• Skip to main content
  • Current
  • Home
  • About
    • About Current
    • Masthead
  • Podcasts
  • Blogs
    • The Way of Improvement Leads Home
    • The Arena
  • Reviews
  • 🔎

activist history

The American Historical Association votes to condemn “scholasticide” in Gaza

John Fea   |  January 8, 2025

From the AHA website: Whereas the US government has underwritten the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign in Gaza with over $12.5 billion in military aid between October 2023 and June 2024; Whereas that campaign, beyond causing massive death and injury […]

Episode 120: “Popular Historians in Post-War America”

John Fea   |  October 16, 2023

Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the “public” they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing […]

Should American historians seek to emulate Howard Zinn’s approach to popular history?

John Fea   |  July 18, 2023

As some of you know, I am working on a three-volume project, geared to a general reading audience, on evangelicals and politics in the twentieth-first century. Sometimes I don’t know if I am doing journalism or writing history, but I […]

Staughton Lynd, 1929-2022

John Fea   |  November 18, 2022

We brought Staughton Lynd’s death to your attention yesterday. We now have an obituary. Here is the New York Times: Staughton Lynd, a historian and lawyer who over a long and varied career organized schools for Black children in Mississippi, […]

Staughton Lynd, RIP

John Fea   |  November 17, 2022

I haven’t found an obituary yet, but Twitter is reporting that the activist-historian/historian-activist has died at the age of 92. I am sure we will have a few more things to say about Staughton Lynd‘s death in the coming days, […]

AHA president James Sweet: “The apology I issued” was not a “retraction.” Activists historians are starting a fight they will not win.

John Fea   |  October 31, 2022

Over at The Atlantic, David Frum revisits James Sweet’s column at the Perspectives on History. I covered this controversy about history and presentism in a way that was favorable to Sweet’s position. See these posts: The James Sweet/AHA blowup What […]

Larry Schweikart: activist historian

John Fea   |  September 17, 2022

Back in 2002 I met Larry Schweikart. He was a professor of history at the University of Dayton. I was interviewing for a job in the history department at the University of Dayton. He may have even been on the […]

Joan Scott and David Bell debate history, presentism and power

John Fea   |  August 26, 2022

In the wake of AHA president’s James Sweet’s “controversial” column in Historical Perspectives, David Bell of Princeton and Joan Scott of the Institute of Advanced Study have responded at The Chronicle of Higher Education. (See our coverage here and here […]