Historians/History

About the Historians Who Write History Columns

by Andrew Bernstein

Historical columnists bridge the gap between academic history and journalism. By writing columns professionals in each of those fields aim to influence the course of world events by putting current events in historical perspective while educating lay-people about the past. The individuals who write these columns are driven and very committed to both their scholarship and the mission of historical columns. “I have always seen journalism and history as kindred fields – a lot of the

Why I Decided to Write a Novel

by Larry Schweikart

Few historians can hope to match the tremendous success of the history-trained fiction writer Caleb Carr, whose book, The Alienist (1994) was a chilling look at the world of late 19th-century America through th

The Columnist Who Thinks African-Americans Should Be Grateful Their Ancestors Were Enslaved

by Andrew Bernstein

A Seattle-area columnist has drawn the fire of more than a thousand complaining readers upset with her suggestion that African-Americans should be grateful their ancestors were enslaved and brought to America. The column, by Adele Ferguson, was published in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal (KPBJ) on March 13, 2006. In the article Ferguson argued that black Americans should abandon the Democratic Party, claiming it doesn't have their true interests at heart. “It

True Stories : Oprah, Elie Wiesel, and the Holocaust

by Dagmar Barnouw

In his portrait of Mordecai Strigler (New Yorker, 10 Jan. 1994) David Remnick describes how, after his liberation from Buchenwald, he immediately began to write Maydanek "as if truly possessed, spinning out a vast cyc

The High School History Textbook Debate in China

by Charles W. Hayford

Japan is not the only country in which high school text books occasion a debate over history and politics. In China, Li Datong, once an activist in the 1989 democracy movements, was fired as the editor of Freezing Point (Bingdian), a weekly supplement to the newspaper China Youth Daily . The occasion for his firing was the January 11 publication of an article,"Modernization and History Textbooks," by Yuan Weishi, a professor of philosophy at Zhong Shan (Sun Yat-sen) U

Conspiracy Thinking and the John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Assassinations: Part I

by Mel Ayton

A child dies from some unexplained illness; fisherman sail off never to return; random violence takes the life of an innocent bystander. And always behind these tragic events lies the question – Why?

JFK Assassination Brouhaha

by Rodney Huff

An article in the Nation by Max Holland has reignited debate over the CIA’s involvement in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the article entitled “The JFK Lawyers’ Conspiracy,” Holland contends that a group of lawyers, namely Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Gary Hart, and G. Robert Blakey, have conspired to overturn the findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswa

Don Tolzmann: Plagiarist?

by Daniel Sauerwein

Another Book About the Haymarket Affair? Yes.

by James Green

Why write a new book about the Haymarket affair? That’s what inquisitive historians wanted to know when I told them I was going to retell that old story for a new time. Hasn’t that been done, they asked? My answer to those questions is embodied in the book,

The Strange Apologetics of Our Academic Colleagues

by Kenneth Wagner

Most folks can sympathize with me in recalling all too many conversations with colleagues that have strongly ideological or partisan leanings on issues that are open to social science and historical research. One is often astounded by the partisans’ ability to rationalize and engage in nearly Olympic level mental gymnastics in order to twist available empirical facts to their preconceived political leanings. Are these folks really this blinded by their partisan leanings? Are they actual

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians

by Rick Shenkman

Daily ReportsDay 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 1Thursday March 31, 2005 The biggest news of the 2005 convention is what happened before the convention took place. It was the decision to move from San Francisco to San Jose on account of

Interview with Philip Zelikow

by Eben Miller

Did you always want to work in government in a high profile position, or is this something that just came serendipitously? (Please feel free to elaborate. I am sure our readers would be interested in knowing how you came to assume this high position and whether this was a long-time goal.) I have been interested in public policy for a long time, at least since high school. My first government position was nearly thirty years ago. Since then I have had the opportunity

One More Reason Why Errors in Transcripts of Presidential Tapes Need to be Corrected Online

by Max Holland

Response by David ColemanSheldon Stern is correct in asserting that Miller Center’s transcripts on the Cuban missile crisis are not reliable for scholarly use, and that more remedial steps need to be taken promptly. Let me give an example from my own work. Recently, I was researching an article related to the 1962 crisis, specifically, t

Why Aren't Black Business Tycoons Celebrated During Black History Month?

by Jeffrey J. Matthews

It’s February and that means it’s Black History Month, a designated time to commemorate and celebrate black contributions to American society. Unfortunately, the historic achievement of African American businesspeople is too often neglected this month, and every month.For more than two decades, a number of historians, led largely by the pathbreaking scholarship of Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of the University of Texas, have been working to expand our knowledge of the rich

Why Historians Have a Responsibility to Condemn the Jailing of David Irving

by Jesse Lemisch

An Austrian court has sentenced historian David Irving to three years in prison for Holocaust denial. This constitutes a moment of crisis for historians and in particular for the American Historical Association. How should historians react? Irving's doctrines and his history are obnoxious. I suppose it's premature to reach a conclusion about yesterday's event this soon, but my first reaction is that it is simply horrifying to see a histo

Historians Against the War: Highlights from their Weekend Conference

by Judy Atkins

Historians Against the War (HAW) held a conference called "Empire, Resistance, and the War in Iraq" this past weekend at the University of Texas, Austin. Living up to its subtitle, "A Conference for Historians and Activists," this conference brought together historians from many U.S. campuses and local activists, but it was also about historians as activists which was what I thought made it unique. I know it is dangerous to call anything unique among a group of historians, bu

Three Years After the Presidential Tapes Conference and Still No Promised Follow-Up?

by Sheldon M. Stern

Click here to read Timothy Naftali's defense of the Miller Center's presidential tape transcripts.In February 2003, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston hosted the first-ever conference about the secret audio tapes made by the six presidents from 1940 (Franklin Roosevelt) to 1973 (Richard Nixon). The two-day conference was sponsored by the JFK Library Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, and the National Archives and

Setting the Record Straight (Again) on the Presidential Recordings Program

by Timothy Naftali

Click here to read Sheldon Stern's indictment of the Miller Center's presidential tape transcripts.Since early 2000 Sheldon Stern has engaged in a public row with Philip Zelikow and Ernest May over the quality of their Cuban missile crisis transcripts. In recent years this has spilled over into criticism of the Presidential Recordings Program, which I direct, at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Dr. Stern wri

Was Eleanor Roosevelt Molested as a Child?

by Sipra Rathi

For years there have been allegations that Eleanor Roosevelt was sexually abused by either her governess or her father or even by her uncles. Is there anything to these allegations? The public image of Eleanor Roosevelt was carefully crafted. She appeared to be a privileged child of the upper classes who gave devotedly of herself to social causes affecting people who hadn’t shared the model family life with which she had been blessed. A look beneath the surface however shows so

How Cardinal Ratzinger Dealt with Germany’s Past

by Daniel Sauerwein

In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Timothy Ryback examines the little known story of Joseph Ratzinger’s visit to La Cambe, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion in 2004. La Cambe is a German cemetery in France where more than 20,000 soldiers are buried, including many members of an SS panzer division. Ryback notes that the visit is reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan’s visit in 1985 to a German cemetery near Bitburg, which was denounced by