Roundup 
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SOURCE: Foreign Policy
7/1/2022
Is the Ukraine War the Start of a New Period of History?
by David A. Bell
The idea that the Russian invasion will be seen as a turning point by future scholars is tempting given the immediate seriousness of events. But two years ago, people were saying the same thing about the COVID pandemic.
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SOURCE: L.A. Progressive
7/1/2022
Politics and Priorities: The January 6 Hearings and American Values
by Walter G. Moss
Pragmatism does not mean acting without principles, but only openly, undogmatically. Is the glimmer of bipartisanship on display at the January 6 hearings a sign of hope?
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
7/5/2022
Explaining the Complexities of the Great Vibe Shift
by Tom F. Wright
As pundits invoke the nebulous concept of "vibes" to try to explain and predict incoherent and emotionally volatile politics, it's worth considering how the outdated (but not very old!) concept of charisma has served the same role.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
7/5/2022
Forget the Metaphorical Heat – The Literal Temperatures are the Problem
by Tom Engelhardt
"Somehow, in this country, climate change has yet to become a significant part of the national debate or mainstream politics."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
7/6/2022
Conservatives Attacking Pornography Carry on History of Politicized Moral Panics
by Kelsy Burke
Calls by J.D. Vance and other conservative politicians for bans on pornography echo the tactics and the failures of America's first anti-obscenity crusader, Anthony Comstock.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
7/5/2022
SCOTUS's Religious Decisions are Part of War on Public Education
by Charles McCrary and Leslie Ribovich
"The court’s conservatives do not oppose secularism so much as they oppose public things. And so, that is what we ought to defend."
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SOURCE: The Conversation
6/30/2022
One Thing the US and Britain Share? Serious Racial Wealth Gaps
by Calvin Schermerhorn
In neither nation can inequality be seen as simply a legacy of enslavement; policy decisions in the more recent past have promoted the wealth gap.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
7/5/2022
The Walls of Troy: Pandemic and Exclusion at an Urban University
by Arabella Delgado
The pandemic has clarified and underscored ways that the University of Southern California, like most private urban campuses, has long sought to maximize the separation between its campus and the surrounding community.
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SOURCE: Saturday Evening Post
7/5/2022
What is the Meaning of America's Oldest July 4th Celebration?
by Ben Railton
Bristol, Rhode Island's patriotic festivities are the oldest Independence Day festivities in the nation, but the town's history sits at the uncomfortable intersection of independence with the slave trade and wars of extermination against Native Americans.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
7/6/2022
Abortion Is Not Just About Privacy; It's About Freedom
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
"If women cannot dictate this most basic aspect of their being, then the Supreme Court has effectively consigned them to a distinctly secondary tier of citizenship."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
7/6/2022
Adoption System Serves People Who Want Babies, Not Women Who Birth Them
by Gretchen Sisson
Despite Samuel Alito's rhetoric, adoption as practiced in the US does not resolve the basic conflicts inherent in unwanted pregnancy, which overlap historically with racial and class inequalities in the nation.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
7/2/2022
Anti-Trespassing Laws a Vestige of Racist "Black Codes" of Postbellum South
by Brian Sawers
Trespassing laws were ostensibly "color blind," but worked in practice to restrict the mobility of Freedmen and women in the South and to empower white landowners to control Black social life.
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SOURCE: New York Times
7/6/2022
Ending the Illusion that Smoking is a Choice
by Sarah Milov
Tobacco companies still promote the convenient fiction that users addicted to the nicotine in their products are making a free choice to consume them.
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7/1/2022
The Roundup Top Ten for July 1, 2022
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
6/24/2022
If the Court Can Reverse Roe, it Can Reverse Anything
by Mary Ziegler
The court majority's assurances that abortion rights are a special case, and that other liberties are not in jeopardy, is hollow.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
6/23/2022
Dangerous as the Plague: The History of Moral Panics over Queer "Seduction"
by Samuel Huneke
From the perspective of the post-Obergefell US, this year's politicized attacks on LGBTQ people—particularly as threats to the nation's youth—seem like a sudden reversal. But such attacks have a long and miserable history that has shadowed movements for queer freedom at every turn.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
6/27/2022
The Classic Model of Education and Democracy Can't Address Today's School Politics
by Steven Mintz
The idea of education serving democracy by producing informed citizens is tested by the lack of agreement about what that goal means. Can the competing claims on the education system be reconciled?
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/29/2022
Black Women Activists Have Long Connected Abortion Rights to Broader Issues of Freedom and Justice
by SaraEllen Strongman
Black women activists have been more likely than their white counterparts to place abortion rights in the broader context of reproductive justice: the freedom to have or not have children on one's own terms without the coercive pressure of political or economic power.
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SOURCE: Truthout
6/28/2022
Dark Money Fuels Anti-Choice Assault in State Houses
by Julia Peck, Evan Vorpahl & Alyssa Bowen
Dark money groups are ready to flood state legislative, judicial and attorney general races with cash and supply their allies with model legislation to take immediate advantage of the opening created by the Dobbs decision. The state-level war over abortion rights is on.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/29/2022
Libs Baffled Why Trump Supporters Aren't Swayed by Bombshells? Look to Iran-Contra
by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
One group—Evangelicals—stood strong behind Oliver North long after his public profile faded. For them, his willingness to break the law in service of his idea of the greater good was the essence of his heroism.
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