I am trying to get former Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust on The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast, but I think her publicist is ghosting me! 🙂 I am hoping that Faust might be willing to consider smaller...
Here is AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman: The Florida Board of Education approved new standards of instruction in African American history on July 19, 2023. A firestorm of protest erupted immediately from a range of public figures (including the vice president of...
In my book Why Study History (revised second edition coming in March 2024!) I introduce students and other readers to Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke’s five Cs of historical thinking. They are change over time, context, causality, complexity, and contingency....
Last academic year a student told me that they were offended by an image I showed in a Reconstruction Era lecture. I had another student complain because I said that systemic racism was built into colonial Virginia society after 1680...
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...
Here is Sarah Mervosh at The New York Times: National test scores released on Wednesday showed a marked drop in students’ knowledge of U.S. history and a modest decline in civics, a sign of the pandemic’s alarming reach, damaging student...
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...
If you are interested, let me know. It will be a night class (6:15-9:15) that will meet once a week. We are looking for someone: The course is geared toward non-history majors, but it is likely that a handful of...
Many of you are following the debate in Florida over the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies courses. If you are not familiar with this controversy, get up to speed here and here. Over at Politico, historian Jonatan Zeitz...
Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historian Association, and Jeremy C. Young, the senior manager for free expression and education at PEN America, weigh-in on attempts by state legislatures to influence what happens in K-12 history classrooms. Here...
Over the years the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) has worked hard to cultivate relationships with secondary school history teachers. I have been honored over the years to be part of these initiatives and am thrilled to see this...
Most historians agree with the title of this post. So do many Americans. But there are others who still claim that the Civil War was about something other than slavery. Watch: Yesterday I showed this video to my Civil War...
Over at Esquire, Abigail Covington interviews Harvard historian Donald Yacovone on his recent book, Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity. Here is taste: ESQUIRE: You make it very clear from the start that...
Congratulations! Here is the press release: NEW YORK, NY (September 27, 2022) –The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced today that Misha Matsumoto Yee, a history teacher at St. Andrew’s Schools in Honolulu, Hawaii, has been named the 2022 National History Teacher of...
Eric Foner reflects on his life as a historian in this interview with Nawal Arjini at New York Review of Books. A taste: Nawal Arjini: How did you come to specialize in Civil War history? Eric Foner: When I was in college in...
James H. Sweet is correct. Historians these days seem more interested in interpreting the past through the lens of the present. Here is a taste of his piece at Perspectives: Twenty years ago, in these pages, Lynn Hunt argued “against...
University of Pennsylvania education historian Jonathan Zimmerman reflects on the wars over history in schools. A taste: Last year, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon likewise called on right-wing Americans to capture the schools. “The path to save the nation is...
Twenty-two years ago, when I regularly taught the second half of the United States history survey (I’ve never taught it at Messiah University), I used a lot of music in class. I still have a small CD collection from those...
Over at Inside Higher Ed, historian Steven Mintz reflects on Richard Cohen’s Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past. The entire piece is definitely worth your time. Here is a taste: In 1879, Albion W. TourgĂ©e anonymously published a...
Here is more from the American Historical Association website: To date, at least 14 states have passed legislation prohibiting the teaching of concepts associated with race and slavery in the United States. At least another 16 states have similar bills...
