Fat, bald, toothless, and chic?

Via someplace I forget–it might have been the H-OIEAHC discussion group—History in the Classroom is really nice website featuring video interviews and panel discussions with several prominent U.S. historians and 1960s political activists given to K-12 teachers.  For example, Robert P. Moses speaking about Civil Rights and his algebra project; Tom Hayden on the Port Huron Statement nearly 50 years later; Blanche Wiesen Cook on Eleanor Roosevelt; Kim Philips-Fein on conservative opposition to the New Deal; Hasia Diner on immigration history; Candace Falk on the Emma Goldman Papers; Carola Suarez-Orozco on the issues facing immigrant children; and Ira Berlin on the Four Great Migrations of African American history, among other fascinating topics. 

Readers of this blog might be especially interested in the second video topic at that link, “Jesse Lemisch:  Historians, Power, and Politics,” a public talk he gave last month on his “classic critique of the historical profession: ‘Present Mindedness Revisited: Anti-Radicalism as a Goal of American Historical Writing Since World War II.’  The panel was chaired by Blanche Wiesen Cook. Panelists included historians Staughton Lynd, Rust Eisenberg, John McMillian, Jesse Lemisch, and Robert Cohen.”  Some of you may remember last summer’s discussion of “Founders Chic,” David Waldstreicher’s term for the phenomenon much decried by Historiann (and in few other corners of the historical profession, it seems.)  Lemisch jumped into the conversation, and in the linked video above he elaborates on some of the ideas we knocked around last year.