Historians/History

Public Appeal on Behalf of Historian Andrea Hamilton

Editor's Note On Monday May 13 the following appeal, signed by historians across the country, is being sent to the president of Baltimore's Bryn Mawr School, a private prep school for girls. The letter protests the school's decision to suppress the publication of a history of the institution written by Dr. Andrea Hamilton, a Tulane graduate who spent three years on archival research for her dissertation. The school's objection to the u

Do Historians Have a Death Wish?

by Keith Miller

Sigmund Freud, as he first suggested in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), then more fully stated in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), had come to think societies, not just individuals, might well have a death wish--a"death instinct"--within the psyche, opposed to what he called Eros, or a principle for life. One evidence Freud had for a"death instinct" derived from his realization that soldiers in war conditions, not to mention people in other life-threatening situations

How Doris Kearns Goodwin Came to Resemble Lyndon Johnson

by Rick Perlstein

Rick Perlstein's commentary on the Doris Kearns Goodwin plagiarism case in 2002.

Column: Richard Hofstadter Was Right

by P.M. Carpenter

In his 1955 The Age of Reform, historian Richard Hofstadter reflected on reformist movements ranging from nineteenth-century Populism to the New Deal. The work contained masterful commentary on fundamental change over time (that, after all, is what the study of history is all about), and his insights were so superbly written that even those later revealed as

I Have Cancer

by Stephen Ambrose

The following statement was released on April 30, 2002. Like millions of other Americans, I have been diagnosed with cancer. Since I just learned about my illness last Friday, I am still getting used to the idea. In the coming days and weeks, I will be seeking further diagnosis and discussing treatment options with physicians and my family. During this time, I would appreciate the news media and the public respecting our privacy. I have sp

Response by Walter W. Stewart and Ned Feder

The article below is a response to Stephen Oates's, I Stood Accused of Plagiarism. Click here to read Oates's response to Stewart and Feder. Click here to read Feder and Stewart's response to Oates. There is broad agreement that plagiarism is the use of the ideas or words of others without adequate attribution. Judged by

OAH Resolution on Honesty and Integrity

by Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians

The following statement was approved by the OAH board on April 11, 2002. Honesty and integrity should undergird the work of all historians. Historians seek truth about the past in an effort to better understand historical developments and how they relate to the present and future. When students encounter historians in the precollegiate, community college, and university classroom, there is an implicit trust on the part of the student that the history teacher or professor wi

Response to Stephen Oates

by Arnita A. Jones

Click here to read Mr. Oates's, I Stood Accused of Plagiarism. History News Network earlier this week published an extended conversation on plagiarism, a conversation that was sparked by Stephen Oates's account of charges against him reviewed by the American Historical Association's Professional Division. We strongly object to Mr. Oates's characterization of the work of the Professional

Mr. Sternstein’s Response to Mr. Bellesiles

Click here to read Mr. Sternstein's essay, Are Michael Bellesiles's Critics Afraid to Say What They Really Think? Click here to read Mr. Bellesiles's Response to Mr. Sternstein. Over the last eighteen months, a number of historians have presented a great deal of evidence demonstrating that Arming America contains an extraordina

Mr. Bellesiles’s Response to Mr. Sternstein

Click here to read Mr. Sternstein's essay, Are Michael Bellesiles's Critics Afraid to Say What They Really Think? Click here to read Mr. Sternstein's Response to Mr. Bellesiles. It is difficult to know where to begin in responding to this relentless polemical attack. First and foremost I must observe that the author of this piece does

Mr. Oates's Response to Mr. Burlingame

Once again, Burlingame serves up those familiar parallel passages as evidence of plagiarism in my work. His mode of analysis, however, is spurious, because the passages are taken completely out of context. To make matters worse, Burlingame has surgically altered some of these examples, eliminating and compressing words, with the use of ellipses, to create the illusion of similarity. If you examine the pages these passages come from, you will discover how different the writing, organization, e

Doris Kearns Goodwin Should Resign as a Harvard Overseer

by Harvard Crimson

It seems that well-known historian and Harvard University Overseer Doris Kearns Goodwin consulted many sources while writing her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, but regrettably, one resource she did not consult was the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Handbook for Students. If she had, she would have been reminded that, “Students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources…Whenever ideas or facts are derived from a

How Academics Responded to My Book About Plagiarism

by Thomas Mallon

Editor's Note: Thomas Mallon's Stolen Words (Harcourt, 1989) remains, more than a decade after its publication, the most comprehensive popular account of modern plagiarism. Chapter 4, the only chapter dealing with history, concerns the case of historian Jayme Sokolow, who was accused of plagiarizing Stephen Nissenbaum's Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America. Below is a brief excerpt from the afterward to the latest edition of Mallon's book. The excerpt was compose

S. Walter Poulshock’s The Two Parties and the Tariff in the 1880s

Ellis As a Rorschach Test

by James Banner

Like most American historians, I've been repeatedly asked these past few days the same question:"What do you think of Joseph Ellis?" Joseph J. Ellis is the Mount Holyoke College historian recently exposed by the Boston Globe as a spinner of tall tales about his past. A former army officer, he fabricated a record of service in Vietnam. A liberal, he concocted a role in anti-war and civil rights protests. An outstanding high school student, he invented tales of his prowess on the footbal

Joseph Ellis's Past Statements About Character

by HNN Staff

The Boston Globe has accused the Pulitzer Prize winner of falsifying his military record in the Vietnam War. The newspaper reports that Ellis, who teaches at Mount Holyoke, claimed in class lectures and media interviews that he went to Vietnam in 1965, where he served as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. In fact, he never went to Vietnam at all. After finishing his ed

Kickstarting History

by Anthony Clark

I've financed my own research project using Kickstarter.

Debunking David Barton's Jefferson Lies

by Chris Rodda

Because they still need to be debunked.