Historians/History

Deeper Into the Muck: Ward Churchill and the “Everybody Does It” Defense

by Larry DeWitt

In my prior essay on Ward Churchill I had a broader thesis I was arguing, so I didn’t go into much detail about what I described as Churchill’s “shoddy” and “unprofessional” scholarship. I gave one extended example (the pox-infected blanket story) but beyond that I did not really bother to document the kind of work that Churchill routinely turns out. This would not matter except that later that same week the N

Historians No Longer Own History

by Jerome de Groot

In 1994 the social historian Raphael Samuel gave television ‘pride of place’ amongst the manifold ‘unofficial sources of historical knowledge’ which historians should attend to in order to conceive of history as a social e

Why I Attempted a History of the Papacy

by Roger Collins

The great outpouring of public grief that followed the news of the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005 showed the remarkable impact he had made on

Ward Churchill: He’s Baaack!

by Larry DeWitt

Well, that embarrassment for the liberal academy—Ward Churchill—is back in the news again. This time he is triumphant.  A jury in Colorado has just ruled that his firing in 2007 was improper, and they upheld Churchill’s central contention: that he was fired because of his politically-incorrect comments on the victims of 9/11. This turn in the saga has allowed Churchill to proclaim his vindication, and has moved his attorney to crow that: “There are few defining mo

Truthiness v. Scholarship: Ward Churchill’s Day in Court

by Thomas Brown

"Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books - they're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it was happened in 1941, that's my right."-- Stephen Colbert Postmodernist epistemology battled empiricism in a Denver courtroom over the past month, and both came away bloodied. The University of Colorado fired Ward Churchill in

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: Has the Right Been Misusing JFK's Quote?

by Donald Lazere

President Reagan’s guru Arthur Laffer, a former economics professor at the University of Chicago, continues to preach the gospel of supply-side economics.

The Historian Who's No Longer Angry

by Megan Stephenson

In the 1980s, when Jacki Rand worked at the Smithsonian, her boss decided to put Rand, who is half Choctaw, on a committee of white men to plan an Indian museum. She was glad to serve but not particularly pleased about being the only Indian. Besides, she figured, those Washington suits probably didn’t know a thing about Native Americans. “I’m not like, the representative of the whole native American thing in the United States. You guys have to go out and meet some Indian

The Journalist as Historian: A Case Study

by David Grann

As a reporter, I nearly always write about the living: people I can talk to, spend time with, accompany on their adventures. Even when a subject refuses to speak with me, or has recently passed away, there are people

Women’s History Month: Comparing Presidential Proclamations

by Daniel Sauerwein

Women’s History Month has its roots in Women’s History Week, which was created by congressional resolution co-sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) in 1981.  In 1987, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress for expansion of Women’s History Week to include the entire month of March.  They were successful and every year Congress passes a bipartisan resolution supporting National Women’s History Month. In addition

Selling Gandhi

by Joseph Kip Kosek

A New York auction house ignited international outrage recently when it announced plans to sell sandals, eyeglasses, and other personal effects

Why Do the Courts Let Presidents Get Away with War?

by Alfred W. Blumrosen and Steven M. Blumrosen

Federal Courts have never considered the June 1, 1787 understanding at the Constitutional  Convention  that  gave Congress—not the president-- authority over war. In disregarding the events of that date, the courts have distorted the meaning of the Constitution, undermined the War Powers Resolution of 1973, and upheld unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Vietnam. This same error carried forward to the proposal in 2008 by former Secretaries of State  James Baker and Warren

The Pastness of the Past

by Gordon S. Wood

In 1969 the distinguished English historian J. H. Plumb wrote a book titled The Death of the Past, which has recently been reissued in a new edition. By &qu

It's Time to Remember the Role of Indians in the Mexican-American War

by Brian DeLay

A hot and humid summer day in St. Louis, 1847. Church bells pealing, flags lolling in the heavy summer air, the city had assembled to toast the arrival of Capt. Alexander Doniphan and his band of Missouri volunteers

Ranking Presidents

Polls and surveys: What experts are saying.

Hawaii and the Lincoln Bicentennial: Remembering a Special Relationship

by James Oliver Horton

With the opening of the new year of 2009, the United States embarks on the commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president. Born February 12, 1809 in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln remains one of the best known and most esteemed presidents in American history. Even in Hawaii, which was an independent kingdom during his time, Lincoln was greatly respected during his presidency and remembered well into the 20th century. As part of the celebr

Holocaust Story Faker is No Angel

by Ken Waltzer

HNN's Response to Harris Salomon's ComplaintsHerman Rosenblat went on ABC's "Good Morning America" Wednesday February 18 and told America that he didn’t lie when he invented a story about a young girl throwing him apples at the fence of a German concentration camp during World War II.  He believed it in his mind, and he would

HNN's Response to Harris Salomon's Complaints

by Rick Shenkman

An early version of this article was published by HNN late in the evening of Monday February 23. In the wee hours of the morning we heard from film producer Harris Salomon by both email and voicemail. He objected to certain claims made in the article about him and indicated if they weren't dropped he would take legal action against both the author and HNN. In response we decided to pull the article pending a thorough review. (The article had remained live on the website just seven hours befor

Hillary and the State Department Historian’s Office: A Way Forward

by Douglas Selvage

The struggle over the future of the State Department Historian’s Office (HO), my former employer, has entered a new and decisive phase.  Nothing less is at stake than the survival and timely publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) documentary series, a living monument to U.S. government openness and transparency established by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Since my previous posting on the alleged misma

George Washington: Realistic Visionary

by Peter R. Henriques

President Barack Obama is clearly fascinated with President Abraham Lincoln and his leadership during perhaps the greatest crisis in American history. The President has stressed that he has done a great deal

About the C-SPAN Ratings

by Phillip Payne

C- Span just released a new presidential ranking that, for the most part, confirmed most previous rankings of presidents. There was some movement but for the most part the good presidents stayed good and the bad presidents stayed bad. Announcements of presidential rankings always attract attention, especially when they are issued at the end of one presidency and the beginning of a new one. C-Span deserves credit for creating ten categories beyond the “great, near great,” and so fo