On April 22, 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 7. The “Individual Freedom” bill: Provides that subjecting individuals to specified concepts under certain circumstances constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin; revising requirements for...
I think it’s fair to say we are in the midst of another round of history wars. Today’s so-called “activist historians” invoke a usable past to preach political and social agendas, while more traditional historians (of all political persuasions–from Trotskyite...
Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford recently published Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. It has a provocative title and an even more provocative argument: Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas...
The responses to the 1619 Project sure make it look that way. Complexity, of course, is one of the 5 Cs of historical thinking. Over at Slate, Rebecca Onion traces the conservative backlash to The New York Times project back to...
The January issue of the OAH Magazine of History is devoted to “History Wars.” I am thrilled to have the lead article in this issue: “Using the Past to ‘Save’ Our Nation: The Debate Over Christian America.” At the moment,...
