Historians in the News 
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.
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SOURCE: Daily Beast
1/23/2021
This Professor Protested a School’s Racism. Then He Lost His Job
"The sudden termination of Felber sends a very strong and disturbing message. Felber was doing antiracist work and initiated programs that benefited the marginalized and disenfranchised."
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/25/2021
After the Capitol Was Stormed, Teachers Try Explaining History in Real Time
The eruption of political violence at the US Capitol has challenged teachers of history and civics at all grade levels and pushed teachers of other subjects to respond to their students' experience of confusion, anger, or sadness.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
1/26/2021
Race on Campus: The Mental Burden of Minority Professors
Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz writes about mental health challenges facing minority faculty at predominantly white institutions, quoting historians Marcia Chatelain and Katrina Phillips.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
1/25/2021
Against the Consensus Approach to History
by William Hogeland
Current debates about the historiography of slavery and the founding mistake the authority claimed by past generations of historians for scholarly integrity instead of recognizing that writing history has always been a political act (that often works to conceal its politics).
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SOURCE: Mother Jones
We’ve Had a White Supremacist Coup Before. History Buried It
LeRae Sikes Umfleet's 2009 book explored the 1898 Wilmington insurrection and showed “how people could get murdered in the streets and no one held accountable for it.”
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SOURCE: NPR
1/24/2021
Historian Discusses The Politics That Shape U.S. History In Schools
Hasan Kwame Jeffries: "Nobody's placing that blame on children. No child in school today is even responsible for the mess that we have right now. But they are responsible for the problems of tomorrow and of the future."
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SOURCE: The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow
1/22/2021
Keri Leigh Merritt on White Myths, Lost Causes & True History
A discussion of the continued relevance of Confederate Lost Cause mythology in the January 6 Capitol riots.
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SOURCE: NPR
1/15/2021
When White Extremism Seeps Into The Mainstream
Historian Kathleen Belew discusses the history of the far right and the work of separating the hard core of the movement from its fringes and those who might be persuaded to join it.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
1/14/2021
A TV Documentary Shows the Deep Roots of Right-Wing Conspiracy
New Yorker critic Richard Brody discusses the 1964 broadcast of "Danger on the Right" on the John Birch Society.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/23/2021
The Trump Presidency Is Now History. So How Will It Rank?
Historians disagree whether Trump surpasses the awfulness of Buchanan or Andrew Johnson, but a roster of them consulted by the Times agrees he was terrible.
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SOURCE: The Intercept
1/23/2021
Capitol Attack was Culmination of Generations of Far-Right Extremism
Historians Robin D.G. Kelley and Greg Grandin discuss the historical relationship between white supremacy and political violence in the US.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/23/2021
Biden Seeks to Define His Presidency by an Early Emphasis on Equity
Nicole Hemmer argues that Joe Biden appears more willing to pledge action on racial equity than Barack Obama was; it remains to be seen if Biden can avoid a backlash from conservatives.
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SOURCE: Vox
1/13/2021
Can the Republican Party be Saved?
Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of "Rule and Ruin," a history of the Republican Party since 1950. He discusses the party's turn toward right-wing radicalism with Vox's Sean Illing.
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SOURCE: Public Books
1/25/2021
How Versailles Still Haunts the World
by Joanne Randa Nucho
Anthropologist Joanne Randa Nucho and Public Books present a virtual forum on the ongoing legacies and impacts of the Treaty of Versailles.
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SOURCE: National History Center
1/25/2021
Virtual Event: Sarah Miller-Davenport: Gateway State: Hawai’i and Cultural Transformation of American Empire, FEB. 1
Please join the National History Center of the American Historical Association for a Washington History Seminar roundtable on Gateway State: Hawai’i and Cultural Transformation of American Empire with author Sarah Miller-Davenport, MONDAY FEB. 1, 4:00 PM EST.
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SOURCE: National History Center
1/25/2021
Virtual Event: Joan Wallach Scott's "On the Judgment of History" FRIDAY JAN. 29
Please join the National History Center of the American Historical Association for a Washington History Seminar roundtable on On the Judgment of History with author Joan Wallach Scott. Friday, January 29, 4:30 PM EST
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SOURCE: History
1/20/2021
How Tuskegee Airmen Fought Military Segregation With Nonviolent Action
Alan Osur and Todd Moye help tell the story of the efforts of the Tuskegee Airmen to integrate military recreational facilities in 1944.
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SOURCE: Vox
1/14/2021
What the History of the Ku Klux Klan Can Teach Us about the Capitol Riot
Historian Linda Gordon urges readers to recognize that the Klan has always drawn from "respectable" members of white society, giving it a dangerous ability to claim to represent real American values.
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SOURCE: NPR
1/15/2021
Reconstruction Era Expert On Why Politicians Use Terms Unity And Healing
"Reconciliation needs accountability. You can't just wash your hands and say, let's forget about the past and move forward with healing."
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SOURCE: Fortune
1/17/2021
The COVID-19 Vaccination Drive May be Slow—But it’s Already Faster than Any in History
Public Health historian Jason Schwartz suggests that discontent about the pace of vaccination is due to the Trump administration's politically motivated and unrealistic promises.
News
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- 'His Work is a Testament': The Ever-Relevant Photography of Gordon Parks
- History Jobs Stabilized Before COVID-19
- The Stories of Those Who Lost Decades in the Closet
- Archaeologists Unearth Egyptian Queen’s Tomb, 13-Foot ‘Book of the Dead’ Scroll
- This Professor Protested a School’s Racism. Then He Lost His Job
- After the Capitol Was Stormed, Teachers Try Explaining History in Real Time
- Race on Campus: The Mental Burden of Minority Professors
- Against the Consensus Approach to History
- We’ve Had a White Supremacist Coup Before. History Buried It