Historians/History

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• 8/2/2020
  

  The History of the Boycott Shows a Real Cancel Culture

  by Mark Holan

  Authors, academics, musicians, and others bothered by their work being “cancelled” might consider the original boycott for some needed perspective.

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Constitutional Textualism, Slavery and Undocumented Immigrants

  by Alan J. Singer

  Just reading the Constitutional text, without context, does not help us understand what Antonin Scalia called “the fairly understood meaning of those words.”

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Yes, Even George Washington Can Be Redeemed

  by Richard Lim

  While we cannot ignore Washingon's participation in slavery, we shouldn’t discount his remarkable transformation into someone who wished for its abolition and took steps personally to make things right, becoming the only major founder to free his slaves.

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Conventional Culture in the Third Reich

  by Moritz Föllmer

  Although Nazi aesthetics are generally associated with the monumental architecture of Albert Speer and the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, Germans generally encountered conventionality in art, music and cinema. This helped to normalize the acts of the Third Reich and to allow ordinary Germans to dissociate themselves from Nazism after 1945.

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• 8/2/2020
  

  The Battle of The Atlantic has Lessons for Fighting COVID-19

  by Marc Wortman

  Pleasure-seekers and shoreline business owners on the east coast of the United States rejected voluntary calls to dim their lights in 1942. German U-Boat crews devastated shipping and commerce until compulsory blackouts were enforced. 

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Did the Atomic Bomb End the Pacific War? – Part I

  by Paul Ham

  Many people, including historians, believe that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan's unconditional surrender, saved a million American lives, and was the least morally repellent way to end World War II. Paul Ham contends that none of this is true. 

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• 7/26/2020
  

  Lincoln, Cass, and Daniel Chester French: Homely Politicians Divided by Politics, United through Art

  by Harold Holzer

  In the age before the glare of television and instantaneous photography were relentlessly aimed at our leaders, politicians could succeed even if they looked like Lewis Cass. Or Abraham Lincoln.

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• 7/26/2020
  

  "You Sold Me to Your Mother-in-Law...": An Ongoing Quest to Reconnect a Family

  by Ken Lawrence

  David Jackson had been forcibly separated from members of his family with no word of their subsequent fates for more than two decades, yet he had not given up hope of finding them. Can today’s historians shed light on his quest?

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• 7/19/2020
  

  Who Was Our Worst President? Think About it When a Grim 75th Anniversary Arrives

  by Paul W. Lovinger

  The anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should inspire consideration of the global fallout from Harry Truman's presidential decisions. 

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• 7/19/2020
  

  The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Black Action Movement and the Way Forward

  by Martin Halpern

  Activists in today’s struggles against institutionalized racism and for black lives can benefit from studying a local victory of fifty years ago. In the spring of 1970, the Black Action Movement (BAM) at the University of Michigan led a thirteen-day strike that won a commitment to change by the university administration.

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• 7/19/2020
  

  Barry Zorthian's War: The Pentagon and the Press in Vietnam

  by Ron Steinman

  A 1970 speech by Barry Zorthian, the Pentagon's chief public information officer in Vietnam, shows a thoughtful approach to balancing the rights of journalists with the need of the military to control information. That approach is missing in the era of "fake news" and open hostility by the administration for the press.

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• 7/12/2020
  

  Marshall McLuhan: The Man Who Predicted the Internet and Warned Us of its Dangers

  by Ludovic Rembert

  These days, most of Professor McLuhan's "global village" is kept in private and confined spaces: the village plaza is Facebook, a space that is operated for commercial purposes, restricting our discussions and absorbing our private data within our conversations and searches to sell it to advertisers.

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• 7/12/2020
  

  A Letter to America: Why We Need a New History Education

  by Linda Morse

  Let us get busy: history teachers must change the world!

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• 7/12/2020
  

  Eighty Years On, Chamberlain's Appeasement Policy is Still Debated

  by Yoav J. Tenembaum

  The evidence suggests that Neville Chamberlain was sincere in his desire but profoundly mistaken about his ability to keep Britain out of war with Germany. 

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• 7/12/2020
  

  75 Years Ago the First "Nuclear Race" Was in Hollywood

  by Greg Mitchell

  Despite Americans' keen interest and considerable fear in the atomic bomb after the end of World War II, the first commercial film to tackle the Manhattan Project was a bomb of a different sort. 

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• 7/3/2020
  

  Abolition Movement Historian Ethan Kytle Discusses Confederate Monuments and Teaching Younger Students about Slavery

  by James Thornton Harris

  "I don’t think it is fair for a scholar like me to tell a community what sort of monuments it should put up. This should be a local decision—and one that takes into account the perspectives of the entire community, which was not the case with Confederate monuments."

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• 7/3/2020
  

  Of Steamboats and Fireworks: The Great Mississippi River Race of 1870

  by Eric Simanek

  On the 4th of July of 1870, a 1,200 mile race between two steamboats on the Mississippi River was decided. The race attracted global interest. Reporters wrote about it. Gamblers wagered on it. People gathered and cheered for it.

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• 7/5/2020
  

  "It Has Not Been My Habit to Yield": Charles Sumner and the Fight for Equal Naturalization Rights

  by Lucy Salyer

  Senator Charles Sumner lost his battle on the Fourth of July 1870, with dire consequences for both Asian immigrant communities and the prospects of a more racially egalitarian America. 

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• 7/5/2020
  

  But Why Is America Exceptional?

  by Guy Chet

  Political separation from Britain allowed old English traits to remain preserved in America, like a bug in amber, even as they were whittled away by change in the old country. 

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• 6/28/2020
  

  In This Election Year We Historians Need to Insist on Truth-telling

  by Walter G. Moss

  “Tell the truth” should be as central to our mission, as “First, do no harm” is to doctors and nurses.