Departments

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Donald Trump

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    9/23/2020

    What Trump Doesn’t Understand About U.S. History

    by Sean Wilentz

    The real choice isn’t between Trump’s rendition of our history and the 1619 Project’s. It’s between ideological distortion and respect for facts, skepticism about pat answers and, above all, refusal to shape the past to fit a fixed political agenda.

  • SOURCE: Boston Globe
    9/22/2020

    Is it Fascism Yet?

    Columnist Renée Graham cites Ruth Ben-Ghiat's history of Italian fascism as a warning about authoritarianism's growth. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    9/25/2020

    Telling the Truth About Slavery Is Not ‘Indoctrination’

    “'We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans,' Du Bois wrote in Black Reconstruction." Today, American students' levels of ignorance about slavery suggests this too often remains true. 

  • 9/24/2020

    The White House Conference on History

    by HNN Staff

    On September 17, Constitution Day, the White House convened a panel discussion of the importance of history to the nation, devoting strong criticism to recent trends emphasizing the importance of racism to the founding and development of the nation.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    9/23/2020

    Trump’s TikTok Deal Shows how Trade with China is Woven into the American DNA

    by Sean Fraga

    "Americans’ beliefs about the value of transpacific trade informed every aspect of the transcontinental railroads. This history shows how deeply trade with China is woven into the American fabric and suggests President Trump’s hostility toward China is unlikely to outlast his administration."

  • SOURCE: Historical Horizons (Calvin University)
    9/23/2020

    I Rise to Speak In Favor of the Discipline I Taught

    by Bob Schoone-Jongen

    A retired history professor from a leading Christian institution rejects the premise that the historian's obligation is to promote a patriotic view of the past. 

  • SOURCE: Associate Press
    9/23/2020

    Dear Donald, Dear Mr. President: A Trump-Nixon ’80s tale

    Letters between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon in the 1980s, recently released by the Nixon Library, show the two men bonded over themes that resonate today: a shared distrust of the media, a desire to maximize TV ratings, the idea of using people as “props,” and more.

  • SOURCE: The Bulwark
    9/23/2020

    Donald Trump’s Bizarre History Conference

    by Ron Radosh

    "There is good history and bad history, and either can be written by historians on the left or on the right. There is no such thing as left-wing history or right-wing history. There is only historical research and the conclusions drawn from evidence."

  • SOURCE: Slate
    9/18/2020

    Trump’s Vision for American History Education Is a Nightmare

    by L.D. Burnett

    "As a historian who writes about the field of history’s place in the culture wars of the 1980s, I watched this conference and saw one long exercise in logrolling for the participants’ politically intertwined institutional commitments."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    9/21/2020

    Donald Trump vs. the Ivy League: An Election-Year Battle

    The Trump administration has always engaged in rhetorical attacks on Ivy League institutions as elitist, but critics say launching a civil rights investigation of Princeton represents an effort to weaponize executive branch agencies to fight a culture war. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    9/21/2020

    A Historian Takes on Trump's View of American History

    by Edward L. Ayers

    "I have practiced history for most of the half-century in which these wars over history have been waged — and I have yet to meet anyone who works to destroy the United States."