Monthly Archives: February 2022

History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours

Francesca Morphakis,PhD Candidate in History at the University of Leeds

History is narratives. From chaos comes order. We seek to understand the past by determining and ordering facts; and from these narratives we hope to explain the decisions and processes which shape our existence. Perhaps we might even distill patterns and lessons to guide but never to determine our responses to the challenges faced today. History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours. It is so compelling a subject because it encapsulates themes which expose the human condition in all of its guises and that resonate throughout time: power, weakness, corruption, tragedy, triumph Nowhere are these themes clearer than in political history, still the necessary core of the field and the most meaningful of the myriad approaches to the study of history. Yet political history has fallen out of fashion and subsequently into disrepute, wrongly demonised as stale and irrelevant. The result has been to significantly erode the utility of ordering, explaining and distilling lessons from the past.

Historys primary purpose is to stand at the centre of diverse, tolerant, intellectually rigorous debate about our existence: our political systems, leadership, society, economy and culture. However, open and free debate as in so many areas of life is too often lacking and it is not difficult to locate the cause of this intolerance.

Writing history can be a powerful tool; it has shaped identities, particularly at the national level. Moreover, it grants those who control the narrative the ability to legitimise or discredit actions, events and individuals in the present. Yet to marshal history and send it into battle merely to serve the needs of the present is misuse and abuse. History should never be a weapon at the heart of culture wars. Sadly, once again, it is: clumsily wielded by those who deliberately seek to impose a clear ideological agenda. History is becoming the handmaiden of identity politics and self-flagellation. This only promotes poor, one-dimensional understandings of the past and continually diminishes the utility of the field. History stands at a crossroads; it must refuse to follow the trend of the times.

Chandak Sengoopta,Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London

Any thoroughly researched and well-argued study of any aspect of the past counts, for me, as history. I do have a preference for historians who probe into the why and the how but, overall, I think that our scope should be as broad and as catholic as possible. I am old enough to remember a time when womens history was a separate field left, in many universities, to Womens Studies programmes and the existence of non-white people was recognised by historians only in the context of imperial history. Back then I am talking only about the late 1980s English, Anthropology and even History of Science departments were often more adventurous in addressing the history of others but their work, we were often told by real historians, wasnt proper history: they use novels as evidence, for heavens sake! Have any of them been near an archive?

If things are better today in History departments, it is because the disciplinary frontiers have been redrawn. But we still have our borders, not all of which are imposed by our institutions or funding authorities. How many History departments would exclude an otherwise excellent candidate only because her sources are mostly literary? A great many, I dare say, including my own. Many of the fields old fixations may have disappeared, but quite a few antiquated fences still await a well-aimed boot.

Political, economic and social history are, without question, essential; so is the history of Europe and America. But they are not the alpha and the omega of History as a discipline. We still do not pay enough attention to histories of ideas, of the arts, of medicine, of philosophy, of entertainment, of technology, whether in Europe or America or elsewhere. Nor do we feel particularly comfortable about biographical approaches to history. None of these potentially enriching themes can be addressed unless we jettison our atavistic equation of the archive with a collection of yellowing reams of paper. It wont be easy to dislodge this idol, but I would like to hope that coming generations of historians will chip away at it with greater conviction than mine has been able to muster.

Marcus Colla,Departmental Lecturer in European History at Christ Church, Oxford

Though almost 60 years have passed since E.H. Carr first posed the question, undergraduates still continue to find much to unpack in his answers. Indeed, Carrs 1961 book What is History? has enjoyed a longer shelf-life than most works of actual history.

But it is a curious fact that What is History? remains a go-to reference for teachers and students everywhere. After all, much of Carrs argument and the debates to which he was contributing might strike us now, as we attempt to answer the question, as being quaintly archaic. The interim 60 years encompass postmodernism, the rise of gender history and the memory boom, to name but a tiny sample. Todays students inhabit a completely different intellectual universe.

Carrs ideas clearly resonate more with our contemporary sensibilities than do those of his detractors, who remained wedded to the idea of an objective historian unfettered from all current assumptions. By contrast, Carr saw history as fundamentally a problem-solving discipline. Not only should historians divest themselves of the illusion that they could somehow stand outside the world in which they live, he argued. They should in fact embrace the fact that the study of the past could be oriented to the needs of the present.

One can immediately see the appeal of such an argument today. In an academic world where the humanities are under greater pressure to justify their significance than ever before, studying the past for the pasts sake no longer cuts it. But I dont think this is the whole story. Rather, I sense that the enduring fascination with Carr reflects something much more fundamental in how we view the relationship between past and present. For instance, we are surely less inclined than previous generations to demand rigid dichotomies between history on the one hand and memory or heritage on the other. Furthermore, were more democratic in who we believe history belongs to: who from the past it includes, and who in the present can benefit from it.

Each historian will view the relationship between past and present differently. But it was Carrs great achievement to identify the tensions of this relationship as the very engine of the discipline itself.

Faridah Zaman,Associate Professor of History, University of Oxford

One way to attempt to answer this question is to ask ourselves what and who are histories for? A common starting point might be that histories are useful for telling us how we got here. Such histories might take the form of origin stories, of relatively linear and perhaps teleological accounts how did we come to organise our societies and political systems in the ways that we have now, for instance or, as the apocryphal saying goes, a series of lessons to learn from in order to avoid the ignominy of repetition.

Such an understanding of history conceals within itself a more exciting and fraught though not necessarily antithetical possibility. Just as we might look to the past to better understand the myriad, complicated ways in which our present world came to exist, historians might also set themselves the task of illuminating worlds unrealised and of other presents that might have existed. Such histories, counter-intuitively, help us understand our own times better either by underscoring the contingency of the world around us or, depending on your perspective, the enduring power of the structures responsible for foreclosing those other paths.

These kinds of histories require attending to and often recovering and reconstructing narratives and perspectives that have been lost in dominant historical accounts. My own work has focused on unsuccessful revolutions and failed political visions in the early 20th century. More broadly, we might consider it a fundamental task of history to reveal the complexity and plurality that people lived with in the past. Such histories can demonstrate how differently people have thought about and related to the world around them, including other ways of recording their ideas and experiences. Much of this terrain used to be marginal to History proper; M.K. Gandhi noted as much in 1909 when he dismissed conventional history as simply a record of war. In recovering what has been subsumed and forgotten for instance, radical dissenting traditions that were drowned out, or anticolonial resistance movements that were defeated history might instead serve much more emancipatory ends and open up spaces of critical and imaginative possibility for our own times.

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What is History? | History Today

An Indiana public school has become embroiled in controversy after a school counselor reportedly sent a letter to parents giving them the option to opt their children out of Black History Month lessons.

Why it matters: The Indiana case comes as some states impose new restrictionson diversity education under the guise of banning the teaching of critical race theory.

How it happened: In the letter posted to Twitter, Sprunica Elementary School counselor Benjamin White wrote that he will be teaching lessons related to "equity, caring, and understanding differences" in the next two weeks.

The latest: Brown County Schools Superintendent Emily Tracy acknowledged the letter in a message to students, families and staff on Wednesday.

Worth noting: The Indiana House has already passed a bill to restrict what teachers are allowed to say about race, politics and history in the classroom, IndyStar reports. The legislation is now with the state Senate.

The big picture: Since last year, 14 states have imposed such restrictions through legislation, executive actions or commission votes,an Education Week analysis found.

What they're saying:"Its so anti-intellectual. Its so rigidly closed. Its almost an effort to keep people walled off from the past," Yale historian David Blight told Axios after hearing about the Indiana opt-out controversy.

Link:

Indiana school's reported Black History Month opt-out option draws ire - Axios

February is Black History Month.

Why do we need Black History Month? Why dont we set aside special occasions to observe the history of other ethnicities in our country?

My answer to this question is that Black history tells a uniquely important story in our nation. It is a story that no other race or ethnicity shares. It is a story that must be grasped and understood if we are to understand our country as a whole, where it has been and where it needs to go.

Unique among a large percentage of Black Americans is a history in which their ancestors did not choose to come to America. They were brought here by force and enslaved. No other ethnicity shares a history in which their ancestors did not come here by choice.

According to the 1790 Census of the United States, of a population of 3,893,635, 17.8%, or a total of 694,280, were slaves.

In a nation founded on the principle of human liberty, almost one-fifth of the population were slaves. How should we understand this?

Some want to tell us that slavery is not just a stain on American history but that it defines America and American history. That America is a nation founded in racism and evil and that the task today is to reinvent and recreate the nation.

This is what wokeness and DEI diversity, equity and inclusion programming is about.

Those who have declared that the nation was evil at its birth now want to seize control and put themselves in charge of deciding what it should be about and what it should look like.

This is a great and dangerous distortion, doomed to add on to, not erase, the sin at Americas founding.

The proclamation from the White House noting National Black History Month 2022 says, Our nation was founded on an idea: that all of us are created equal and deserve to be treated with equal dignity throughout our lives.

This, I think, is false.

Our nation was not founded on an idea. An idea is a product of thought.

When slave trader John Newton, composer of the haunting hymn Amazing Grace, had the horrible confrontation with himself, realizing the grave sin he had committed, he wrote I was lost, but now Im found. / Was blind, but now I see.

Newton did not discover he had a bad idea and decide to replace it with a better idea.

He realized that there is truth in the world, which he gravely violated.

The ideals upon which our nation was founded were rooted in divine principles and recognition that all are created equal because all are the product of the same Creator.

It is for this reason that those who signed the Declaration of Independence concluded saying, With a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Sacred is not about ideas. Sacred is about faith and divine truth.

The presence of slavery at our nations founding was about Mans ability and willingness to sin.

Slavery was the symptom, not the cause.

Black History is documentation that even in a great nation, sin was present.

The Creator gave man the ability to choose. This is why freedom is important. Men cannot be denied their ability to choose. But they also cannot escape their responsibility to choose good over evil.

This is the lesson we must learn from Black History.

We will not live right, we will not treat our neighbors right, until we recognize that we all are the results of the same Creator.

America is in crisis today because recognition of that Creator has been widely purged.

And like the plantation owners that usurped truth, so today we have a new generation of usurpers.

This is what we must recognize and fix.

Star Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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Learning the lessons of Black history | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshalltown Times Republican

This past weekend, the Houston Astros made Major League Baseball history by promoting the first Dominican-born conditioning coach Hazael Wessin.

After eight seasons in the minor leagues, Wessin has been promoted to the major-league staff as an assistant strength and conditioning coach.

Wessin has worked as a Latin America coordinator, and as a strength coach in the Dominican Summer League, Class-A, Class-A Advanced and Triple-A for Houston. His promotion comes a month after the Astros lost athletic trainer Lee Meyers to the Miami Marlins.

With eight minor-league seasons behind him, Wessin had nothing but gratitude in his announcement on Instagram.

Thanks to all the people who believed in me when not a lot of people did, Wessin said via Instagram. Carlos Alfonso, Geremias Guzman, Brendan Verner, Bill Firkus and Rachel Balkovec. Ill always be thankful to each one of you. Thanks to all my former players at the Minor League Level because of you guys Im the coach Im today.

Want your voice heard? Join theClimbing Tal's Hill team!

Many former and present Astros prospects and players were excited for Wessins next step, including Robel Garcia, Freudis Nova, Alex De Goti, Garrett Stubbs, Enoli Paredes, Jose Siri and Cristian Javier.

Wessin worked with all these players, mostly at the Triple-A level this past season. He also followed the team during the postseason, as players and staff members of minor-league clubs joined the Astros in October.

These players were the first to congratulate Wessin on social media, while current staff at different minor-league levels reached out as well.

Nothing but hard work, discipline, attitude and trust in yourself are key for getting your dream to become real, DSL Astros strength and conditioning coachGeremias Guzman said to Wessin via Instagram.

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Astros make MLB history with staff promotion - Climbing Tal's Hill

The Chicago Bulls will enter the All-Star break 38-21 and on a five-game win streak thanks to Wednesdays 125-118 victory over the Sacramento Kings.

Here are 10 observations:

1.In a development that should surprise no one, this one was a shootout. The Bulls scored 125 points, shot 50 percent (for an NBA-high 23rd time this season) and committed just eight turnovers, yet this one hung in the balance until the final minutes of the fourth quarter because the Kings shot 51.2 percent and 12-for-30 from 3-point range.

2.DeMar DeRozan made NBA history with his seventh straight game of 35 or more points on 50 percent or better shooting, breaking the record previously set by Wilt Chamberlain in 1960-61 and 1963.

To put it precisely, DeRozan notched 38 points on 16-for-27 shooting to lead the charge against Sacramento. And, as has become a regular occurrence, he was at his best down the stretch, notching 12 points in the fourth quarter.

3.This must also be noted: Early in the period, as he faced double-teams on every ball-screen and sometimes in isolation, DeRozan consistently made the right read as a facilitator. In addition to those 12 fourth-quarter points, he handed out three of his six assists in the final frame. Hes now averaging 5.2 assists per game on the season, and 5.6 during the 35-point/50-percent shooting streak.

4.Coby White was brilliant yet again in what the Bulls hope is his last start in place of Zach LaVine for the time being.

Not only did White continue his recent hot streak of scoring posting a season-high 31 points he also continued to display the leap as a decision-maker he has made in his third NBA season, handing out six assists against one turnover. Five of those dimes came in the first half as he leveraged a handful of drives and closeout attacks into scoring opportunities for others.

White also drained a season-high-tying six 3-pointers for the second time in four games three in the fourth quarter deftly utilizing shot fakes and strategic spot-ups off his double-teamed teammates to free himself up. He's now hit 21 3s in his last four games, and with a 63.6 percent conversion rate.

5.Nikola Vuevi secured his 34th double-double of the season with a last-second rebound, bringing his final stat line to 21 points, 10 rebounds and three assists. He enters the break averaging 22.9 points, 12.8 rebounds and four assists in his last 14 games.

6.Javonte Green was questionable much of the day with a sprained ankle, but the Bulls are happy he made it onto the floor. Green scored in double-figures for the eighth time in 13 games since returning from a groin strain on Jan. 24, notching 15 points and making six of his seven field-goal attempts.

Again, the key to Greens success was finding gaps to cut through and spot up in, to the tune of 3-for-4 3-point shooting around his higher-gravity teammates. Green had one game in his NBA career with three made 3s entering this season, but now has two in his last three appearances.

7.Its beating a dead horse at this point, but the decimated nature of the Bulls bench must be noted. Still without LaVine, Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso and Patrick Williams, the teams reserve group of Troy Brown Jr., Derrick Jones Jr., Matt Thomas and Tony Bradley combined for just eight points on 2-for-12 shooting, including a third 0-fer from Brown Jr. (0-for-5) in his last four games.

It helped, then, that each of the Bulls starters cracked double-figures, with Ayo Dosunmu the low man at 12 points to go with six rebounds, six assists and two steals.

8.The 3-pointer that DeAaron Fox banked in just after the first-quarter buzzer may have gotten waved off, but the fact that it went in at all spoke to his hot start. He scored a game-high 14 points (on 6-for-8 shooting, 2-for-3 from 3) in the opening period, dicing the Bulls up on dribble-drives and pull-up jumpers throughout. He hardly slowed down from there, finishing with 33 points and nine dimes.

9.Dosunmu had his share of rookie moments checking Fox and committed four turnovers, including a head-scratcher on a late inbounds play with the games outcome decided.

That said, he also made the defensive play of the game with this chasedown block on Donte DiVincenzo:

10.LaVine joined the Bulls bench in street clothes for the second half, a good sign after Donovan told reporters pregame that LaVine's visit with a Los Angeles knee specialist went very well, and hes cleared to return when the Bulls reconvene after the All-Star break. LaVine is now bound for Cleveland:

Next up for the Bulls: A week off, before returning next Thursday at home against the Hawks.

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10 observations: DeRozan makes history in win over Kings - NBC Sports Chicago

There are a variety of events to choose from throughout the rest of the month. Some can also be attended virtually.

ST. LOUIS The Missouri History Museum's Black History Month program series starts Thursday, and there are several events to choose from throughout the rest of the month.

Most events are in person, but some can also be attended virtually. Click the links in the descriptions below for more information about the events, including time and if there are any capacity limits.

Thursday, Feb. 17: The Legacy of Homer G Philips HospitalYou'll learn more about the hospital and hear from a panel of contemporary Black medical practitioners about their experience in the profession today. Click here for more.

Friday, Feb. 18 - Saturday, Feb. 19: K-12 History Exploration Days "Protests and Progress: St. Louis Neighborhoods"This event will look at how neighborhoods in St. Louis have changed throughout the years. It'll include a photo collection of the historic Black neighborhood Mill Creek Valley, which was demolished in the mid-20th Century, and interactive drop-in stations.Click here for more.

Friday, Feb. 18: Storytelling in the Museum (ages 2-11) "Protests and Community Storytelling"This storytelling event will teach kids about "community, protest, and St. Louis neighborhoods through childrens books." There's also a special storytelling session on Zoom as well.Click here for more details.

Thursday, Feb. 24: Race, Violence, and Justice: The Mink Slide SalonSt. Louis filmmaker Owen K. Woodard will show a clip from his film "The Mink Slide" and Dr. Geoff Ward from Washington University will talk about "racial violence within American history, how it relates to Missouris history, and how reconciliation and healing can begin."Click here for more details.

Friday, March 4: St. Louis Regional STEAMaster Competition 2022Find out who the next STEAMaster of St. Louis is. This competition takes a new approach to science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education. Students will show their knowledge through rap or poetry.Click here for more details.

For a full list of events and details, click here.

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Here's what's going on at the Missouri History Museum for Black History Month - KSDK.com

SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) A Sarasota teacher dresses up as prominent African-Americans whove made history to teach her students Black history lessons.

Teidra Everett is a second grade teacher at Bay Haven Elementary School. She has taught there for two years, making it a point to educate her students about Black history. And in February, she gets really creative!

They come in excited like who is she? Who are you? Everett said.

Everett has dressed up as Ida B. Wells, Queen Latifah, Whitney Houston, Rosa Parks, Mae Jemison and many more.

Theyre going to remember she dressed up as this person and this person did that versus just reading it from a book, she said.

Everett creates PowerPoints and videos for the students about each person she dresses up as. The students keep a journal and are quizzed in March.

I dont want them to lack compassion for other peoples situations or their hardships, Everett said. I want to be able to connect on that level and I want my students to grow and be able to connect with people and not just dismiss them because they havent experienced it.

Everett is the only African American teacher at Bay Haven. She hopes other teachers, regardless of their race, will put more effort into teaching Black history.

I would like for this to be a district wide thing where people are not afraid to be expressive because African American history is American history, so it shouldnt be something youre afraid to talk about or something you dont honor because it is who we are as people, she said.

Even though Everett has been at Bay Haven for two years, she has been dressing up for Black history lessons for five years. She said she is a firm believer of being the change you want to see in the world. She hopes her efforts inspire other educators.

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Sarasota teacher gets creative with Black history lessons - WFLA

It seems as though every few years, a new wave of panic sweeps across America about the books being taught in schools. They are too conservative, or too liberal; theyre being suppressed, or theyre dangerous; theyre pushing an agenda; attention must be paid. This winter sees America in the grips of the latest version of this story, with conservative-driven school book bannings heating up across the country. And experts say theres a special virulence to this particular wave.

In Tennessee, a school board yanked Art Spiegelmans graphic Holocaust memoir Maus from the eighth grade curriculum. Last fall, a Texas legislator launched an investigation into 850 books he argued might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex, including The Legal Atlas of the United States and Shirley Jacksons The Lottery. In December, a Pennsylvania school district removed the LGBTQ classic Heather Has Two Mommies from school libraries.

Theres definitely a major upsurge in school book bannings, says Suzanne Nossel, CEO of the free speech organization PEN America. Normally we hear about a few a year. We would write a letter to the school board or the library asking that the book be restored, and very often that would happen.

In contrast, Nossel says, this year she finds herself hearing from different authors by the day about their books being banned. And the bans, too, are much more forceful than theyve been before. Some are an individual school board deciding to pull something from a curriculum or take it out of the library, she says. But there are also much more sweeping pieces of legislation that are being introduced that purport to ban whole categories of books. And thats definitely something new.

While the extremes to which the most recent book bannings go are new, the pattern they follow is not. Adam Laats, a historian who studies the history of American education, sees our current trend of banned books as being rooted in a backlash that emerged in the US in the 20th century. That backlash, he says, was against a specific kind of content, seen as teaching children, especially white children, that theres something wrong with America.

Looking at the school book bannings of the 1930s against the bannings of the 2020s can show us how history repeats itself even when we attempt to bury our history.

In the 1920s, Harold Rugg, a former civil engineer turned educational reformer, put together a highly respected line of social science textbooks. Lively and readable, they are the most popular books of their kind, have sold some 2,000,000 copies, are used in 4,000 U. S. schools, Time magazine reported in 1940. It added ominously: But recently the heat has been turned on.

They were intended to be a more progressive take on American society, Laats says. The banning of those books is almost creepily familiar compared to today.

Ruggs textbooks brought a Depression-era sense of class consciousness to their account of American history. They asked pointed questions about how class inequality persisted so sternly across the US, and whether America really was, as advertised, the land of opportunity.

For some objectors, these were questions no one had any business asking Americas children: They were un-American, subversive, and potentially Communist. As a jingoistic patriotism spread across the country in the lead-up to World War II, school boards, facing a wave of anti-Rugg sentiment, banned and even burned copies of the textbooks.

They went from being one of the most commonly used books in schools to becoming unfindable, says Laats.

Ruggs class-conscious American history didnt emerge all on its own. It was part of a larger shift in the way the country was beginning to think about itself, says education historian Jonathan Zimmerman.

In the early 20th century, the history profession, well, it professionalized, says Zimmerman. People got PhDs, they went to Germany, they learned how to do archival research. And they started to ask some different and hard questions. If the American Revolution is a fight for freedom, why are there 4 million enslaved people? Why would a third of white people be Tories and go to Canada? Some of that critique started to get into textbooks, and there was this huge backlash.

The challenges to books that questioned Americas narrative of ideological innocence and purity didnt only come from reactionary WASPs. German Americans, Polish Americans, Jewish Americans, and African Americans, they are the ones that kept this out, says Zimmerman. Groups that were in the process of clawing their way into being included in the American founding myth, after all, had a vested interest in keeping that myth going, the better to access the social capital that came with it.

If you diminish the revolution, in their minds, youre diminishing their respective contributions to it, says Zimmerman.

By and large, those groups were successful. Over the course of the 20th century, the great founding myth of America has found room to include and celebrate the contributions of all sorts of groups not just the founders, but also immigrants and women and foreign allies and people of color. But Zimmerman argues that this inclusion has by and large happened uncritically. You put all these new groups into the story, but the title of the book is still Quest for Liberty: Rise of the American Nation, he says.

Zimmerman argues that the most recent slew of conservative book bans is responding to a real change in the way American history is taught. That change was most famously codified by The 1619 Project, a New York Times essay series spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones that reframes the American story as one beginning in 1619, when the first slave ships came to America. And this new narrative, like Ruggss book before it, challenges a heroic narrative of liberty and freedom in which anyone might want to be included.

The 1619 Project is not a demand for inclusion. It isnt, says Zimmerman. I mean, its not against inclusion, of course; those people want inclusion, but thats not the point. It says, Okay, when we do start including, what happens to that big story? Is it a quest for liberty? Was this country founded on liberty? This is a fundamental question.

With the 1619 Project, says Laats, the core of the controversy is roughly: Is history the celebration of the founding fathers? Or is history a celebration of a broader root of freedom fighters, especially including enslaved people and Indigenous people as the true freedom fighters? The question at stake is, Laats argues: Who are we as Americans?

One of the oddities of this recent round of book bannings is that it comes just after a long, outraged news cycle of conservatives arguing that the left had become too censorious, with calls to remove classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from school curricula and Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilders name stripped from a childrens literature award. This conversation arguably reached its peak just last year when publishers faced furious backlash from the right after sending two Dr. Seuss books out of print because of their racist imagery.

The cancel culture is canceling Dr. Seuss, declared Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade in March 2021.

The disconnect between last years outrage and this years is striking.

If you dont like cancel culture, so-called; if you dont like Twitter mobs; if you dont like protesters on campus who reject conservative speakers; thats one thing, says PENs Nossel. But to respond to that with legislative bans on curriculum with prohibitions on certain books and ideas in the classroom is to introduce a cure thats far worse than any disease. If you put threats to free speech in a hierarchy, theres just no question that legislative bans based on viewpoint and ideology are at the top of the list.

Laats argues that this sort of abrupt about-face from the right, too, is part of a larger historical pattern.

The 20th-century pattern is pretty clear, if you take the 100-year perspective, Laats says. There has been progress on racial issues. It might feel depressingly stuck, but if you compare it to 1922 or even 1962, there has been progress. Same with LGBTQ rights. The difference is enormous. And with every stage of this broadening of who is considered a true American, theres been a co-option of the winning terms by the losing side. The anti-abortion movement is met by the pro-abortion movement; the LGBTQ rights movement on the left is met with claims of religious persecution from the right.

Laats points to Dinesh DSouza and William F. Buckley as masters of this strategy. Its this style of conservatism that is intimately familiar with more progressive attitudes in society, in a way that more progressive pundits tend not to be as familiar with conservative ideas, he says. Because progressive ideas though it might not feel like it, especially not for the last presidency progressive ideas have become more and more dominant.

Zimmerman and Nossel both say that conservatives success at banning books from schools should demonstrate that the left had become too willing to censor over the past decade.

What I worry about is that free speech is losing its moorings on both the left and the right, says Nossel.

Im not equating the two, because this has the teeth of law, what were talking about now, says Zimmerman. A state legislature passing laws that you cant make kids feel uncomfortable is different from Dr. Seuss getting a couple books taken off the internet. But, he adds, there is enough of a continuity between the two cases on principle that he feels the left has put itself in a difficult strategic position. You cannot protect Beloved if youre purging Huck Finn, he says.

Zimmerman says he still thinks its reasonable for citizens to respond to the books that are taught in schools, and even to protest them in certain cases.

In the 1960s, there were history textbooks in this country, including in the North, that still described slavery as a mostly beneficent institution devised by benevolent white people to civilize savage Africans, says Zimmerman. You know why it changed? Because the NAACP and the Urban League created textbook committees that went into school boards and demanded that racist textbooks not be used.

Zimmerman suggests that objecting to a book because of its potential to harm students, which is a subjective measure, is less effective than objecting to a book because of its untruthfulness. Of course [the textbook committees] said the books were racist, because they were, he says. But they also said that they were false, which they were. To me, thats a much more appropriate line of argument in these discussions.

Laats argues that no matter what strategy liberals take, its unlikely people will stop arguing about the books we use in schools anytime soon.

Whoever gets to control what kids are reading gets to control the definition of, quote-unquote, the real America, he says. That resonates with a lot of people.

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How the banned books panic fits Americas history of school censorship - Vox.com