Historians shouldn't be alarmed by the number of historians on the Times's list of the best nonfiction titles of 2022. They should be alarmed by how big publishing houses seem to have an inside track to the platform.
If two high profile incidents are any indication, many colleges seek to move students with mental health concerns off campus as quickly and quietly as possible, putting their own liability and reputation ahead of the needs of students for supportive community.
Exposés of the brutal conditions faced by migrant laborers who built Qatar's World Cup facilities echoes the history of American public works, where workers' bodies and lives were subordinated to budgets and timetables.
Are you confused about the meaning of Fascism? If so, you're not alone. Benito Mussolini, the creator of Fascism, famously did not define it until 1932.
"Affirmative action opened a door I would walk through.... My professors, soon to be my colleagues, could imagine me among them because the very notion of women faculty had been given a legitimacy and a thinkability."
One labor historian finds his colleague's offer of advice to the Biden administration naive in light of the Democratic Party's (and the American state's) support for capital over labor.
We mistakenly bemoan "polarization" instead of reckoning with the economic power of radical right-wing elites, who have the resources to fund growing organizations, and the growing number of people disaffected from the social order who are susceptible to their messages.
Americans can fight both partisan dysfunction in Washington and the rise of authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism by working to advance the common good in their own communities, strengthening bonds of social solidarity.
"We often misdiagnose our current malady as one of 'polarization.' That’s wrong. We have one rogue, ethno-authoritarian party and one fairly stable and diverse party."
The history of European Jews in the medieval period is unfortunately dominated by discussions of death that make violent antisemitism seem inevitable and inescapable.
The pronouns of history are "they, them and theirs," not "we, us and ours." Reactionaries want to dissolve the difference students need to understand the past critically.
"The experience has got me thinking about the women who came before me and how their pain and suffering accelerated medical advancements from which I am benefiting."
Contemporary New York elites downplayed the possibility that rebellious colonists set the Great Fire of New York in 1776; the same people were responsible for the modern myth of Santa Clause. The connections between the two are surprising.
Once Republicans championed opening the franchise to 18 year-olds. Today, it seems the party is unwilling to win those votes and would prefer to restrict them.
History suggests that Whitmer's approach to public responsibility for pandemic control works better than DeSantis's individualistic framework for controlling disease. Which one might win votes is another question.
The resolution of a crisis caused by the murder of a Seneca man by two English fur trappers modeled the kind of restorative justice principles that are being raised today by criminal justice reformers.
