Historians in the News

Podcast: PEN's Jeremy Young Argues Restrictions Won't End with Florida

Jeremy Young of PEN America and Chyna-Lee Hunter, a Miami high school senior, discuss the chilling effect already spreading from Florida's decision to block the AP African American studies course. 

North Milwaukee Looks to Highway History to Reshape the Future

Clayborn Benson of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum is finding common cause with planning activists who want to take down the freeways that separated North Milwaukee from the rest of the city and contributed to its decline. 

AHA: Time to Move from the Monograph to Recognize More Public Kinds of Scholarly Work

As historians and humanists seek to demonstrate the public value of their knowledge, it doesn't make sense to make public-facing history work a career-killer, according to the AHA. 

The Poetics and Politics of Historical Memory in Hungary

by Gábor Schein

Gábor Schein offers a "poetry of witness" for the mutilation of history in service of Hungarian nationalism. 

Are DeSantis's Education Reforms Part of "Global Authoritarian Playbook"?

PEN America's Jeremy Young explains how Florida's reforms go further than any others in American history to limit the institutional autonomy of colleges and subject their operations to more direct political control. 

Professor Discusses the Hidden History of Passports

Patrick Bixby's work examines the cultural history of the passport and how documents secure the freedom to travel. 

Origin Stories: How Science Invented the Idea of Race

The Science History Institute presents a new podcast series on the development of the idea of race in the context of Enlightement, colonialism and empire. 

It Won't Stay in Florida

United Faculty of Florida President: "Since 2021, DeSantis has pushed through efforts to compel state-sponsored speech on campus, dismantle oversight, encourage corruption-breeding secrecy and invade the personal lives of all higher ed community members."

"Indigenous Continent" Seeks Shakeup of American History

by Sean T. Byrnes

Pekka Hämäläinen seeks to frame the history of North America in terms of the indigenous peoples who settled the continent before the arrival of Europeans and, crucially, continued to dominate the continent into the nineteenth century. 

Aging is Threatening the History of Many Black Communities in Maryland

Black community historians have long been the keepers of historical knowledge about places and local traditions that elite institutions have considered unimportant. As they age, who will carry on their work and preserve and keep the documentary record? 

When Mississippi Banned Sesame Street

As Mississippi prepared to launch a state-run educational television network in 1970, its members voted 3-2 that images of a multiracial group of children at play on "Sesame Street" would antagonize conservative politicians and jeopardize the network's funding.

New Resources Help Virginians Fill in Hidden Family Histories Including Enslaved Ancestors

“Researchers and librarians would say things like, 'That history just doesn’t exist.' Or, 'We just don’t have those records,'" Lydia Neuroth with the Library of Virginia explained. "But we are realizing we do. We just haven’t done a good job sharing it.”

Conversation: Why is AP Taking Activism Out of African American Studies?

Historians Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Robin D.G. Kelley discuss the roots of African American Studies in civil rights activism, which makes the decision to de-emphasize contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter inexplicable and diminishes the power of the course to help students make sense of the society.

Reconsidering Phillis Wheatley's Place in the Revolutionary Era

David Waldstreicher's "The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley" places the poet in the ranks not only of the founders of American literature but of the nation itself. 

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham on the AP Af-Am Studies Controversy

by Olivia B. Waxman

The Harvard historian, one of the principal evaluators of the AP curriculum, says that the most prominent public statements about the pilot course reflect misunderstanding or deception about what its contents really are. 

Organization of American Historians Statement on AP African American Studies

"The OAH further rejects the characterization of these scholars and their scholarship as examples of “woke indoctrination,” and instead recognize them as central to the interdisciplinary research and teaching of African American history and culture, as well as American history more broadly."

Historians on DeSantis and the Fight Over Black History

Experts including education historians Adam Laats and Natalia Mehlman Petrzela discuss the controversy over Florida's rejection of the Advanced Placement course in African American Studies. 

A Reading List of Authors Removed from the AP African American Studies Course

The College Board has made revisions to its pilot African American Studies course that appear to follow the criticisms made by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Here's a collection of essays by many of the scholars representing diverse Black intellectual traditions whose ideas will not be part of the course going forward. 

Harvard Law Symposium on Roe 50 Years Later

A conference hosted by the Radcliffe Institute convened legal and historical scholars to discuss the future of reproductive rights. 

600 African American Studies Faculty Sign Open Letter in Defense of AP African American Studies

"We categorically reject DeSantis’s autocratic claim to knowing what college-level material should be available in an AP African American Studies course. There is no precedent, of which we are aware, for him or the Florida Department of Education to claim expertise on any other subject matter for AP course adoption."