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.
Source: New York Review of Books
5/2/2023
by Adam Hochshild
If conservatives are against "woke" history education, what, exactly, are they for? There's much to be learned from the curriculum created by the Michigan christian college, which presents a jarring contrast with the themes presented in the new Hulu documentary series based on Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project.
Source: Bloomberg CityLab
4/27/2023
Historian Nicholas Dagen Bloom says that American politicians, especially at the municipal level, made a series of choices that diverted resources from mass transit to auto transportation. Neither racism nor the market nor secret conspiracies by industry made these choices inevitable.
Source: Washington Post
4/27/2023
by David M. Perry
According to Annie Abrams's new book, the Advanced Placement program has subordinated high school students' learning to standardized testing and enabled public universities to gut humanities departments by accepting high school work for college credit. Her dive into education history explains how that happened.
Important judicial decisions are increasingly made through the procedural rulings the Court makes on lower-court decisions, without extensive briefings, arguments, or publicity. Law professor Steve Vladek explains why this matters, and why Samuel Alito is mad at him.
Source: Washington Post
4/26/2023
by Valerie Strauss and James Harvey
One of the educators who served on the commission that developed an influential report on the state of American education argues that the report was built to serve an anti-public school ideology, and that its conclusions were a foundation for the culture war battles over schooling today.
Source: Mother Jones
4/24/2023
In "The Rediscovery of America" the historian presses for encounter, rather than discovery, to be the dominant theme of early American history. He explains here what can be gained by adopting this lens.
Source: The Atlantic
4/19/2023
Abortion law historian Mary Ziegler says that a younger generation of uncompromising leaders is likely to win control of the antiabortion movement and push for legislation and policy changes without regard for their public popularity. Daniel K. Williams says the Dobbs ruling has only fueled their sense of righteousness.
Source: The New Yorker
4/17/2023
Jonathan Healey's "The Blazing World" insists on seeing the ideological and theological roots of revolt as drivers of insurgency.
Source: The Atlantic
4/22/2023
by Tiya Miles
With David Waldstreicher's book, "there can now be no doubt of Wheatley’s importance not only to African America but also to the country and culture as a whole," alongside Paine, Jefferson and Franklin.
Source: The New Yorker
4/21/2023
by Jay Caspian Kang
Political scientist Cedric Johnson argues in a new book that protest movements have fixated on racial identity at the expense of making a broad critique of how policing defends an unequal and exploitative society and building a bigger coalition for change. Writer Jay Caspian Kang puts this argument in the context of debates about identity politics from the center to the left.
Source: The Nation
4/18/2023
by Gerald Horne
A new biography by John L. Williams examines the connections that the pathbreaking radical intellectual CLR James drew between the Haitian revolution and global struggles for emancipation in the 20th century.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
4/24/2023
Annie Abrams argues that the prevalence of Advanced Placement courses in American high schools distorts the goals of education and shortchanges students from experiencing higher-level learning in the humanities.
Source: New York Times
4/24/2023
Some leading scholars in Black studies have signed petitions calling on the College Board to revise the course, and are planning a nationwide day of protest on May 3 around “freedom to teach and to learn.” Civil rights groups and teachers’ union leaders are also set to participate.
Source: The Atlantic
4/18/2023
A new book asks whether microbes have been bending the narrative arc of history all along.
Source: The New Yorker
4/13/2023
Isaac Chotiner interviews the law professor and digs deeper into his skepticism of the state charges against Donald Trump.
Source: American Academy of Arts and Sciences
4/20/2023
Congratulations to Jean Allman, Marcia Chatelain, Linda Colley, Nelson Lichtenstein, Ann M. McGrath, Tiya Miles, and Steven J. Zipperstein on their election to the AAAS in 2023.
Source: NPR
4/16/2023
Lauren MacIvor Thompson and Mary Ziegler discuss the history of the 19th century Comstock Act and its appeal to abortion opponents as a legal tool to ban abortion nationally.
Source: Nature
4/17/2023
Early depictions of the fetus in utero—imaginative as much as descriptive—were a boon to obstetric medicine, but also placed the fetus above the mother in terms of the medical system's concern, contends medical historian Rebecca Whiteley
Source: New York Times
4/17/2023
Scholars like Doran Larson and Vesla Mae Weaver are working to bring the writings of incarcerated men and women to light as valuable sources of insight not only on prison life but fundamental questions of freedom.
Source: The Nation
4/18/2023
by Priya Satia
Journalist Sathnam Sanghera insists that British education needs to renew a focus on empire to allow students to understand the global significance of empire and colonialism in the present, particularly as contemporary Brits debate the merits of a multicultural society.
