Historians/History

Why Did Truman Really Fire MacArthur? ... The Obscure History of Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War Provides the Answer

by Bruce Cumings

The media claim that North Korea is trying to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction. Yet the United States, which opposes this strategy, has used or threatened to use such weapons in northeast Asia since the 1940s, when it did drop atomic bombs on Japan.

Why Some Israeli Professors Feel They Are the Victims of an Old-Fashioned Witch Hunt

by Neve Gordon

“Are you a donor to Israeli universities?” the anonymous writer asks.“Learn what is happening on Israeli campuses. Be informed about what is being done with your gifts and generosity.” These are the opening lines to a preposterous and dangerous new website called Israel Academia Monitor. Presenting itself as a human rights movement of sorts, it declares that its aim is to bring to light abuses of academic

The Crisis in History: A Review of the Three Books Written About the Scandals

by Ralph Luker

How Relevant Are This Year's AHA Sessions?

by Alex Bosworth

When the American Historical Association meets this Thursday in Seattle, Washington for its 119th annual convention, the AHA will rekindle the old debate over whether historians today pay too much attention to current events or too little. Many historians feel that studying controversial news topics smudges the line between history and outright journalism. Others argue that avoiding these issues is a form of scholastic cowardice.

History Scandals: What Historians Think of the AHA's Policy

by HNN Staff

In May 2003 the American Historical Association decided to abandon the investigation of "professional misconduct in the practice of history." "Instead of adjudicating a small number of confidential cases," the association announced, "the AHA will mount a sustained effort to educate historians, their students, and the public about appropriate standards for research and writing as w

What Jon Wiener Says in His New Book

by HNN Staff

Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower (New Press, 2005)

What Ron Robin Says in His Book

by HNN Staff

 Scandals and Scoundrels: Seven Case that Shook the Academy (University of California Press, 2004) RON ROBIN The Argument [Fro

Historians in Trouble: Why Some Get Nailed

by Jon Wiener

Historians have been in the news a lot recently, and the news has not been good—accusations of plagiarism, investigations of research fraud, and punishments for classroom misconduct have made headlines and in some cases even ended up in court. Media spectacles around

What Are the People Who Reenact 20th Century Wars Up to?

by Jenny Thompson

From History Channel documentaries to Band of Brothers, popular representations of war are ubiquitous. For some people though, passively consuming war stories isn’t enough. They want to take their interest a step further

The Lessons of the History Scandals

by David Greenberg

In 2002, I stumbled across an act of plagiarism by the historian Stephen E. Ambrose that had gone undiscovered, or at least unmentioned, in the reams of pages then being devoted to his scholarly transgressions. In th e third volume of his Nixon biography, Ambrose wrote,"Two wrongs do not make a right, not even in politics, but they do make a precedent." It was a clever aphorism—uncommonly clever, I now realize, for a man normally given to brown-bag prose. The real author was Richard Nix

An Interview with Jon Butler ... Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

by Rick Shenkman

"Religion played very little role in the American Revolution and it played very little role in the making of the Constitution. That's largely because the Founding Fathers were on the whole deists who had a very abstract conception of God."

Are History Grad Students Apathetic?

by John McMillian

"Can we please keep this list-serve free of all blatantly political announcements? Whether you want your Mumia freed or fried, I’d like to keep this list-serve relevant to issues specific to history graduate students.” This was the indignant response I provoked during my second year of grad school at Columbia University, when I used a list-serve that is shared by history graduate students to announce an upcoming rally to protest the impending execution of Mumia Abu-Jam

The Late Unpleasantness in Idaho: Southern Slavery and the Culture Wars

by William L. Ramsey

The so-called “culture wars,” though maddeningly difficult to define, have begun to set previously complacent Americans against one another in unexpected ways and to challenge some of the basic goals and assumptions of late twentieth-century U. S. social policy. Critics on the right have stepped up attacks on multiculturalism, “political correctness,” and even on the general framework of “secular humanism” that has guided much of western thought since the E

The Writing Life ... One in a Series

by Alan Trachtenberg

Shades of Hiawatha came about through a process of discovery and interpretation stretching over some twelve years. In my earlier work, particularly The Incorporation of America (1982), I

Dear Mr. Spencer: About Those Things You Said About Me

by Mark LeVine

On December 7, 2004 FrontPageMag.com published an article by Robert Spencer about historian Mark LeVine. Mr. Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books). Dear Mr. Spencer : First of all, t

It Is Long Past Time for All of Us Who Teach and Write History to Take a Stand Against Professional Malfeasance

by Peter Charles Hoffer

This article is drawn from Mr. Hoffer's recent book, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Frauds - American History From Bancroft And Parkman To Ambrose, Bellisles, Ellis, And Goodwin. This excerpt appears

The End of the Lawsuit Against Me

by Daniel Pipes

Threats of legal action on Middle Eastern and Islamic issues are about as common as corrupt practices at the United Nations – and almost as problematic.Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Global Relief Foundation frequently resort to litigation to suppress fre

Iris Chang's Achievement and Sad Demise

by Victor Fic

"The chronicle of humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is true that even in such horror tales there are degrees of ruthlessness, then few atrocities can compare in intensity and scale to the rape of Nanjing during World War II." So wrote Chinese-American author Iris Chang in the introduction to her 1997 book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Basic Books, 1997). A New York Times best-seller that was translated into thirteen la

The Chemical Industry's Attack on Historians

by Gerald Markowitz & David Rosner

“I think you all know that what happened 40 years ago is no reflection of the kind of industry that we represent today.” (2002) -- Terry Yosie, Vice-President of the American Chemistry Council [1] When “Trade Secrets,” Bill Moyers’s award winning special on PBS (based, to a significant extent, upon documents we uncovered

I Am a Victim of Propaganda

by Joseph Massad

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on Professor Massad's own website with the title:"Statement in Response to the Intimidation of Columbia University." HNN selected the title used here."University President Lee Bollinger says that Columbia officials will formally investigate accusations that some professors threatened and intimidated students. Alan Brinkley, the University's provost, is leading an inquiry into claims made in Colu