Breaking 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: The New Yorker
  7/13/2023
  

  Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History

  by John Nichols

  "The origins of the misquote, which has circulated for years in Christian nationalist publications, can be traced to that 1956 article in The Virginian, a segregationist-era publication that Willamette University history professor Seth Cotlar has described as 'virulently antisemitic & white nationalist'.”

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Currents
  7/5/2023
  

  Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?

  The anti-antisemitism of German Holocaust education is based on the implicit premise that immigrants will identify with a sense of shame held by ethnic Germans. If those immigrants ask instead whether contemporary nativism could result in their own persecution, it is seen as a sign of their non-Germanness. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/5/2023
  

  "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads

  For more than a century people have made excuses for the death and dismemberment caused by automobiles as if it were a phenomenon of nature. 

• 
• SOURCE: MSNBC
  7/5/2023
  

  Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error

  The Senator's tweet repeating a false quotation that asserted the United States had an explicitly Christian founding is more than a case of being suckered by online misinfomation; it reflects his Christian nationalist politics. 

• 
• SOURCE: Science
  6/13/2023
  

  Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today

  Census data analysis by demographic historian J. David Hacker and health researcher J’Mag Karbeah correlate indexes of racial segregation with child mortality rates as a proxy for overall population health and conclude that the gap between black and white infant mortality grew the more segregated a city was. 

• 
• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  6/20/2023
  

  Understanding the Leading Thinkers of the New American Right

  by Charles King

  The framework of integralist thought championed by Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen and others argues for a view of the common good to supplant liberal individual rights as the core of a constitutional order. They claim to connect to intellectual traditions centuries old, but their claims of moral decline echo those of early 20th century eugenicists and nativists. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/21/2023
  

  Want to Understand the Internet? Consider the "Great Stink" of 1858 London

  Bad information online is a concern. But the history of public health shows that understanding how it spreads and circulates is critical to fighting it. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/14/2023
  

  As More Schools Ban "Maus," Art Spiegelman Fears Worse to Come

  “It’s a real warning sign of a country that’s yearning for a return of authoritarianism,” Spiegelman tells Post columnist Greg Sargent of the challenge made against his graphic-format Holocaust history by residents of Nixa, Missouri. 

• 
• SOURCE: PEN America
  6/13/2023
  

  PEN Condemns Censorship in Removal of Coates's Memoir from AP Course

  Several students reported their teacher using terms that mirrored the language of the state law—claiming the lesson "made them ashamed to be Caucasian"—resulting in the school board's decision to remove the book from an Advanced Placement Language course. 

• 
• SOURCE: SPLC Learning for Justice
  6/12/2019
  

  Teaching Hard Histories Through Juneteenth

  A celebration of freedom should put the work of the people who fought and struggled to achieve it at the center; thinking of freedom as something achieved instead of something granted. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/9/2023
  

  Arkansas Libraries and Booksellers Sue over State Book Restrictions

  The vagueness of provisions in the new law about "making available" material "harmful" to minors makes librarians and sellers afraid that even with separate children's sections they would face criminal liability for selling books to adults. 

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  6/12/2023
  

  Biden Administration Seeks US Readmission to UN Cultural Body, Aims at Countering China's Soft Power

  In a reversal of Trump policy, the US will seek to rejoin UNESCO and pay back dues because of the perception that China has gained extensive influence over the body, which supervises international educational and cultural heritage initiatives. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/31/2023
  

  Major Genealogical Group Apologizes for Past Associations with Eugenics and White Supremacy

  The National Genealogical Society acknowledged that its founding in 1903 accompanied the rise of the eugenics movement, and that early leaders viewed genealogical study as  way of demonstrating and protecting racial purity. 

• 
• SOURCE: NBC News
  6/9/2023
  

  Latin American Historians, Diplomats Slam The Economist for Racist Description

  Historians Alex Aviña and Ignacio Sánchez Prado say the magazine blamed the quality of workers for Latin America's slower economic development, echoing centuries-old tropes rooted in racism. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  6/6/2023
  

  Isabella Weber and the Historical Case for Price Controls

  by Zachary Carter

  Her calls for exploring the efficacy of targeted caps on prices was widely mocked in 2021. A year and a half later, are caps precipitated by the war in Ukraine proving her point? 

• 
• SOURCE: Getty
  6/1/2023
  

  Progress Digitizing the Johnson Publishing Archive, a Vast Resource in African American History

  Kara Olidge of the Getty Research Institute says making millions of images from the publishing company behind Ebony and Jet magazines accessible will help people to learn about Black history even if state legislatures restrict teaching it in schools. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  6/12/2023
  

  New College Visiting Prof. Out of Job—Rufo's Public Remarks Suggest Politics the Motive

  Erik Wallenberg wrote a critical commentary about the ideological reordering of their campus. His contract renewal was then declined. Trustee Christopher Rufo's tweets seem to affirm that the nonrenewal was ideologically motivated. Wallenberg speaks out. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Atlantis
  6/12/2023
  

  Hollywood Has Abandoned the Citizen-Inventor

  After generations of populist inventors making the things they need, Hollywood has framed our relationship to invention as receiving the gifts bestowed on us by plutocrats. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/13/2023
  

  New Book Says Cure for Girls in Crisis is Revolution

  Mattie Kahn's new popular history of girls' activism spans centuries and class and ethnic divides, showing the power of young women to change what they can't accept. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  6/1/2023
  

  The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It

  by Mark Weisbrot

  There is no "ticking bomb" of national debt; the use of the debt ceiling to threaten the nation with default to secure spending cuts that damage Democratic presidents is by now a clearly established partisan trick, and the US government should no longer be held hostage to it, says an economic policy researcher.