Current Events that Relate to History
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Book Review
Not So Close
For Henry David Thoreau, it is only as strangers that we can see each other as the bearers of divinity we really are.Commonweal -
sourced
How Business Metrics Broke the University
The push to make students into customers incentivizes faculty to seek visibility through controversy rather than through traditional scholarly achievement.Compact -
Comparison
The US Used the Alien Enemies Act to Detain Their Families. Now, They are Watching History Repeat
During World War II, the law justified the imprisonment of thousands like Heidi Gurcke Donald.Mother Jones -
Comparison
The Last Time Pro-Palestinian Activists Faced Deportation
Mahmoud Khalil’s case is eerily similar to that of the L.A. Eight when students were targeted not because of any criminal activity but because of their speech.The New Yorker -
Explainer
No Tariffs Without Representation
Executive trade power has gone too far.Law & Liberty -
Argument
Trump’s Imperial Fantasy: To Be Polk, McKinley, and Putin—All at Once
Trampling rights, imposing tariffs, gobbling up others’ territories. Trump is imitating his role models to a T.The New Republic -
exhibit
Social Safety Net
How Americans through the years have approached the thorny questions of identifying who the government is obliged to help and how such assistance should be funded and distributed.
From the HNN Archive
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What Is the Role of the Historian?
Rethinking the job of history — and the American Historical Association — after the veto of the Gaza “scholasticide” resolution. -
“A Party for the White Man”
The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed. -
Indifferent to the Fate of Freedom Elsewhere
Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters. -
Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress
How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC. -
When Good Housekeeping Meant Getting Vaccinated Against Polio
The pages of 1950s lifestyle magazines offer a glimpse of a time when childhood vaccines were anything but controversial. -
The Forebears of JD Vance and the New Right
Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past. -
The Burned-Over District
The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come. -
Who Built the Panama Canal?
Finding testimony from the Afro-Caribbean workers who changed the Americas forever.