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History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup Top 10!

What Naomi Wolf and Cokie Roberts teach us about the need for historians

by Karin Wulf

Without historical training, it’s easy to make big mistakes about the past.

Free Speech on Campus Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You

by Lee C. Bollinger

Norms about the First Amendment are evolving—but not in the way President Trump thinks.

Don't buy your dad the new David McCullough book for Father's Day

by Neil J. Young

McCullough appears to have written the perfect dad book, but it's romantic view is the book's danger.

Voter Restrictions Have Deep History in Texas

by Laurie B. Green

Texas’ speedy ratification of the 19th Amendment represents a beacon for women’s political power in the U.S., but a critical assessment of the process it took to win it tells us far more about today’s political atmosphere and cautions us to compare the marketing of voting rights laws with their actual implications.

What Does It Mean to be "Great" Amidst Global Climate Change

by David Bromwich

How can Robert Frost, Graham Greene, Immanuel Kant, and others help us understand values and climate change?

How the Central Park Five expose the fundamental injustice in our legal system

by Carl Suddler

The Central Park Five fits a historical pattern of unjust arrests and wrongful convictions of black and Latino young men in the United States.

The biggest fight facing the U.S. women’s soccer team isn’t on the field

by Lindsay Parks Pieper and Tate Royer

The history of women in sports and the discrimination they have long faced.

I Needed to Save My Mother’s Memories. I Hacked Her Phone.

by Leslie Berlin

After she died, breaking into her phone was the only way to put together the pieces of her digital life.

How to Select a Democrat to Beat Trump in 2020

by Walter G. Moss

In a Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 we want someone who possesses the major wisdom virtues, virtues that will assist him/her to further the common good. In addition, we need someone with a progressive unifying vision.

Warren Harding Was a Better President Than We Think

by David Harsanyi

An analysis of presidential rankings and a defense of Warren G. Harding.