In Defense of Public Institutions
By Elizabeth Stice
The Latest 
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“Patriotic” Veterans Only, Please
Gregory A. Daddis
While perhaps an indication of our current toxic political environment, the attacks on “unpatriotic” veterans like U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman actually have a long and checkered history in post-World War II America.
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75 Years After the Dresden Bombings
Sinclair McKay
History in Dresen is not an abstract academic pursuit; instead, it is palpable and passionate. It matters enormously. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the horror that made Dresden – deep in eastern Germany - a by-word for annihilation.
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Blog
"Keep American Beautiful" and Personal Vs Corporate Environmental Responsibility
(R)evolutionary Biology
What we can learn from how mid-century Americans concerned about litter were conned and co-opted by forces larger and more guilty than they.
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Trump the Great and Powerful
Steve Hochstadt
It is not surprising that a president so unconcerned about Constitutional norms would try to add to his powers. It is disturbing and dangerous that the Republican Party as a body supports Trump goi...
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Happy 200th Birthday to Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Sandra Weber
In commemorating Anthony’s birthday, women have examined the past, celebrated their progress, and looked to the future.
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“Free College” in Historical Perspective
John R. Thelin
“Free college” is a visible and volatile issue in the Democrat candidates’ presidential campaign platforms. No Democratic candidate today can afford to ignore the issue, even if it means taking time to impose strict limits.
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A Gallon of Talk and a Teaspoon of Action, Then Label the Problem "Insolvable" and Plan Another Conference
Robert Scott Kellner
What shall it avail, the latest speech-laden conference on this topic, when seventy-five years of intensive Holocaust education had no effect on Holocaust deniers and could not stop the resurgence of the virulent anti-Semitism that had infected Germany one hundred years ago?
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Jimmy Carter: The Last of the Fiscally Responsible Presidents
Joe Renouard
Jimmy Carter’s Economy Was Better than You Think
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New Evidence from the Clinton Presidential Library on Bill Clinton and Helmut Kohl's Diplomatic Relationship
Stephan Kieninger
The Clinton-Kohl documents shed new light on their efforts to facilitate the emergence of an interdependent and transnational world based on freedom, peace, security and prosperity.
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Why Trump Is Different than Reagan, Either Bush, Dole, McCain, or Romney—He’s Evil
Water G. Moss
Like Trump’s six previous Republican presidential candidates (and like many Trump supporters), all of the major 2020 Democratic candidates are decent human beings. Trump is evil.
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Remembering Soldier's Bravery at Iwo Jima, 75 Years Later
Jack H. Lucas
"I had no way of knowing that in a matter of a few short hours I would make the most important decision of my life and in the lives of three members of my fire team. The choice would be mine: either I could die alone or all of us would die together."
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An Interview with Historian Dr. David Dzurec of the University of Scranton
Jared Levinson
The University of Scranton's History Department Chair, Dr. David Szurec discusses the ways students engage with local history through service-learning.
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"We Can Always Learn More History:" An Interview with Historian Seth Center
Samantha Benthien
Dr. Seth Center, the Senior Fellow and Director of Brzezinski Institute's Project on History and Strategy, provides unique insight on how a deeper knowledge of history is valuable when facing the challenges of today.
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Trump's Acquittal and the History of the Intentionally Undemocratic Senate
Ed Simon
What can and must be learned from the impeachment affair isn’t that resistance to Trump has to be fruitless, but rather that we can’t expect institutions and procedures to be that which saves us.
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Was Nixon Really Better Than Trump?
James Robenalt
Nixon’s tapes show an embattled president acting the same way, only behind closed doors.
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Re-Animating the 1619 Project: Teachable Moments Not Turf Wars
James Brewer Stewart
Those of us who value the 1619 Project can reclaim our “teachable moment” by excavating beneath the heated rhetoric. There we will discover that the journalists and the historians embrace conflicting but equally valuable historical truths regarding slavery’s power to shape our nations past and present.
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The Travesty of the Century
Alon Ben-Meir
Whereas the US has over the years played a central role in the effort to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no American administration has provided such a detailed proposal, certainly not one that grants Israel all of its wish list.
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The Dramatic Relationship Between Black America and the Academy Awards
Elwood Watson
From Hattie McDaniel to #OscarsSoWhite.
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Should the Democratic Presidential Candidates Announce Their VP Picks Now?
Joel K. Goldstein
History suggests that these well-intended proposals rest on mistaken judgments about the way the vice-presidential selection system now operates, exaggerate the benefits of the proposed reforms, and underestimate the difficulty of implementing those remedies.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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The Communist Manifesto Turns 172
Sam Ben-Meir
This is a moment that we should not allow to pass without some reflection on the meaning to us today of Marx and Engels’ pamphlet.
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How Somalis Use Theatre to Rebuild Culturally
Farah M. Omer
Modern Somali theatre rose to prominence in the 1960s, the period following the independence and the subsequent unification of Somaliland and Somalia. By the 1970s, there were multiple shows a night in any given city and the average Somali adult was considered a regular theatre goer regardless of socioeconomic status.
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Blog
Who Deserves the Credit for a Good Economy?
Ronald L. Feinman
Clearly, Donald Trump has benefited from what is now the longest economic expansion in American history. The unemployment rate has dropped to as low as 3.4 percent. The question that lingers is who...
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Remembrances, Race, and Role Models: The Renaming of a Middle School
Frank P. Barajas
The new name of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, whatever it will be, should have a recognizable footnote so people can learn not only about the totality of Oxnard’s history but also its relationship with larger national currents.
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The Erasure of the History of Slavery at Sullivan’s Island
Roy E. Finkenbine
Some 40% of the nearly 400,000 Africans imported into British North America and the young United States passed through this place. It has been termed the “Ellis Island” of African Americans.
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The Making of a Periphery
Ulbe Bosma
How did the once-prosperous islands of Southeast Asia transform into a “peripheral” region?
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The 1619 Project Debate with History of Slavery in New York City
Alan Singer
Slavery and its legacies in New York City.
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The Cold War New and Old: Architectural Exchanges Beyond the West
Łukasz Stanek
Until today, many urban landscapes in West Africa bear witness to how local authorities and professionals drew on Soviet prefabrication technology, Hungarian and Polish planning methods, Yugoslav and Bulgarian construction materials, Romanian and East German standard designs, and manual laborers from across Eastern Europe.
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Frank Ramsey: A Genius By All Tests for Genius
Cheryl Misak
Unlike his friends Russell and Wittgenstein who focused on the vastness and the unknowability of the world, Ramsey believed it was more important to concentrate on what is admirable and conducive to living a good life.
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How Religious History Helps Us Understand Russia's War Against Ukrainian Independence
Khrystyna Karelska and Andreas Umland
In recent months, the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian multidimensional military, political, economic and cultural conflict has made international news. What is less well known beyond Eastern Europe is the important religious aspect of Moscow’s “hybrid war” against Ukrainian national independence.
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JFK's New Hampshire Primary Hope Resonates Today
William Lambers
The day before the 1960 New Hampshire presidential primary, candidate John F. Kennedy talked about America's great hope for disarmament. Speaking at the University of New Hampshire, JFK said "No hope is more basic to our aspirations as a nation" than disarmament.
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The Unique Struggles of Women and Native Americans to Vote
Thom Hartmann
And how efforts to surpress certain voters continue.
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Manipulation of Spanish History Has Manufactured A Constitutional Crisis
Christopher Binetti
The history of Spain does not support the Spanish nationalist claim that Castilian is the natural language and culture for all people of the Peninsula.
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The Remarkable Success of Midwestern Front Porch Campaigns
Jeffrey Normand Bourdon
No presidential electioneering technique has ever been as successful while appearing and disappearing as quickly as front porch campaigning.
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Harriet Tubman and a National Legacy of Midnight Skies and Silent Stars
Todd Lookingbill
The Oscar buzz around the film and the popularity of the biopic with critics and general audiences alike creates an opportunity to discuss and shine a light on the important landscape associated with this amazing historical figure.
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Israel as Palestine: One State is Not the Solution, It’s Reality
Ian S. Lustick
The struggle for peace between Israel and the Palestinians has been replaced by struggles, likely to take generations, for the equalityof Jews and Arabs within the state now known as Israel.
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Celia Sánchez Manduley: The Most Famous Woman You Have Never Heard Of
Tiffany A. Sippial
The work to preserve and study the history of the Cuban Revolution and its contributors—like Celia Sánchez Manduley—is arduous but important.
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Can We Save the Truth?
Steve Hochstadt
There is a great irony that the political conservatism, which once argued for objective truth, now relies on the broadest attack on truth that we have ever experienced.
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Roundup Top 10!
This week's broad sampling of opinion pieces found on the Internet, as selected by the editor of HNN.
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The Pioneers: Heroic Settlers or Indian Killers?
Walter G. Moss
Unless we in the USA acknowledge not only the heroic, but also heinous deeds of our past, we will fail to face our future with the courage needed to overcome such ills as racism and our present political polarization.
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Kindergarten Goes to the University Classroom: The Educational Value of Show and Tell
Andrew Joseph Pegoda
During the Fall 2019 semester, I experimented with having students do 10-minute Show and Tell presentations in my Secularisms/Atheisms religious studies and U.S. history seminar. The results couldn’t have been better.
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If the Pentagon is worried by climate change, shouldn’t we be worried too?
David Carlin
As the world warms, Syria offers a cautionary tale about how climate change may destabilize societies and sow global chaos.
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Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are Back, and the Sexual Revolution with Them
Bruce Chadwick
The late 1960s was the heyday of America’s sexual revolution and nowhere was it bigger than in California.
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Why Thomas Jefferson Was Really No Friend of Religious Freedom
M. Andrew Holowchak
Thomas Jefferson, because of the passage of his Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom, is customarily viewed by scholars as a paladin of religious freedom. Yet there is reason to question that view.
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What’s in a Nickname? From Caligula to Sleepy Joe
Josiah Osgood
If Suetonius, who served on the staff of two Roman emperors, were alive today, I think he’d advise Trump to spend less time coming up names for others and think about what he could call himself.
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What Did Hitler Think About Anglo-American Capitalism?
James Thornton Harris
A review of Brendan Simms' controversial new book, Hitler: A Global Biography.
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How the South Dominated American Education
John Heffron
An excerpt from John Heffron's The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education: The Rockefeller Years (1902-1917).
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Mary Jo Binker on Eleanor Roosevelt and Advice for Future Historians
Isabella DelPino
“You know what I love about Eleanor Roosevelt and the thing that I try to emulate the most about Eleanor Roosevelt? She had tremendous zest for life and for new experience and that animates me.”
News
- A farm boy became a fearsome warrior at Iwo Jima. And he did it with a flamethrower.
- Plymouth Rock vandalized with red graffiti ahead of 400th anniversary of Mayflower landing
- The enslaved people who built and staffed the White House: An afterthought no more
- Truman and Coolidge go up, Jefferson and Jackson go down. How history remembers presidents
- George Steiner: The Last Viennese Jew
- Renowned presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin finally takes on George Washington
- Legal Historian Jed Shugerman Says William Barr's Actions Are "Remarkably Not Normal"
- Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat Quoted in Washington Post Article on Trump's Quest to Rewrite History
- This one-of-a-kind conference celebrates the real people behind the Underground Railroad
- Zara Steiner, distinguished scholar of diplomatic history, dies at 91
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