Roundup

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.

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• 
• SOURCE: USA Today
  2/24/2021
  

  I Couldn't Unlearn the Name of My Great-Great-Grandfather's Enslaved Person — And I Didn't Want To

  by Ann Banks

  "It is one thing to recognize systemic racism and to agitate for a more just and anti-racist society. Yet it is something else truly to open yourself to the heart-stopping details, the specific horror of kidnapping a 2-year-old child, a child whose name I know."

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/24/2021
  

  Many Black Americans Aren’t Rushing to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine – A Long History of Medical Abuse Suggests Why

  by Esther Jones

  From J. Marion Sims to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments to the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks' DNA, there are ample historical reasons for Black Americans to feel that medical authorities are unconcerned with their safety and mistrust new COVID vaccines. Acknowledging this history is essential for public health authorities to gain trust. 

• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/22/2021
  

  The Campaign to Free the Wilmington 10 Holds the Key to Successful Activism Today

  by Kenneth Janken

  A campaign to free 10 racial justice protesters in 1972 worked because it connected the cause to the problems with police, poverty, and racism experienced by a broad cross section of the community, and "recognize[d] racism not as separate from history but as part of historical processes and political economy."

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/21/2021
  

  Spin Doctors Have Shaped the Environmental Debate for Decades

  by Melissa Aronczyk

  E. Bruce Harrison shifted American business's response to the environmental movement from a posture of denial and refusal to one of strategic compromise that elevated industry's scientists to an authoritative position which has kept a brake on green reforms and regulation. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/25/2021
  

  Militarism, Foreign Policy, International Relations

  by Stephen Wertheim

  A historian of American interventionism argues that a return to the "normal" liberal international order will mean further commitment to using the military as a primary tool of international relations and the continuation of endless and destructive warfare. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  2/25/2021
  

  The Tokyo Moment: What Developing Cities Can Learn From The Postwar Japanese Capital

  by Ben Bensal

  "Studying postwar Tokyo helps historicize the discourse on megacities, which is still in its infancy. While there are important similarities between today’s megacities in terms of their size, organizational complexity, and socio-economic challenges, there are important contextual differences that are best assessed using a historical approach."

• 
• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  2/25/2021
  

  QAnon and the Satanic Panics of Yesteryear

  by Daniel N. Gullotta

  "The perception of a Christian nation in religious freefall fits almost seamlessly with QAnon’s conviction that the United States is under spiritual assault."

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  2/23/2021
  

  No, Classics Shouldn’t ‘Burn’

  by James Kierstead

  A classicist offers a rebuttal to a recent critique of the field, arguing that practitioners are justified in evaluating a "western civilization" but do so from a multitude of perspectives.

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  2/24/2021
  

  What Counts, These Days, In Baseball?

  by David Henkin

  A cultural historian considers recent baseball controversies in light of new books on the sport, and concludes that ideas of fair competition have much more to do with our social context than fans acknowledge. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/25/2021
  

  The Republican Party Is Now in Its End Stages

  by Tom Nichols

  "The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s."

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/24/2021
  

  A Path to Citizenship for 11 Million Immigrants is a No-Brainer

  by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz

  The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act showed the effectiveness of a large-scale amnesty for undocumented immigrants and reflected a reasonable and pragmatic approach to normalizing the status of immigrants as workers and community members. It should be remembered as a success and a model. 

• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  2/23/2021
  

  Higher Ed’s Misguided Purging of Trump Supporters

  by Jonathan Zimmerman

  "The real threat isn’t a horde of evil Trumpers clamoring at our gates. It’s our quest to root out the enemies of democracy, which never ends well for the university."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  2/22/2021
  

  My Brother’s Keeper

  by Ada Ferrer

  Historian Ada Ferrer offers her own family history of separation and reunification around the Cuban revolution. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/19/2021
  

  Five Myths About Black History

  by Keisha N. Blain

  From slavery to emancipation, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Brown v. Board of Education, and Black Power, widespread partial knowledge of Black history shows that school curricula need to do more to connect the history of Black Americans to the nation's history. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Asia-Pacific Journal
  2/15/2021
  

  Will the Nuclear Powers Ever Be Willing to Forgo Their Nuclear Weapons?

  by Lawrence Wittner

  The collapse of the Soviet Union has paradoxically created a climate where the perceived danger of nuclear weapons has waned, taking energy from a growing movement toward arms control and disarmament. 

• 
• SOURCE: Bright Lights Film Journal
  2/23/2021
  

  A Star Is Shorn: Thanks to Woefully Underinformed Campus Activists, Acting Legend, Badger Alum, and Civil Rights Champion Fredric March Is Suddenly “Off Wisconsin”

  by George Gonis

  In 2018, the University of Wisconsin stripped actor Fredric March's name from a campus theater because of his brief affiliation in 1919 with a campus society called the Honorary Ku Klux Klan. The author argues that this misconstrues the nature of the society, which was not affiliated with the "Invisible Empire" KKK, and erases March's steadfast support for civil rights and opposition to Nazism.

• 
• SOURCE: Informed Comment
  2/17/2021
  

  From COVID to Power Outages in Ice Storms, the Texas Republican Party has Created a Failed State

  by Juan Cole

  Texas Republicans have gotten out of the way of the market and preached the futility of government action. A non-winterized utility grid is the result. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/23/2021
  

  Energy Deregulation Worsened the Texas Crisis — And Enron is Partly to Blame

  by Gavin Benke

  The problems in Texas are a product of an approach to the energy business that Lone Star State companies like Enron pursued at the end of the 20th century. 

• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/21/2021
  

  Emmanuel Macron’s Socially Constructed Bogeymen

  by Daniel W. Drezner

  What, exactly, "Islamo-leftism" is, and what relationship it could possibly have to American academic theories, are two big questions left unanswered by the French President's attacks on academic ideas. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/23/2021
  

  Having Vaccines Alone isn’t Enough to Defeat COVID-19

  by Joyce Chaplin

  Early efforts at smallpox innoculation showed the importance of social and political factors in making new medical technologies effective.