News at Home

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• 9/25/2022
  

  Does Marital Status Discrimination Hold the Key to Protecting Sexual Freedoms from SCOTUS?

  by Marc Stein

  As concern rises that the court might revoke the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception while reinstating the criminalization of gay sex, advocates for reproductive and sexual freedom need to consider how to make the equal protection argument that rights individuals enjoy in marriage can't be denied to individuals outside of them. 

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• 9/25/2022
  

  The History of DDT Shows Government Agencies Have Responsibility for Today's Skepticism about Science

  by Elena Conis

  The willingness to share information about the toxicity of pesticides has long been compromised by the government's interest in their economic usefulness. From COVID to climate, today's crises show the need for a new balance of transparency and profitability.

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• 9/25/2022
  

  Thinking and Teaching the Implications of Federalist #10 for Democracy

  by Jeff Schneider

  Teachers of Constitutional history must push their students to understand something difficult: James Madison's vision of the "public good" is a vision of elite rule that today stands in the way of democratic solutions to society's problems. 

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• 9/18/2022
  

  How the Constitution Can Accommodate Divergent Values

  by James D.R. Philips

  When founding the nation, American political leaders had to both leverage Americans’ shared political culture and beliefs, and allow for Americans’ differing moral beliefs and values.

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• 9/18/2022
  

  Another Documentarian's Perspective on "The U.S. and the Holocaust"

  by Martin Ostrow

  Like many other Americans, I will be watching closely to see if The U.S. and the Holocaust honestly portrays the responsibility of American leaders, or fails to confront the difficult truths that need to be faced.

• 
• 9/18/2022
  

  Gil Coronado: The Padrino of National Hispanic Month

  by Ricardo Romo

  After dropping out of high school to begin his Air Force career at age 15, Gil Coronado became the most influential leader in expanding the federal recognition of Hispanic heritage from a week to a month. 

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• 9/18/2022
  

  What Casey Jones Tells Us about the Past and Present of America's Railroad Workers

  by Scott Huffard

  Although it's difficult to separate fact from fiction around his life, the famed railroad engineer had something in common with today's rail workers: being stretched to the limits of health and safety by companies' pursuit of profit. 

• 
• 9/11/2022
  

  Arena Rockin' The Vote?

  by George Case

  Dismissed, derided, or even deplored by critics, and out of step with the trends, arena rock acts still pack them in in much of America. Is it the sonic key to understanding Trumpism? 

• 
• 9/11/2022
  

  Pessimistic Economic Forecasts Ignore a History of Dynamism

  by John Landry and Howard Wolk

  Many economic histories portray the American prosperity of the century between the Civil War and the 1970s as the picking of low-hanging fruit. But the story of entrepreneurial innovation during that time is more complicated, and more relevant to the present, than we think. 

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• 9/11/2022
  

  The Authoritarian Personality and the Rising Far Right

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  This moment of peril for American democracy calls for a return to the diagnosis presented in "The Authoritarian Personality," 1950s effort to develop a social-psychological profile of the people likely to embrace fascism. 

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• 9/4/2022
  

  Considering the Automobile's Influence on Society—Before the Next Influence Takes Over?

  by Bryan Appleyard

  The story of the car—a story of genius and folly in equal measure—is the story of the making of the modern world. A new book weaves the threads of the automobile's influence through landscape, war and peace, mass production and individualism, and the environment. 

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• 9/4/2022
  

  UN Report Highlights Ongoing Racism in US

  by Alan J. Singer

  The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called out American health disparities, police abuse and crackdowns on protesters as key failures of the United States to address racial inequality. 

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• 9/4/2022
  

  What I Learned About Governments from Researching Classified Documents

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Historians who have conducted research in classified materials understand how seriously governments take secrecy and how secrecy can conceal malfeasance or anti-democratic action. 

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• 9/4/2022
  

  "Pour Myself a Cup of Ambition": The 1970s Echo in Today's Union Revival

  by Ellen Cassedy and Lane Windham

  This Labor Day, we’re hopeful about the renewed energy and excitement for workplace organizing—especially by women workers—and cautiously optimistic that today’s workers may overcome the sorts of corporate tactics that blocked organizing in the 1970s.

• 
• 8/28/2022
  

  Uncancel Wilma Soss

  by Robert E. Wright and Janice Traflet

  Wilma Soss defied norms as a woman who became independently wealthy through her PR agency and her investments, but the circumstances of her marriage and her outspoken advocacy for shareholders against corporate waste led to her erasure.  Her biographers hope to correct that. 

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• 8/28/2022
  

  The Failed Promise of Free, Universal School Lunch

  by Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower

  With the lapsing of pandemic support for expanded school lunches, the nation returns to its historical roots of stigma and stinginess around the feeding of children. 

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• 8/28/2022
  

  Stephen Aron's Work Examines Moments of Intercultural Peace in the West

  by James Thornton Harris

  Both triumphalist and revisionist histories of America's westward expansion emphasize violence, and disagree about whether to understand it with pride or guilt. But what can we make of the moments where understanding and accommodation temporarily prevailed? 

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• 8/28/2022
  

  The Chicano Moratorium in East LA and Ventura County

  by Frank P. Barajas

  Chicano Moratorium commemorations continue today in communities in and out of East Los Angeles as they mark a history that centers on the experience of ethnic Mexican and Latinx peoples in the US to inspire and reinspire the young and old, to continue their struggle to realize the ideal of justice for all.

• 
• 8/22/2022
  

  What Elizabeth Johnson’s Exoneration Teaches about the Salem Witch Hunt

  by Tony Fels

  The Massachusetts legislature recently exonerated Elizabeth Johnson, though her confession and conviction shows how "members of the Puritan communities of early Massachusetts could readily convince themselves that in some way or other, perhaps at a moment of weakness, they really had allowed Satan into their lives."

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• 8/21/2022
  

  The Reputation of Presidents Takes a Hit in Their Second Term

  by Ronald L. Feinman

  The 2024 presidential campaign is fast approaching, with speculation rampant about whether Biden should seek a second term. Although his political fortunes have improved recently, the record of second-term presidents might give him pause.