Roundup

What Zelensky Gets Wrong about the Holocaust in Ukraine

by Jeffrey Veidlinger

The Ukrainian president has overreached in comparing the invasion of his country to the Holocaust in an appeal to Israeli leaders to take action against Russia, and invoked only the Ukrainians who resisted Nazi extermination of Jews. 

Planning For The People Y Qué? From Advocacy Planners To Hardcore Punks

by Mike Amezcua

"Punk fliers are planning documents. Not the official kind produced by city planning departments, of course, nor the grassroots plans by neighborhood activists resisting investment capital and gentrification. But these fliers contain a planning schema all the same."

Questing for the Past

by Katherine Churchill

A nameplate in an 1864 edition of Gawain and the Green Knight led the author to discover the connections between a mythic medieval past and the Lost Cause ideology of Jim Crow Virginia. 

The University in Ruins: Against Farcical "Innovations"

by Johann N. Neem

"It’s not clear what role universities should play in society, and to what or to whom they are accountable, other than their corporate interests."

Nuclear Power Plants Aren't Made to Survive War

by Kate Brown and Susan Solomon

"It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war."

Is Putin a New Constantine?

by Daniel Gullotta

"In short, Putin seems to strike some conservatives as a new Constantine for a new Christendom standing against progressive totalitarianism."

The Thrill of Teaching Mill

by Samuel Goldman

Mill was prescient in focusing attention not only on the restriction of speech by the state, but on the cultural and social obstacles to dissenting opinion.

Who Gets to Be American?

by Jonna Perrillo

Johann Tschinkel, a Nazi scientist, was recruited by the United States after the war. His reflections on his educational experiences in Germany and those of his children in segregated American schools, offer a warning about the efforts to control the social studies curriculum today. 

Black Mayors, Black Politics, and the Gary Convention

by Brandon Stokes

The National Black Political Convention of 1972 demonstrated that Black political power had been linked to urban governments, foreshadowing challenges of disinvestment, white flight, and exclusion from broader coalitions in national politics. 

The Black Freedom Struggle of the 19th Century North

by Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr.

The efforts of freeborn Black Americans in the north highlights the long roots of many contemporary racial justice issues outside of the frame of slavery and emancipation. 

When Communism was Queer

by Samuel Huneke

American commentators have used the repression of gay life in states like Cuba to discredit socialism. The history of communist approaches to sexuality is more complex, as in the former East Germany. 

Does Zelensky's Image Upend Stereotypes about Jewish Masculinity?

by Miriam Eve Mora

The emergence of Ukraine's Jewish president as an exemplar of wartime valor challenges longstanding stereotypes about Jewish men. 

Get Ready Now for the Storm of Takes Coming at America's 250th Birthday

by John Garrison Marks

Major anniversaries tend to crystallize debates about how Americans learn and remember history. America's 250th will follow a presidential election and years of political argument about the teaching of history and make all parties eager to win the symbolic war.

Now is the Time to Revisit Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism

by Anne Applebaum

The political and economic supports for stability and prosperity in the developed world are more precarious than ever; the revival of authoritarianism that Arendt predicted may be at hand, making her work more vital than ever. 

Why Greg Gutfeld is Mad at Me about Ukraine and the Holocaust

by Rafael Medoff

The Ukraine crisis is engendering conspiratorial thinking from defenders of Russia's actions. 

Does Academic Freedom Really Require Tolerance for Prejudice or Falsehood by Faculty?

by Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth

Academic freedom and free speech aren't the same thing, and it's time for professional standards in academia to recognize the necessity of drawing boundaries around bigotry and falsehood as potentially disqualifying for faculty members. 

The Roundup Top Ten for March 18, 2022

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

Texas's Anti-Transgender Policies Erase the State's Indigenous Transgender History

by Gregory D. Smithers

The prominent role of what would now be called transgender individuals in indigenous societies in Texas was part of the justification Europeans claimed to colonize the land; students compelled to learn Texas history in school could learn a much more inclusive set of stories. 

The Long History of American Isolationism

by Lindsay Chervinsky

Since the days of George Washington, the imperatives of American economic development and hegemony over the western hemisphere, and the desire to avoid European wars, have been in tension. 

Trump's "Sh*thole Countries" Remark is Nothing American Churches Haven't Said for Generations

by Kathryn Gin Lum

American missionaries in the nineteenth century prefigured the former president's comments by forming a worldview of a "blessed us" and a "backward them."