Roundup

My Son Was Killed In Iraq 14 Years Ago — Who’s Responsible?

by Andrew Bacevich

"Even today, the electorate shows little inclination to rethink the core assumptions informing basic US national security policy. Supporting the troops means suppressing second thoughts, asking few questions, and shoveling more money to the Pentagon."

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. 

The Lies Cops Tell and the Lies We Tell About Cops

by Stuart Schrader

"The core of policing is not safety. It is social control. All the other lies obfuscate this function."

Billie Jean King, Foremother

by Robert Lipsyte

Billie Jean King's legacy runs far beyond tennis, and has become even more relevant with the passage of time as challenges to the doctrine of amateurism and the NCAA make clear. 

How Cruelty Became the Point of Our Labor and Welfare Policies

by Gail Savage

The persistence of Malthusian thinking in social welfare debates is leading to policies that create needless suffering and a corrosion of the common bonds of humanity that sustain a society.

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."

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. 

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."

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. 

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.

I Am A Veteran History Teacher. Let Me Teach History

by Valencia Ann Abbott

Culture wars and legislative battles over things like the 1619 Project and "critical race theory" have made classrooms "a minefield of political dos and don'ts," where facts and truths are treated as dangerous, says a veteran secondary school history instructor. 

We Stand in Solidarity With Nikole Hannah-Jones

by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Martha S. Jones

"The University’s Board of Trustees has failed to uphold the first order values of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. And too many lawmakers have wrongly deemed it their role to reach into classrooms and tell educators what to teach and how to teach it."

100 Years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Lessons from my Grandfather

by Gregory B. Fairchild

The centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre is a call to consider how disadvantaged communities can gain access to capital and build the kind of prosperity that characterized the Greenwood district before 1921 and eluded it afterward, says a professor of business whose grandfather survived the riot.

Academic Tenure Is Broken. Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Case Makes That Clear

by William Egginton

Many academics have objected to political interference in the University of North Carolina's decision to ignore the faculty recommendation to tenure Nikole Hannah-Jones as a Knight Foundation Chair of Journalism. This incident should not obscure the ways that the tenure system entrenches inequality when it works properly. 

What Scaremongering About Inflation Gets Wrong

by Rebecca L. Spang

Inflation has become a subject of political dread as Americans have shifted from seeing themselves as producers to seeing themselves as consumers. But historical perspective shows that policy picks winners and losers and is dependent on choices about what to measure and how.   

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.

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. 

How Napoleon’s Legacy Explains the Middle East’s Conflicts

by Yoav Tenembaum

An international relations scholar argues that the Middle East can be explained through the division of "revolutionary" and "status quo" interests that dates to Napoleon's challenges to the European imperial order. How other nations respond to the conflict will follow whether they favor the status quo.