This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: WABE
May 8, 2023
By outsourcing collection of delinquent taxes to private investors, Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, takes away incentives to keep people in their homes. Housing scholar Dan Immergluck says allowing private speculators to auction off properties is driving unaffordable housing and gentrification
Source: New York Times
May 8, 2023
Historian Karin Wulf argues that the leadership of Colonial Williamsburg has steered an effective course through the conflicting imperatives of nostalgia, heroic storytelling, and the harsh inequalities of the colonial era.
Source: NPR
May 7, 2023
The historian of Mexico notes that the US-Mexico border was formed by an American military invasion, and has been in a militarized state since politicians have linked migration to national security concerns like drugs and terrorism.
Source: The Guardian
May 6, 2023
A DuBois biographer discusses the work of tracing the great intellectual's life and work, and the experience of reading an unpublished and unfinished manuscript.
Source: New York Times
May 5, 2023
“There is a growing gap between Britain’s perception of its own empire and how it’s perceived everywhere else,” said William Dalrymple, a prominent historian of British India. “And that gap keeps growing.”
Source: Miami New Times
May 4, 2023
"We will not allow DeSantis to kill our history," says Marvin Dunn. "We just won't allow it. We will take our history directly to the parents if that's what's required, and apparently, it is what is required."
Source: The New Republic
May 4, 2023
Political "orders," rather than election cycles, are a key way to understand big political shifts, like the rise and dismantling of the New Deal in America.
Source: Galveston Daily News
May 3, 2023
The suit by J.P. Bryan, a retired oilman and the executive director of the private Texas State Historical Association, which produces many important educational materials, claims that the board has too many academics and is too critical of the Anglo settlers of the state. Historian Nancy Baker Jones, the TSHA President, is the principal target.
Source: Washington Post
May 2, 2023
Vinson, who attended high school in Washington D.C. and was a dean at the George Washington University, returns to the District with goals of vaulting the university into the top ranks of research institutions.
Source: New York Times
May 2, 2023
“Our country held hands with the U.S. in an alliance and we knew that its soldiers were here to help us, but that didn’t mean that they could do whatever they wanted to us, did it?”
Source: PEN America
May 2, 2023
Matthew Garrett, a self-proclaimed conservative and tenured professor, was fired for cause by his institution after many cases of controversial speech and some alleged violations of university policy. The university's "kitchen sink" claim against him undermines academic freedom and faculty free speech rights.
Source: New York Review of Books
May 2, 2023
by Adam Hochshild
If conservatives are against "woke" history education, what, exactly, are they for? There's much to be learned from the curriculum created by the Michigan christian college, which presents a jarring contrast with the themes presented in the new Hulu documentary series based on Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project.
Source: Scalawag
May 1, 2023
by Micah Herskind
A massive training facility for police to practice urban warfare reveals the decades-long abandonment of poorer Atlantans and the efforts of local business elites to use redevelopment and policing to cater to the wealthy and control the poor, as historians Dan Immergluck and Maurice Hobson help to explain.
Source: Sojourners
May 1, 2023
by Matt Bernico
The events surrounding the 1886 Haymarket Affair, when a Chicago general strike for the 8 hour day became violent, revealed tensions present in Christianity today: what happens when Christians side with the bosses?
Source: Jacobin
Apr 30, 2023
The defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 was supposed to mark the demise of the conspiratorial right. Matthew Dallek's book explains how the fringe rose to dominate the Republican Party in 2024, in part because of the shortsightedness of liberal elites.
Source: Contingent
Apr 30, 2023
The series editor for the Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society discusses her work as a public historian.
Source: NPR
Apr 29, 2023
Is the debt ceiling, which has been raised 78 times since being established by Congress during World War I, a useful periodic reminder of fiscal restraint or an outdated relic that has become a weapon for partisan extortionists? Kathleen Day discusses the ceiling with NPR's Scott Simon.
Source: New York Times
Apr 28, 2023
Germany stands alone among European nations in protecting many Soviet-era monuments in the former East Germany. Honoring victims of Nazis has long been a reason, but this has been complicated by German support for Ukraine after its invasion by Russia.
Source: Washington Post
Apr 27, 2023
Peggy O'Donnell Heffington makes an assertive argument that the United States has a long history of official involvement in motherhood, from making reproduction near-compulsory for white women on one side of the color line to eugenics and sterilization on the other.
Source: Bloomberg CityLab
Apr 27, 2023
Historian Nicholas Dagen Bloom says that American politicians, especially at the municipal level, made a series of choices that diverted resources from mass transit to auto transportation. Neither racism nor the market nor secret conspiracies by industry made these choices inevitable.
