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Harvard University

Does Harvard possess the remains of 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved people?

John Fea   |  June 3, 2022

Here is Gillian Brockell at The Washington Post: Harvard University holds the human remains of thousands of Native American people, despite a 1990 federal law requiring their return, according to a draft report leaked to the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson....

When Harvard grads attack the American “elite”

John Fea   |  March 28, 2022

Someone recently left a message on my voicemail asking me if I saw myself as part of the “liberal elite.” He is one of the regular callers who leaves voice mails whenever I write something here or elsewhere that they...

Ivy leaguers who are trying to destroy American democracy

John Fea   |  January 12, 2022

What do Josh Hawley, Steve Mnuchin, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz, Elise Stefanik, and Kayleigh McEnany have in common? They all have degrees from Ivy League institutions and they are all, in one...

Harvard’s Houghton Library digitizes its early American manuscripts

John Fea   |  June 15, 2021

Here is Anne Buress at The Harvard Gazette: In a recent virtual curatorial discussion, Houghton librarian John Overholt took an item from the Colonial North America collections to share with his audience. Rather than highlighting a letter from John Hancock or a...

When the KKK came to Harvard

John Fea   |  March 29, 2021

This is an excellent piece of undergraduate historical research and reporting. Here is a taste of Simon J. Levien’s piece at The Harvard Crimson: This article is my attempt to do “good history.” It represents a year’s worth of archival...

Cornel West is leaving Harvard. He will return to Union Theological Seminary.

John Fea   |  March 8, 2021

Some context. Here is The New York Times: Cornel West is abandoning his quest for tenure at Harvard and going back to Union Theological Seminary, where he first taught 44 years ago, the New York seminary announced on Monday. Over...

Cornel West is threatening to leave Harvard

John Fea   |  February 19, 2021

Harvard offered the 67-year-old public intellectual an endowed chair, a ten year contract, and a pay raise, but Cornel West is holding out for tenure. I can’t read the Boston Globe story because I don’t have subscription, but here is...

The new director of Harvard’s Warren Center for Studies in American History talks public history

John Fea   |  August 28, 2020

The Harvard Gazette is running an interview with Tiya Miles, the new director of the Warren Center for Studies in American History. Here is a taste: GAZETTE: What first drew you to public history? MILES: When I began my journey in the landscape...

How fast did news of American independence spread?

John Fea   |  July 7, 2020

I just ran across this Smithsonian piece from 2017. Fascinating: It was the breaking news to end all breaking news—the fledgling British colonies of North America were committing treason and declaring independence. But in an era long before smartphone push alerts, TV...

What John Quincy Adams Thought About His Pastors and Schoolmates

John Fea   |  May 21, 2020

This is a great post from J.L. Bell at Boston 1775. A taste: I promised more cattiness from John Quincy Adams as a college student. In his diary for the year 1787, Adams inserted several profiles of his classmates and other people he met...

Cornel West’s Commencement Address at Harvard Divinity School

John Fea   |  June 1, 2019

This resonates with me on many levels: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3TyTe827yg&w=560&h=315] Read the transcript here. A taste: As I look at myself, I can see the white supremacy in me. But oh, when I was at Charlottesville, looking in the eyes of...

The Latest from the Randall Stephens Collection: Historian Baseball Card Series

John Fea   |  March 30, 2019

Check out the entire collection here.  ...

“Till the stock of the Puritans die”

John Fea   |  March 29, 2018

Harvard University has changed the lyrics of the school’s alma mater. Goodbye Puritans. Read about it at The Boston Globe.  Here is a taste: The lyrics “Till the stock of the Puritans die,” the last verse in the 181-year-old song, will...

Ghost Dissertation Advisers

John Fea   |  March 7, 2018

I am thankful that I had an excellent dissertation adviser who cared about my work.  Katrin Schultheiss, the current chair of the Department of History at George Washington University, did not have the same experience.  She described her experience (at...

Drew Gilpin Faust on Free Speech: We live in a “highly polarized political and social environment, perhaps the most divisive since the era of the Civil War”

John Fea   |  May 27, 2017

Here is the Harvard president’s commencement address: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anZrIGqFAw4&w=560&h=315]...

Slavery at Harvard

John Fea   |  March 14, 2017

I just came across this article Lydialyle Gibson’s essay in Harvard Magazine titled “A Vast Slave Society.”  It is a report on a one-day conference at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute on slavery at America’s first institution of higher education and other...

Harvard Law School Removes Crest Linked to Slavery. Annette Gordon Reed Dissents

John Fea   |  March 5, 2016

Harvard Law School has decided to abandon the crest of the Isaac Royal family, a slaveholder who helped endow the school because it does not represent “Harvard values.” Not everyone at Harvard Law School agrees with the decision.  One of...

The Eugenics Movement at Harvard

John Fea   |  March 3, 2016

Adam S. Cohen  is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. It will be released this month with Penguin Press. Over at Harvard Magazine, Cohen shows how the prestigious university’s professors were once promoters...

The Colonial North American Project at Harvard University

John Fea   |  November 5, 2015 Leave a Comment

Harvard is digitizing its archival and manuscript collections related to 17th and 18th century North America. From the website of the Colonial North American Project: When complete, the project will make available to the world digitized images of all known […]

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