David Blight
@dblight.bsky.social
1K followers 150 following 65 posts
Historian, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which won P-Prize, a teacher and lifer as Tigers, Lions, and MSU fan.
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dblight.bsky.social
The emperor has no clothes and he is spreading hatred, ignorance, and corruption all around. We have to convert despair into a fighting spirit! Save the American republic!
dblight.bsky.social
Federal troops to Portland? Portlanders: don't take the bait. He wants a violent confrontation in order to use those troops. For now hold silent marches with muffled drums, bring flowers, sing songs of freedom, keep it all peaceful and non-violent. Confrontation will come in time.
dblight.bsky.social
Honor US soldiers at Wounded Knee? Take down 30 images about slavery at Harpers Ferry? Indict your political enemies in worse abuses of law and Constitutional norms than Watergate? Historians and everyone who cares - fight back! We are beyond simply saving democracy; we have to stop a TYRANT!
dblight.bsky.social
Good news. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, has graciously accepted my invitation to two debates with his fellow historians about American history on the eve of the US 250th. Details of time and sites are being worked out. One likely in a red state, and one is a blue state.
dblight.bsky.social
President Trump: Meet Frederick Douglass and his Narrative. Read!!! And do not say another public word about slavery until you get educated. Please stop insulting Americans with your unbounded ignorance.
dblight.bsky.social
Kevin Roberts at Heritage Foundation has not yet accepted my invitation to debate historians. If anyone has direct access at Heritage, please encourage him. The Trump History department should cite their sources and defend their arguments in public.
dblight.bsky.social
Trump's rant about museums: accuses "woke" curators of portraying "how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been..." The first claim is obscene, the second is simply stupid. Ignorance in the mind of a tyrant is a very dangerous thing. Historians - awake!!
Reposted by David Blight
dblight.bsky.social
Good morning. Here is the cover and all 11 essays of new special issue of the TNR by historians ighting back against Trump administration's assaults on history, museums, archives, libraries. No surrender among historians.
newrepublic.com/magazine?utm...
newrepublic.com
dblight.bsky.social
Kevin Roberts and the Heritage Foundation: Come out and debate historians about the current and future practice of American history. See the current New Republic. We respectfully invite you to an open, civil debate.
-David Blight, for American historians and teachers eager to fight back.
dblight.bsky.social
Good morning. Here is the cover and all 11 essays of new special issue of the TNR by historians ighting back against Trump administration's assaults on history, museums, archives, libraries. No surrender among historians.
newrepublic.com/magazine?utm...
newrepublic.com
dblight.bsky.social
See new essays in New Republic. I have gathered and edited eleven essays by historians on teaching and writing history in the time of Trump. We are fighting back! I'll be on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell tonight at 10 to talk about the special issue of TNR.
newrepublic.com/series/67/tr...
Trump Against History
How is Trump changing our sense of who we are? We asked eminent Yale historian David W. Blight to round up some colleagues to consider the question. Here’s what they had to say.
newrepublic.com
dblight.bsky.social
With Akhil Amar, I just helped direct this extraordinary teacher seminar on the history of the Constitution in Philly at National Constitution Center, generously sponsored by the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute and OAH. Our comrades, the teachers, were magnificent in knowledge and dedication! Bravo!
oah.org
☀️ Day 2 of the week-long summer intensive for social studies teachers is in full swing! Incredible conversations—including a lecture by former OAH pres David Blight—& deep dives into history are happening right where it all began. Check out the panel from day 1 here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLVh...
dblight.bsky.social
Trump's lawyers, bound by vows of loyalty to their profoundly ignorant leader, are constitutionally cherry-picking their way to autocracy. They are patient; we citizens should not be!
dblight.bsky.social
Birthright citizenship: as old in England as Sir Edward Coke's 1608 opinion in "Calvin's Case," and at least as early as the Prudence Crandall case before Connecticut Supreme Court in 1834. The principle: when a government expects "obedience" it must provide "protection."
dblight.bsky.social
Trump's sense of triumph yesterday over SCOTUS decision on nation-wide injunctions derives from steady impulse against birthright citizenship. NO Mr. Trump, the Civil War did not end in 1969 and section 1 of the 14th is not intended only for children of slaves. We cannot allow ignorance to win!!!
dblight.bsky.social
An 800% increase in the ICE finding in the new budget bill out of House and now before the Senate? God help us. Trump wants confrontation; peacefully, without burning cars, people should give it to him.
dblight.bsky.social
When barbarians enter your land and territory, do not plan to negotiate. Build your defenses and get ready to drive them out. At universities and all over American education we need to prepare, as William James said, for "the moral equivalent of War."
dblight.bsky.social
Published this piece on the origins of Memorial Day in Charleston in 1865 fourteen years ago in the NY Times. And see Drew Faust's piece in today's Times. We do indeed need to "stand up!" DB

www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/o...
dblight.bsky.social
Trump: rude, cruel, pitiful, a really bad White House reality show, with international leaders such as the president of South Africa. Trump should be suspended from school by his junior high dean.
civilwarmemory.bsky.social
This is a reminder that white Southerners also believed that they were being persecuted during Reconstruction. What an embarrassment.
atrupar.com
with the South African president sitting next to him, Trump suggests there is a white genocide happening in his country and says, "I hope you can have an explanation of that"
dblight.bsky.social
Here is the video of my commencement address at Michigan State on May 3. Move about 20 minutes into the video. I called it "History Comes for You Too."

video.wkar.org/video/colleg...
MSU Commencements | College of Social Science | Spring 2025 | Season 2025 | Episode 14
College of Social Science | Spring 2025
video.wkar.org