chernock says that much of the late Queen's perception as a successful monarch can be attributed to her embrace of the British value of stoicism and, less positively, of stereotypically feminine qualities. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/10/2022
  

  Prosecution Results in Return of 70 Antiquities to Italy and Egypt

  Art crime expert Erin Thompson wonders why museums, including the Met, have not been proactive about initiating the process of returning looted antiquities. `