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Historians and the News: Kathleen Belew
September 8, 2021 @ 5:45 pm - 7:00 pm
FreeA Historical Perspective on the White Power Movement, the January 6 Insurrection, and the Domestic Legacies of Overseas Wars
OHS is excited to re-launch the popular “Historians and the News” series with a conversation between Dr. Kathleen Belew and Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols. This free virtual event promises to offer valuable insights, informed by years of scholarly analysis of the past, into the news stories that fill our screens and newspaper pages.
As the House select committee investigating the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 has begun to hold hearings and new reporting reveals the seriousness of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, militaristic white-supremacist organizations such as the Proud Boys continue to hold rallies in cities including Portland, Salem, and Los Angeles. In this conversation between two nationally renowned historians, Dr. Belew and Dr. Nichols will discuss how these events have historical roots in mid-twentieth century white supremacist movements.
Dr. Belew’s research explores how white power activists created a social movement through a common narrative about betrayal by the government and the weapons, uniforms, and technologies of war. By uniting Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, and other groups, the movement mobilized and carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. Professor Belew’s conclusion that this movement was never adequately confronted, and remains a presence in American life, is all too clear today.
About Historians and the News
OHS is committed to providing broad access to historical content that expands knowledge of the past to better inform our present. Dr. Belew and Dr. Nichols will discuss the implications of Belew’s research in the context of today’s news, offering the kinds of insights that only careful scholarship can provide. We are grateful to the many individual donors that sustain our mission and allow us to offer powerful educational programs like this at no cost. On the registration page, we invite you to make a donation in support of this work, so that OHS can continue to preserve the resources that historians such as Dr. Belew and Dr. Nichols rely on for their research and scholarship.
Please note that only those who register for this program in advance will have access to the program and to the post-event recording (which will be available through a password-protected site for 30 days following the program). Zoom links will be sent to ticketholders one week, one day, and one hour before the event.
Kathleen Belew is a historian, author, and teacher who specializes in the history of the present. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Belew spent ten years researching and writing her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018, paperback 2019). Belew has spoken about Bring the War Home in a wide variety of places, including Frontline, Fresh Air, All Things Considered, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, and AC 360 with Anderson Cooper. Her work has featured prominently in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us (ABC) and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis (Frontline). Belew is co-editor of and contributor to A Field Guide to White Supremacy, on sale October 26, 2021. Belew earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. She earned a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University. She has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2019–2020), Northwestern University, and Rutgers University. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.
Christopher McKnight Nichols is associate professor of history and Sandy and Elva Sanders Eminent Professor in the Honors College at Oregon State University (OSU), where he is Director of OSU’s Center for the Humanities. He founded and leads OSU’s Citizenship and Crisis Initiative. Nichols is an expert on the history of the United States’ relationships with the world, including isolationism, internationalism, globalization, ideas, and political history, with an emphasis on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era through the present. An Andrew Carnegie Fellow and Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer, Nichols also is a frequent commentator on air and in print on U.S. foreign policy and politics, often appearing on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s program Think Out Loud with Dave Miller. He is an editorial board member of the “Made by History” section of the Washington Post and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Nichols is the author, co-author, or editor of six books, most recently Rethinking American Grand Strategy and including Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age. Nichols is a proud member of the Oregon Historical Society’s board of trustees and a passionate advocate for history and the humanities.