Roundup

While the right fearmongers on Islam, the left condescends

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Our Muslim citizens need protection from physical assaults, which have multiplied since Paris and San Bernardino. But they don’t need safeguards for their culture, which is stronger than its self-anointed gatekeepers know.

The History That Links Trump and Putin

by David Kaiser

Its roots go back at least 80 years, well before either one of them were born

The Wrong Side of 'the Right Side of History'

by David A. Graham

President Obama espouses a facile faith in history bending toward perfection and morality—against evidence and reason.

This Generation, Too, Has a Rendezvous with Destiny

by Harvey J Kaye

"Commencement speakers usually call on graduates to embrace the future. But I’m going to call on you to do something else: I am going to urge you to embrace the past. I want you to remember who you are." - Harvey J Kaye

Will the GOP Mount a Third-Party Challenge to Trump?

by Jeff Greenfield

Experts—and history—suggest it's an increasingly plausible scenario. And could end in disaster.  

Political Party Meltdown

by Kevin Baker

The strategists who wanted greater ideological purity may have gotten more than they bargained for.

A Medieval Antidote to ISIS

by Mustafa Akyol

Could a long-forgotten Islamic doctrine hold the key to defeating the radicals in Iraq and Syria?

Can Honest History Allow for Hope?

by Tim Tyson

The obligations of scholarship diverge from the needs of activists.

Anger: An American History

by Stacy Schiff

Well before Japanese internment camps, before the Know-Nothing Party, before the Alien and Sedition Acts, New England drew its identity from threats to public safety. We manned the nation’s watchtowers before we were even a nation.

Why the ‘best and brightest’ can be dimmest and worst at governing

by Robert Dallek

Millions of Americans, led by the Republican presidential candidates themselves, seem to forget what goes into a successful presidency.

The fate of foreign refugees, past and present

by Caroline Shaw

To allow Islamophobia to redefine asylum as dependent on religious confession would be to return to the world of rampant anti-Catholicism of early modern Britain.

How Progressives Stole Christian History

by David Byrne

Christian principles continue to shape even allegedly secular minds because Christianity guided Western civilization for over a millennium.

Roundup Top 10!

This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editors of HNN.

We Can No Longer Ignore the Power of Woodrow Wilson's Racist Ideas

by Ibram X. Kendi

Racial debates about the past are simultaneously racial debates about the present.

Video of the Week: Color film was built for white people. Here's what it did to dark skin.

The unfortunate history of racial bias in photography.

Pop Culture Roundup: This Week

This week ... Gettysburg address as Trump would deliver it, a history book turned into a film, Tolstoy read over the air, and more. 

Who’s Really ‘Radical’?

by Emily Bazelon

Politicians and movements have long used the term to reference opposition or significant change. But these days, it’s most often used to describe terrorists.

Trumping History

by Michael Kazin

The Trump phenomenon is better understood as an amalgam of three different, largely pathological strains in American history and culture.

Thanks to right-wing deniers, schools still sow seeds of doubt over climate change

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Last Saturday, delegates from 195 countries signed a historic pact on human-made climate change. But in many American classrooms, students are debating whether pollution warms the planet at all.

Academe Must Confront Its Racist Past

by Pamela Newkirk

Colleges should incorporate the history of bigotry into their curricula.