Links to Recent Articles of Interest:
“Poof! It’s Gone: Disappearing the America We Once Knew”
By Karen Greenberg, TomDispatch, posted May 13
Quoting Milan Kundera’s novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”), this article delineates the Trump administration’s wholesale erasure of public information maintained by government agencies. The author is a historian and director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law.
“Elon Musk Thought He Could Break History. Instead It Broke Him”
By David Nasaw, New York Times, posted May 12
Puts Elon Musk’s rise and (softly cushioned) fall in the context of how wealthy business owners have traditionally exercised influence with the federal government. The author is an emeritus professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center and has written widely read biographies of William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Carnegies, and Joseph Kennedy.
“When the Federal Government Denies Constitutional Rights”
By Alan Singer, Academe Blog, posted May 7
“When circumstances look dire, in an era when the federal government is seeking to deny fundamental constitutional rights to legal residents of the United States, it is important to remember formerly enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s response to the Supreme Court’s 7–2 majority decision against plaintiff Dred Scott in Dred Scott v. Sandford.” The author is a historian who directs social studies education at Hofstra University.
“The Legal Theory Behind Trump’s Power Grabs”
By Pema Levy, Mother Jones, posted May 5
How a theory of sweeping presidential power that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected in the Watergate era became gradually more respectable in conservative legal circles. The author is a reporter for Mother Jones and formerly a Washington correspondent for Newsweek.
“A Vietnam Story: From Otherness to Solidarity”
By JJ Johnson, Portside, posted May 2 (from The Washington Spectator)
A personal observation linking the 1960s to the present. The author was a member of the “Fort Hood Three” who served 28 months in prison for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War in 1966 and later became a union activist and editor of the 1199SEIU newspaper.
“What It Will Take to Stop Trump’s Assault on Coal Miners (and the Rest of Us)”
By Kevin Young, Common Dreams, posted May 2
Draws lessons for the present from the mass movement of West Virginia coal miners in the “black lung” strikes of 1969 which won health and safety protections at both the state and federal levels. The author teaches history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is a member of the H-PAD Steering Committee.
“Trump, Historians, and the Lessons of U.S. Tariff History”
By Elizabeth McKillen, LAWCHA Labor Online, posted May 1
Challenges Trumpian understandings of tariff history, focusing especially on the “Gilded Age” of the late nineteenth century. The author is a labor historian and a professor emerita of US history at the University of Maine.
“Symposium: Was the Vietnam War a Mistake or Fatal Flaw in the System?”
Responsible Statecraft, posted April 30
Twelve observers offer brief responses to the question “Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?” They are: Andrew Bacevich, Greg Daddis, Carolyn Eisenberg, Morton H. Halperin, Stever Kinzer, Noah Kulwin, Lobert Levering, Anatol Lieven, Daniel McCarthy, Robert Merry, Paul Pillar, Tim Shorrock, Monica Duffy Toft, Stephen Walt, and Cora Weiss.
By Sean Wilentz, New York Review of Books, posted April 25
Debunks JD Vance’s claim that Andrew Jackson as president defied an order from the Supreme Court, providing a basis for Trump to do the same. “Despite Vance’s ignorant bluster about Jackson, such an action would not just be lawless; it would be without precedent in the country’s history.” The author teaches US history at Princeton University.
By David Cortright, Boston Review, posted April 24
Recounts the multi-level movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s that helped to end the Vietnam War, offering parallels and lessons for present-day resistance to the Trump administration. The author was part of the movement that he describes, first as a GI and then as a civilian. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
“The Long History of Lawlessness in US Policy toward Latin America”
By Greg Grandin, The Intercept, posted April 22
The author quotes Bertold Brecht: “Don’t romanticize the ‘good old days’ when fighting the ‘bad new days’ of fascism.” This article puts the Bukele regime of mass incarceration in El Salvador in the context of US-backed repression in Latin America from the 1940s on, with telling examples. The author teaches history at Yale University.and is the author of America, America: A New History of the New World (Penguin Press, 2025).
“Said’s Specter: Columbia Is at War with Its Intellectual Heritage”
By Timothy Brennan, Chronicle of Higher Education, posted April 14
On the influence of the Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward Said on Columbia University during his forty-year teaching career there from 1963 to 2003, arguing that the current assault on Columbia is, in effect, “a deliberate attack on Said’s legacies.” The author teaches at the University of Minnesota and is the author of Places of Mind, A Life of Edward Said (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2021).Thanks to Rusti Eisenberg and an anonymous reader for suggesting articles included in the above list and to Roger Peace (creator of theU.S. Foreign Policy History and Resource Guide) for valuable consulting. Suggestions can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.