Arizona’s Voter-Registration Law Is Declared Unconstitutional, Bringing into Focus Some Less Widely Recognized Aspects of Voter Suppression Efforts

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Arizona’s voter most recently enacted voter registration law to be unconstitutional. The law required that those registering to vote provide copies of several documents proving their citizenship, pointedly violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 which sought to encourage voting by providing a simple, federally processed form…

“Race, Class and Gender”

For the past six months, I’ve been hearing odd complaints that the humanities, once home, supposedly, to the study of “truth, beauty and goodness,” have been overwhelmed by concern for “race, class and gender.” Another came last Friday, using the exact phrases of the older ones, all stemming from a single “study” put forward by…

A Response to Peter Wood

By Allan Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University In his response to my critique of the National Association of Scholars report, RECASTING HISTORY: ARE RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER DOMINATING AMERICAN HISTORY?, at the recent conference of the AAUP, NAS President Peter Wood harps on a remark that comprised well under 1 percent of my…

Analysis of the NAS Report on “Recasting History”

By Allan J. Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University This analysis examines the report of the National Association of Scholars: RECASTING HISTORY: ARE RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER DOMINATING AMERICAN HISTORY? (January 2013). The report studies courses as the University of Texas, Austin and Texas A & M University. It concludes that introductory history classes…

Zealous for the Humanities

The title here is from the end of David Brooks’ column in today’s New York Times. He’s lamenting how we’ve let the humanities become debased, allowing them to fall from their 20th-century high (in terms of college graduates) to a new low (though he doesn’t consider that, before the 20th century as well as in…

Higher Ed’s Version of the Great Impostor

The following is another item that I am re-posting from Futility Closet (www.futilitycloset.com). It is re-posted with the permission of Greg Ross, who maintains the site. You can have daily updates delivered to your e-mail each morning. ************************* Marvin Harold Hewitt was bright enough to find schoolwork boring, so he dropped out of high school.…

Peter Wood’s Attack on the AAUP

I invited National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood to speak at the AAUP conference this past weekend, and organized a couple of sessions with him on the Higher Education Bubble and the NAS report on the teaching of American history. Unfortunately, Wood may be accustomed to speaking before loyal supporters and friends, since he…