Roundup

Vietnam Veterans Transformed Memorial Day Weekend into a Holiday about Peace

by Elise Lemire

"By the time the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 1971, many returning service members decided to reject not only the commercialization of Memorial Day, but also the holiday’s traditional premise that it was noble to die fighting a war."

Twenty Years after 9/11, its Memorialization Remains Contested

by John Bodnar

"How people respond to traumatic events and the pain of others, of course, is always unpredictable. But such responses have consequences."

The Racist Roots of Campus Policing

by Eddie R. Cole

Campus police forces often trace their origins to moments when Black demands for expanded housing opportunity clashed with universities' ambitions for expansion or desire to maintain white residential areas near their campuses. 

Anti-Vaxxers are Claiming Centuries of Jewish Suffering to Look like Martyrs

by Sarah E. Bond

"Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers would have us believe that the evil of being encouraged to get a vaccine is the same as the project of ethnic labeling and cleansing undertaken by the Third Reich. It appears at first a farcical analogy, but it’s not without its dangers."

We Don't Need a Commission to Study January 6

by Claire Potter

The Republicans' success in blocking a January 6 Commission is a disturbing sign of political extremism in one party, but there's no reason to believe that such a commission would have solved the problems underlying the insurrection.

The Solution to the Craft Beer Industry’s Sexism and Diversity Problems

by Allyson P. Brantley

Absent robust enforcement of sex discrimination prohibitions by the EEOC (which frequently dismissed women brewery workers' complaints), consumer boycotts alongside union actions forced major brewers to change their practices. Will similar strategies help fight sexism in today's craft brewing world?

Because of Palestine

by N.A. Mansour

"It is because I am Palestinian that I can tell you that objectivity—in history-writing, in the archives, in museums—does not exist."

It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel

by Sam Haselby and Matt Stoller

Ivy League institutions have an unfair hold on the distribution of opportunity and on the diversity of ideas in America and the world. 

The Roundup Top Ten for May 28, 2021

by HNN Staff

The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

The History the Japanese Government Is Trying to Erase

by Chelsea Szendi Schieder

  An academic involved in the recent "comfort women" controversy while teaching in Japan warns "In failing to teach what the wartime state did, the Japanese government only emboldens the forces of misogyny and racism and cultivates new generations of violence."

The Feminist Past History Can't Give Us

by Paula Findlen

"What it really meant to be a woman of science three centuries ago is not so easily conscripted into contemporary narratives of feminist liberation."

America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales)

by William Hartung

The United States continues to supply the world with arms at the expense of human rights. 

Will We Ever Get Beyond "The Fire Next Time"?

by Elizabeth Hinton

"What we witnessed in 2020 was the latest manifestation of an ongoing crisis that could have been solved if elected officials had properly understood the root causes the first time around."

We are Told America is Living Through a ‘Racial Reckoning’. Is it Really?

by Simon Balto

Policing historian Simon Balto argues that White America today seems most intersted in defending a personal sense of innocence over racism rather than working for justice. The new culture war over "critical race theory" is evidence.

George Floyd Changed The World of Athlete Activism

by Carl Suddler

The protests over George Floyd's murder involved Black athletes at a time when athletes are highly visible and broke with a decades-long tendency to steer clear of controversy.

Cherokee Nation Policies after the Civil War Show that Reparations Work

by Melinda C. Miller

Black Freedmen and their families who were able to claim land under treaties made by the Cherokee Nation were much better able to acquire and retain land than African Americans elsewhere, suggesting that the failure of the Reconstruction-era government to advance a reparation policy was a missed opportunity to advance racial justice.

American Amnesia

by Jeremy Sabella

The religious history of America shows a restorationist impulse to seek a return to an idealized past. Without reckoning with the totality of that past, the restorationist project dangerously eliminates accountability. 

The Housing Market is Booming but Remains Deeply Unequal

by LaDale Winling

The standards and practices of real estate appraisal were developed in the context of white supremacy in the 1920s and since then have worked to make home ownership a path toward building wealth that has favored white Americans. 

Looking Beyond the Female Firsts of Science History

by By Anna Reser and Leila McNeill

While celebrating the pioneering achievements of women in science is worthwhile, it shouldn't substitute for close scrutiny of how scientific communities include or exclude participants and how society's gender and racial norms shape the work of scientists in that society. 

Laws Against Teaching Critical Race Theory in College are Unconstitutional

by Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

"Since the 1950s — when a Red Scare mentality led legislators to try to ban the teaching of communist or socialist theories in state educational institutions — the Supreme Court repeatedly has held that universities, as well as individual professors, enjoy a First Amendment right to academic freedom."