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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6/16/2023
The Roundup Top Ten for June 16, 2023
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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SOURCE: Oxford American
6/6/2023
Lady Vols Country
by Jessica Wilkerson
The author remembers Pat Summitt's championship women's basketball teams at the University of Tennessee as a demonstration of how sports "encompass a battleground for determining how gender manifests in the world, how women and girls can use their bodies, and who can access self-determination."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/9/2023
The Targeting of Bail Funds is an old Weapon in the Civil Rights Backlash
by Say Burgin and Jeanne Theoharis
Atlanta and Georgia law enforcement's arrest of the leaders of a fund dedicated to securing bail for protesters opposing "Cop City" shows that protest movements have long depended on bailing out activists, and the forces opposed to change have long known it.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
6/11/2023
Pat Robertson Helped Make Intolerance a Permanent Plank in the Republican Platform
by Anthea Butler
Pat Robertson lived at the intersection of public piety, apocalyptic rhetoric, and the pursuit of profit, and did as much as anyone to make the vilifiation of opponents as threats to the moral fiber of the nation a part of conservative politics.
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SOURCE: Substack
6/12/2023
Medgar Evers's Memory Shows Us Unchecked Violent Rhetoric Will Yield Political Violence
by Claire Potter
"Medgar Evers died at the hands of people whose ideological (and, in some cases, actual) descendants threaten our democracy with violence today."
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SOURCE: The Hill
6/8/2023
Is Oklahoma's Religious Charter School Good News for Secularists?
by Jacques Berlinerblau
Oklahoma recently approved the first publicly-funded religious charter school in the United States. Is it possible that this ambitious move will backfire when schools representing all denominations and faiths demand equal treatment?
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SOURCE: Jacobin
Indoctrination in Schools? How About a Century of Capitalist Propaganda?
by Jennifer Berkshire
A century ago, the electric power industry faced an existential crisis as government mulled over public rural electrification programs. Their solution was to provide teachers and schools with propaganda for the magic of private enterprise, the first wave of business's efforts to control curriculum.
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SOURCE: CNN
6/13/2023
The Lesson of Germany's Most Famous Trans Woman? Freedom Requires Joy
by Samuel Huneke
As anti-trans and homophobic legislation and rhetoric pervade the political arena, this Pride month may feel less than celebratory. A historian of queer life under both Nazism and East German Communism says it's a mistake to embrace doom.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/13/2023
DEI Education in America Goes Back to the 18th Century
by Bradford Vivian
The pioneering Quaker educator Benezet implemented student-centered reforms that accounted for differences in background and experiences of injustice, reflecting the spirit, if not the language, of contemporary DEI principles in education and teacher training.
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SOURCE: Jacobin
6/14/2023
Turning Universities Red
by Steve Fraser
American colleges were built to serve the children of elites and maintain the social order they dominated. Despite fears of liberal indoctrination on campus, growing labor movements including all workers are the only way that colleges will really make a more egalitarian society.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
6/14/2023
The Daiquiri is the History of American Empire in a Cocktail
by Ian Seavey
"The daiquiri rose to prominence as a direct result of the American imperial project in the Caribbean during the burgeoning classic cocktail age from 1860 to 1920."
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SOURCE: The Conversation
6/13/2023
The Forgotten History of Japanese Internment in Hawaii
by Olivia Tasevski
Although Hawaii is associated with the United States being victimized by foreign attack, the history of internment of Japanese Americans on the islands should also remind us of the U.S. government's human rights abuses.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
6/12/2023
How Must We Respond to MAGA Threats of Political Violence?
by Tom Nichols
"Finally, there’s nothing wrong with some dismissive scorn among sensible voters. These people are not 10 feet tall. They are, in fact, small and ridiculous."
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6/2/2023
The Roundup Top Ten for June 2, 2023
The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
6/1/2023
Amid Anti-Woke Panic, Interdisciplinary Programs Inherently Vulnerable
by Timothy Messer-Kruse
Because standards of academic freedom like those of the AAUP tie that freedom to expertise within recognized professional communities of scholars, those doing interdisciplinary work and working in programs like ethnic studies have less institutional protection against charges that they are engaged in politics rather than scholarship.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/25/2023
The Right to Dress However You Want
by Kate Redburn
New anti-transgender laws should prompt a legal response, but they also require a fundamental recognition: laws prescribing gendered dress codes infringe on everyone's freedom of expression.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/30/2023
WGA Strike Latest Example of Cultural Workers Joining Together as Entertainment Technology Changes
by Vaughn Joy
The development of television and online content have historically forced multiple Hollywood unions to join forces to secure a share of the returns of new techology or risk being frozen out entirely.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
6/1/2023
Does the Man at the Top Get the Blame for Bankruptcy? French Nobles Found Out the Hard Way
by Christine Adams
French nobility expected a bankruptcy crisis abetted by their intransigence to force Louis XVI to accept a constitutional monarchy. They got revolution instead. Does the House Freedom Caucus understand this lesson?
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/31/2023
Can We Solve the Civics Education Crisis?
by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman
Universal schooling created the potential for a unifying civic curriculum that, paradoxically, has been the subject of perpetual disagreement regarding its contents. A recent bipartisan roadmap for civics education that makes those disagreements central to the subject matter may be the only way to move forward.
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SOURCE: CNN
6/1/2023
James Comey is Deluded About Trump's Influence on Republicans
by Julian Zelizer
The former FBI director blamed Trump for the growing Republican hostility toward the FBI, among other government institutions. But the belief that major institutions are compromised by un-American elements has a long and deep history on the right that won't be eliminated whenever Trump happens to leave the political stage.
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