David Blight
United Kingdom
Journalist, editor, writer, entrepreneur, and lover of the finer things in life. All tweets are my own opinions and don't represent anyone else.
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Articles by David Blight
The Just Security Podcast: 9/11 at 25 Years: The State of U.S. National Security, Intelligence, and Alliances Today
Just Security – JustSecurity.org Skip to content Watch the Episode: Co-hosts Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman are joined by Daniel Fried and Nicholas Rasmussen to discuss how 9/11 and the United States’ responses to it continue to shape U.S. counterterrorism and foreign policy a quarter century later.
“Can These Bones Live?”: Reflections on the Anniversary of 9/11
The 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, known to history now as “9/11”, sit unsteadily in American memory 25 years later. Historical memory, collectively structured, driven by competing narratives, rooted in power struggles, and roiling with turbulence within schools, universities, sites, all manner of media and creative arts, museums, scholarship, families and governments, is by definition unsteady.
Trump Is Bending History to His Will. He Will Fail.
Historians employ time-honored methods in the use of evidence but, by instinct and training, never accept determined “settled truths.” The Trump White House and its history police want us all to live in their chosen bubble, immune from instability or perceived disorder in their take on American greatness. They have a right to their bubble as individual citizens, but to impose it on the rest of us as policy egregiously breaks the public trust.
The Ideas at the Heart of the Declaration and the Constitution
As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, the National Constitution Center convenes three of the country’s leading scholars for a timely and reflective conversation on the founding principles that continue to shape American constitutional democracy. David Blight, Robert P.
AMERICA AT 250: Misreading a nation's morals can turn catastrophic
America at 250 Seldom was a president so out of touch with public opinion, biographer Larry Gara wrote of Franklin Pierce, the 14th American to hold the office of chief executive. He failed to recognize the national mood shifting even as the country’s political party system unraveled, the union teetered on the brink of disaster, and slavery increasingly drove Americans to fear and despise each other, North and South.
So You Want a Civil War? Let’s Pause to Remember What One Looks Like.
Today marks the 163rd anniversary of Antietam. Those who say they’re ready for civil war should stop and think about what happened there. So, you say you want a “civil war”?
So You Want a Civil War? Let’s Pause to Remember What One Looks Like.
David Blight Wed, September 17, 2025 at 10:00 AM UTC 6 min read So, you say you want a “civil war”?
So You Want a Civil War? Let's Pause to Remember What One Looks Like.
At Antietam, there was no "far right" or "radical left" contending for the life of the nation and its democratic experiment. There were firmly held, irreconcilable ideologies in the minds of these soldiers and the leaders who sent them to their dutiful deaths and to bear their hideous wounds. The "Union" and its many meanings, the struggle for Southern independence and creation of a slaveholders' republic, and the fight over the future of slavery animated the minds of young soldiers.
What if History Died by Sanctioned Ignorance?
The primary aim of the political right, said the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, in early 2024, should be “institutionalizing Trumpism.” He and his organization meant this especially for the writing, teaching, and dissemination of American history.
Finding the green: Draft ATO PCG sets out low-risk software payments
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released draft Practical Compliance Guideline PCG 2025/D4, which sets out when the ATO will consider certain cross-border software payments to be ‘low risk’ for royalty withholding tax purposes (Draft PCG). The Draft PCG is a welcome development and introduces a two-zone risk framework (white and green), which offers a practical ‘safe harbour’ for taxpayers that fall within these categories.
What if History Died by Sanctioned Ignorance?
The primary aim of the political right, said the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, in early 2024, should be “institutionalizing Trumpism.” He and his organization meant this especially for the writing, teaching, and dissemination of American history.
Trump cannot win his war on history
On Thursday President Trump issued an executive order, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." In Mr. Trump's customary bluster, the order bursts with accusations against unnamed persons who are presumably my fellow historians and museum curators for our "concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation's history." The order's repeated invocation of the Smithsonian Institution echoes now-familiar right-wing goals outlined in Project 2025 and elsewhere: ending the alleged "woke"...
Trump May Wish to Abolish the Past. We Historians Will Not.
Under the grossly misleading title “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the White House last week issued an executive order that would undermine the integrity of writing and teaching of American history. The order uses ideological litmus tests to define for teachers and students what is acceptable and unacceptable American history.
Universities Like Yale Need a Reckoning Original
The worst thing we university liberals could do right now is to keep wondering why "they" hate us, why blue-collar workers seem to vote - as we understand it - against their own interests in sidling up to an authoritarian in a red tie who courts other billionaires, or why human nature itself did not come through for us and make the arc of history bend toward justice as we define it.
Global taxation is here: draft Australian legislation to implement 15% global minimum tax
Global taxation has arrived. Australia’s draft legislation to implement the OECD’s Pillar Two Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) rules will place a 15% floor on the tax that large multinationals will pay in any particular jurisdiction. This aims to level the playing field by eliminating the tax benefit of routing profits through low-tax jurisdictions.
Opinion: Trump's 'lost cause,' a kind of gangster cult, won't go away
A supporter of Donald Trump holds a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the crowd breached the building as Congress was proceeding with the electoral vote certification of the 2020 presidential election. (Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images) On Jan. 6, 2021, former President Trump, the loser of the 2020 election, famously addressed a gathering of followers who then joined the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol.
January 6th
Ask the ‘Coupologists’: Just What Was Jan. 6 Anyway? Without a name for it, figuring out why it happened is that much harder. by Joshua Zeitz, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Scott Althaus, Matt Cleary, Ryan McMaken via Politico Magazine on August 19, 2022
The Roundup Top Ten (+3!) For December 22, 2022
Note: We're releasing the LAST ROUNDUP OF 2022 a day early since many readers may be stepping away from their screens for the holiday break (a move HNN strongly endorses). We're also including an extra 3 essay excerpts in the top ten this week to hold you over to the new year.
In the shadow of slavery: From reconstruction to 1900
Journalist [archival]: Opposing groups of protesters had already repeatedly clashed in Charlottesville when this happened. Journalist [archival]: In Charlottesville Virginia, mourners gathered to remember 32-year-old Heather Heyer who was hit and killed by a car, allegedly driven by a suspected white nationalist. Annabelle Quince: The clash last year between white nationalists and protesters in Charlottesville Virginia wasn't unique.
The Roundup Top Ten for June 11, 2021
by David W. Blight Nations have histories, and someone must write and teach them, but the 1990s battle over the National Standards for History remains a warning to all those who try – setting a history curriculum is politics by other means, and the right has always been willing to fight over it.
The Roundup Top Ten for March 5, 2021
by Emily Hilliard "Hazel’s song catalog is often divided into separate categories of personal songs, women’s songs, and labor songs. But in her view and experience, these issues all bled together; her songs address struggle against any form of domination and oppression, whether of women, workers, or herself."
GOP congressman whitewashes Douglass
By David Blight Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021 | 2 a.m. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., loves Frederick Douglass. He has a portrait of the former slave in his office at the U.S. Capitol. Does that make you feel any better? Many Americans are weary of or fed up with Republicans’ venality, hypocrisy and lies. But if we were hoping for at least a weekend off after the second impeachment trial ground to its inevitable end, it was not to be.
An American Pogrom (Review)
; SOURCE: New York Review of Books 11/9/2020 Historians in the News tags: terrorism, racism, Jim Crow, Reconstruction, North Carolina, Wilmington Massacre by David W. Blight Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino Atlantic Monthly, 426 pp., $28.00; $17.99 (paper; to be published in January 2021) Political violence, especially around elections, has a long history in the United States.
10 biographies about American historical figures
10 biographies about American historical figures Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash So the hype got to you, you finally checked out “Hamilton” on Disney Plus and now you want to learn everything you can about the influential figures in American history.
10 biographies about American historical figures
10 biographies about American historical figures Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash So the hype got to you, you finally checked out “Hamilton” on Disney Plus and now you want to learn everything you can about the influential figures in American history.
“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
July 02, 2020 In 1852, the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York, invited Frederick Douglass to give a July Fourth speech. Douglass opted to speak on July 5 instead, and, addressing an audience of about 600, he delivered one of his most iconic speeches that would become known by the name “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” This episode explores Douglass’ oration on racial injustice and the broken promises of equality and liberty laid out in the Declaration of Independence.
Review | ‘Union’ tells the origin story of the United States through 19th-century voices
All nations have origin stories and, over time, national narratives and myths, however contested. When, how and by whose pens and voices over the course of the 19th century did the United States attain its dominant story? What indeed was the United States from its inception, traversing the cataclysm of the Civil War and Reconstruction, down to the era of World War I? A “federation” of sovereign states? A “nation-state in waiting” under God’s “providential” design?
Best Books on the American Civil War
To set the scene for our discussion of books about the American Civil War, please tell me about your book, This Republic of Suffering, which illuminates the toll of the war. The American Civil War was fought, from 1861 through 1865, over sectional issues between North and South, including questions of slavery and the power of the central government to enforce its will within the United States.
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
43 min Professor Blight offers an introduction to the course. He summarizes some of the course readings, and discusses the organization of the course. Professor Blight offers some thoughts on the nature of history and the study of history, before moving into a discussion of the reasons for Americans' enduring fascination with the Civil War.
Roundup Top 10!
12/13/19 Roundup tags: Roundup Top 10 A University’s Betrayal of Historical Truth by David W. Blight, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kevin M. Levin The University of North Carolina agreed to pay the Sons of Confederate Veterans $2.5 million—a sum that rivals the endowment of its history department.
A University’s Betrayal of Historical Truth
by David W. Blight, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kevin M. Levin W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill On the eve of Thanksgiving, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) over a Confederate monument that had stood for more than a century on the university’s flagship campus, in Chapel Hill, before demonstrators toppled it in August 2018.
Leave them weeping
One of the peace walls near the Falls Road in Belfast is decorated with a mural featuring several famous figures – among them, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. At its centre, though, five times the size of the others, is a stern-looking man with bushy, neatly parted grey hair, wearing a frock-coat and necktie.
'Frederick Douglass: Prophet Of Freedom'
In his speech at the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, September 24, 2016, President Barack Obama delivered what he termed a “clear-eyed view” of a tragic and triumphant history of black Americans in the United States. He spoke of a history that is central to the larger American story, one that is both contradictory and extraordinary. He likened the African American experience to the infinite depths of Shakespeare and Scripture.
David Brion Davis, Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned historian of slavery
David Brion Davis David Brion Davis, Yale Sterling Professor of American History Emeritus and preeminent scholar on the history of slavery and abolition, died on April 14 of natural causes. He was 92. Davis was the founding director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, which was established at Yale in 1998.
‘Quite the jewel’ - honoring David Blight and his new Douglass biography
Ta-Nehisi Coates — bestselling author and distinguished writer in residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute — confessed to a packed Yale Art Gallery auditorium that he first became aware of Yale historian David Blight around 2008 while seeking educationally enriching background audio for his steady videogaming habit. Coates had an intense interest in Civil War history and began looking for the best recorded university lecture courses on the subject.
What Frederick Douglass Revealed-and Omitted-in His Famous Autobiographies
Frederick Douglass, the most influential black man in 19th-century America, wrote 1,200 pages of autobiography, one of the most impressive performances of memoir in the nation’s history. The three texts included Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (published in 1845); his long-form masterpiece My Bondage and My Freedom, (1855); and finally, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised in 1892).
David Blight takes top the pages of the NYT to say we should look to Frederick Douglass in this moment of crisis
David W. Blight is a professor of history at Yale and the author, most recently, of “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.” In the introduction to Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography, “My Bondage and My Freedom,”published in 1855, his friend James McCune Smith wrote that if a stranger landed in the United States and sought out its most prominent men by using newspapers and telegraph messages, he would discover Douglass.
Frederick Douglass’s 19th Century
Illustration by Andrea Ventura. Let me begin on a personal note. Over half a century ago, my uncle, the historian Philip S. Foner, rescued Frederick Douglass from undeserved obscurity. Beginning in 1950, he edited four volumes of Douglass’s magnificent speeches and writings, each with a long biographical introduction that chronicled his rise to international renown as a crusader for abolition and racial equality.
A Tribute to Gloria Naylor: Teacher of Black Feminism
On September 28, Gloria Naylor passed away from heart failure. She was 66 years old and one of the greatest literary voices in American history. She was best known for her book, Women of Brewster (adapted into a 1989 television miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey, Cicely Tyson, and Robin Givens), which earned her the 1983 National Book Award for First Fiction. In Women of Brewster, Naylor not only made black women the protagonists but she placed their experiences at the center of the narrative.
Yale's David Blight says the Right is co-opting Frederick Douglass
David W. Blight, a professor of history at Yale, is the author of the forthcoming book “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.” ... In “Self-Made Man,” a new book published by the Cato Institute, the lawyer Timothy Sandefur argues that [Frederick] Douglass’s essential legacy lies in his advocacy of liberty, individualism and private property and free enterprise.
Teaching Hard History
Search splcenter.org Kate Shuster Schools are not adequately teaching the history of American slavery, educators are not sufficiently prepared to teach it, textbooks do not have enough material about it, and – as a result – students lack a basic knowledge of the important role it played in shaping the United States and the impact it continues to have on race relations in America. Download the report. Teachers can access resources on teaching American slavery at: www.tolerance.org/hardhistory.
The Subversive Praxis of Black Beauty and Wealth
The Subversive Praxis of Black Beauty and Wealth Having rocked the cosmetics industry last month with her new line of products, Fenty Beauty, pop star Rihanna (née Robyn Rihanna Fenty) was recently a headliner for Vogue’s Forces of Fashion conference in New York City.
Online Forum: The Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora
Online Forum: The Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), is hosting an online forum on Black October: The Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora. The forum begins on Monday, October 30, 2017 and concludes on Saturday, November 4, 2017.
Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the Atlantic World
Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the Atlantic World This is an excerpt from the preface of Andrew T. Fede’s Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and the Atlantic World, recently published by the University of Georgia Press. In the book, Fede offers a comparative study of laws concerning the murder of slaves by their masters and how these laws were implemented.
Recent Works on Black Women, Gender, and Global Garveyism
In my recent review of Adam Ewing’s book, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics, I emphasized the significance of foregrounding the ideas and activism of black women in order to fully capture the rich and complex history of global Garveyism. As I explained in my review, black women’s roles are vital to understanding the global contours and enduring legacies of Garveyism.
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
27 episodes (HIST 119) This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional, individual, social, intellectual, or moral.
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