Roundup 
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2/3/2023
The Roundup Top Ten for February 3, 2023
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/25/2023
Florida's AP Fight Latest Battle in a Very Old Education War
by Bethany Bell
The state's rejection of the proposed curriculum as "indoctrination" stands on the foundation laid by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to establish the Lost Cause myth as the center of history education in the South for generations.
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SOURCE: Boston Globe
1/30/2023
Tyre Nichols's Death and America's Systemic Failure
by Peniel E. Joseph
Nichols's killing, like other police killings, emphasizes the need for what W.E.B. DuBois called "abolition democracy," meaning the "eradication of the institutions, vestiges, and badges of racial slavery and new investments in Black citizenship and dignity." This is more than "reform."
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
2/1/2023
We've Reached the Execution Stage of the Profession's Demise
by Jacques Berlinerblau
"The decisions which ravaged the future for coming generations of Ph.D.s were made not just by consultants and suits, but by those with Ph.D.s and likely a few peer-reviewed publications. This was scholar-on-scholar violence."
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/29/2023
Do French Pension Protests Reveal a Lazy Nation?
by Robert Zaretsky
French workers are among the most productive in Europe, but today's protests over a potential increase in the retirement age show a long tradition of defending the value of leisure as the chance to pursue one's own ends outside of paid labor.
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SOURCE: Slate
2/2/2023
Native Wikipedians Fight Back against Erasure of Indigenous History
by Kyle Keeler
While the internet is often seen as a hotbed of revisionism and "political correctness," Wikipedia editors who seek the inclusion of indigenous perspectives on American history often are stymied by resistant editors and the platform's rules, which discount the reliability of new, critical scholarship.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
1/30/2023
America's Lost Faith in the News
by Louis Menand
Politicians' success in demonizing and discrediting unfriendly news media threatens to undermine "the facts" as a shared social reality. Is anyone prepared to live in that world?
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/30/2023
On Florida's Erasure of Black History
by Lynn Pasquerella and Mary Dana Hinton
The Florida AP decision raises a host of troubling questions about what the state hopes to accomplish, with ominous implications for political enfranchisement, democratic deliberation, and civic connection.
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SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
1/30/2023
George Washington in Barbados?
by Erica Johnson Edwards
The local monuments to George Washington's 1751 visit to Barbados demonstrate the interconnectedness of American and Caribbean histories as well as the influence of Caribbean practices of enslavement on the institution in the United States.
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SOURCE: Richmond Times-Dispatch
1/31/2023
Beneath the Surface of Virginia's History Standards
by Edward L. Ayers
Virginia's Department of Education has ignored the guidance of historians and educators in revising the state's K-12 history standards. The example of how political appointees treated the role of African Americans in driving the movement for abolition is a telling example of the inadequate history they want to teach.
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SOURCE: Truthout
1/30/2023
Refuse a Return to "Normalcy" after Police Killings
by Austin McCoy
Refusing to accept avoidable death as part of American life—from COVID or police violence—is the foundation of change. Americans need to organize a national day of mourning in the form of a work stoppage.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/31/2023
If the Courts Won't Stop DeSantis Attacks on Higher Ed, What Will?
by John Warner
Academics have turned to the rhetoric of academic freedom to condemn the governor's moves to increase control over higher ed. The problem is that the public doesn't care about academic freedom—but they might be made to care about politicizing state colleges.
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SOURCE: TIME
1/26/2023
Why "Woke" is Such a Convenient Dog Whistle for the Right
by Samuel L. Perry and Eric L. McDaniel
The term hints at evoking demonized populations—Black and LGBTQ Floridians, for instance—while maintaining enough ambiguity to foster deniability about the consequences of legislation. It also has the auxiliary function of trolling white liberals.
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SOURCE: Yes!
1/26/2023
Why We Need Pirates
by Paul Buhle, Marcus Rediker and David Lester
Though vilified in popular culture, the history of piracy shows that many crews were egalitarian bands of maritime workers escaping their exploitation at the hands of merchant companies and navies. A new graphic adaptation of a recent history of piracy tells the story.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/29/2023
Mass Shootings Reflect the Narcissism of Young Men
by Tom Nichols
The injured grandiosity of "failed to launch" young men is pushing them to seek outsize revenge, often using the readily available guns.
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SOURCE: The Bulwark
1/27/2023
Kids Could Teach Republican Pols a Lesson About Handling the Harsh Truth
by Margaret McMullan
"Decades after she first walked into Little Rock Central High, Elizabeth Eckford said, 'True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared past'."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
1/29/2023
The Real Failures of January 6
by Karen J. Greenberg
Despite surface similarities, the attack on Brazil's government buildings earlier this month differed from January 6, 2021 in one key respect: the transfer of presidential power had already been accomplished. The contrast is sobering—for America.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
1/28/2023
The Police Killing of Tyre Nichols Was Heinous, but not an Aberration
by Simon Balto
Americans must not continue to presume that violent incidents are external to the basic role and function of policing in society.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
1/30/2023
Regina Twala's Stolen Life Work Highlights Colonialism Inside the Historical Profession
by Joel Cabrita
Regina Twala performed the intellectual labor that supported another intellectual's published work on African religious practices; her obscurity was the foundation of his fame.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
1/30/2023
Fear of a Black Studies Planet
by Roderick A. Ferguson
A scholar whose work was named in Florida's decision not to support the AP African American Studies course discusses a long history of conservative efforts to control textbooks and teaching and, failing that, to create politically useful hysteria about indoctrination.
News
- Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham on the AP Af-Am Studies Controversy
- 600 African American Studies Faculty Sign Open Letter in Defense of AP African American Studies
- Organization of American Historians Statement on AP African American Studies
- Historians on DeSantis and the Fight Over Black History
- How the Right Got Waco Wrong