Historians in the News

Holocaust Survivor's Daughter in Legal Battle With Historian over Claim of Lesbian Liaison with Nazi Guard

Hájková, who is researching the queer history of the Holocaust, said testimonies by survivors of the camps and legal documents from the guard’s trial led her to conclude that the two women might have had a lesbian relationship, either coercive or consensual. However, she acknowledged that there was no definite proof of this.

Kamala Harris’s ‘Little History Lesson’ About Lincoln’s Supreme Court Vacancy Wasn’t Exactly True

Lincoln delayed in announcing a replacement to Chief Justice Roger Taney in large part because the leaving the appointment unresolved would help preserve his fragile coalition through the election, especially by inducing potential rivals to campaign for him.

The Outsized Role of the President in Race Relations

Lindsay Chervinsky announces a new collaborative podast "The Past, The Promise, The Presidency" to offer an accessible understanding of racism and the presidency.

With a Touch of Wisdom: Human Rights, Memory, and Forgetting

by Antoon de Baets

A historian concerned with memory, censorship and human rights considers whether there is an affirmative duty for historians to promote the memory of crimes and atrocities.

Yuri Dmitriev: Historian of Stalin’s Gulag, Victim of Putin’s Repression

Amid condemnation of the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, much less attention is being paid to the case of Yuri Dmitriev, a tenacious researcher and activist who campaigned to create a memorial to the victims of Stalinist terror in Karelia, a province in Russia’s far northwest, bordering Finland.

A Treaty Right For Cherokee Representation

Historian Julie Reed (Cherokee Nation) discusses the 1835 Treaty of New Echota in the context of the escalation of indigenous removal from the southeastern United States. 

In Louisville, Looking to Life-Changing Past Civil Rights Protests to Move Forward

Historian Tracy E. K'Meyer says that, despite the mutual misgivings of older and younger activists, Louisville's legacy of civil rights protests in the 1960s is highly influential today as activists seek justice and policing reform in the wake of the killing of Breonna Taylor. 

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Among First Ladies

David Michaelis's new biography is an excellent resource for those unfamiliar with the life and work of Eleanor Roosevelt and her political partnership with FDR.

Nation’s Deadliest Domestic Terrorist Inspiring New Generation Of Hate-Filled ‘Monsters,’ FBI Records Show

“A mass casualty event like the Oklahoma City bombing is … meant to provoke further violence," noted Kathleen Belew, a University of Chicago historian.

USC’s Natalia Molina Wins MacArthur Fellowship for Work on Immigrant Stereotypes

"Of this year’s 21 fellows across the arts, education, science, media, law and environmental studies, Molina’s work on race, gender, culture and citizenship is particularly timely, essentially at the heart of the national conversation as America undergoes a reckoning over systemic racism and grapples with questions of equity, inclusion and identity."

2020 is One of the Top 5 Contenders for Craziest Year in American History

If anyone needed confirmation, a panel of historians agrees that this year is... special. No one even has the bandwidth to discuss Murder Hornets anymore.

Did the US Try to Assassinate Lenin in 1918?

A new book demonstrates that the United States and western allies attempted to thwart the Bolshevik revolution and actually started the Cold War with an ill-fated 1918 invasion of Russia, but is on more speculative ground tracing an assassination attempt against Lenin to the US.  

Does a New Wave of Anti-Asian Racism Require a New Way of Fighting Back? 10/7

Historian Lon Kurashige joins US Senator Mazie Hirono and other guests to discuss rising racism against Asian Americans and Asians in America. 

National Book Foundation Presents "A New Black Politics?" October 14

The National Book Foundation presents a discussion with Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the state of Black politics before the 2020 election and what's likely to follow. 

MacArthur Foundation Announces 21 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners

University of Southern California historian Natalia Molina is among the 2020 awardees of the MacArthur Foundation's prestigious award in recognition of her research on racism, immigration and American citizenship. 

The Oligarchs’ Revenge (Review)

by Manisha Sinha

Heather Cox Richardson's book makes an essential argument that the conceptual distinction between class and race in American history obscures the way that American elites have worked to create and defend oligarchy. 

Why African Americans Were More Likely to Die During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

Black Americans in the 1918 flu pandemic were anomalously less likely to catch the flu, but died disproportionately from it because of segregated medicine.

The Day Nuclear War Almost Broke Out

"There should, it seems, be a useful lesson to be learned from that frantic afternoon. But what, in God’s name, is it?"

A Native American Community in Baltimore Reclaims Its History

Very few people are aware that there was once a sizeable population of American Indians, the Lumbee tribe, who lived in the neighborhoods of Upper Fells Point and Washington Hill.

The German Model for America

West German society intially sought to repress evidence of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes, preserving a myth that German civilians were also victims. The work of owning up to those crimes took decades and encountered bitter resistance.