In the past few years, students and adults have pushed to change the names of schools and institutions based upon the namesake’s past history.  Back in 2015, for instance, the Confederate flag was pulled down from the South Carolina capitol in the wake of the Charleston shootings (the shooter was pictured w/ Confederate memorabilia), and then the South Carolina legislature voted overwhelmingly to take the flag down.  This Economist article examines other particular cases not mentioned in the “Rethinking History”.  From another point of view, this article defends leaving the Hoover FBI federal building as it is, though some have come to question Hoover’s tough-minded, illegal wiretappings of students and Dr. King (Cointelpro).  Since the Charleston church shooting, there has been a concerted effort to begin the controversial process of taking down statues to leaders of the Confederacy throughout the South.  In an August 2017 statement on the monuments controversy, the American Historical Association (AHA) said that to remove a monument “is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history.” The AHA stated that most monuments were erected “without anything resembling a democratic process,” and recommended that it was “time to reconsider these decisions.” According to the AHA, most Confederate monuments were erected during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, and this undertaking was “part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South.” According to the AHA, memorials to the Confederacy erected during in the 1890s “were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life.” A later wave of monument building coincided with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s, and according to the AHA “these symbols of white supremacy are still being invoked for similar purposes.”

In the summer of 2020, America had a reckoning with Confederate monuments of all types and some people started tearing down some that still remained.  Some saw these monuments as symbol of the systemic racism in the country that celebrated men who fought to keep Black folks enslaved.  Other people thought that history was being “canceled” or erased by the removal of Confederate monuments.  Some protestors even went after the large statue of Andrew Jackson in D.C. but could not pull it down (see pic below).  Then President Trump issued an executive order that would prosecute people who defaced or destroyed federal statues.

In the article, “Rethinking History,” former Princeton president and 28th President of the United States Woodrow Wilson is derided because of his racist comments.  He told a black leader in 1914 that “segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you.”  A different example from the article is what the University of Virginia has done in the past decade in trying to honor its slave past.  At least 140 slaves helped build the university, and this fall, Virginia opened up a dorm named after two of the slaves who had worked on the campus before the Civil War.

One argument against changing the names of buildings or taking people off of our money is that our culture has become incredibly mired in political correctness.  We are too worried about offending people, the argument goes, so we make decisions like these to make sure no one gets triggered.  An argument for changing the names of buildings (like was recently done to Cobo Hall down town after people began to rethink the Detroit mayor’s stance against blacks integrating white neighborhoods in the 1950s) is that some things need to be fixed because having your name on a building is an honor.  Are we finally recognizing the faults of the past and trying to make amends for them, because our nation, though it’s been a melting pot since its inception, is really starting to change?  Or, can we learn something from the past instead of erasing it and blocking the things which we find disturbing?

This brings us to Andrew Jackson.  This NY Times article  from 2015 suggested putting a woman’s face on the 20$ bill.

“Jackson was a slave owner whose decisions annihilated American Indian tribes of the Southeast. He also hated paper currency and vetoed the reauthorization of the Second Bank of the United States, a predecessor of the Federal Reserve. Jackson is in the history books, but there’s no reason to keep him in our wallets.”

His record with the Indian Removal Act, his battles w/ Nicholas Biddle and the 2nd BUS, and the fact that he was a slave owner all count against him.  But what about his adoption of an Indian boy during one of the campaigns to eradicate the Indians?  Did America actually benefit from not having a central banking system for almost 80 years?  He was a symbol of the common man, those who could newly vote in the elections of 1828 and 1832 voted for him overwhelmingly, because he was a common man at one time.  But he was also an exceptional man, having fought in the War of 1812, amassed a fortune (though off the backs of slaves), and become the 7th president of the United States.  There are very very few people who can claim these achievements.

Andrew Jackson was first honored by being on the $20 beginning in 1928 (to coincide w/ the 100th anniversary of his electio).  Before that, Presidents Grover Cleveland and George Washington were on the bill as well as former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and also Lady Liberty.  Then the idea came about of putting a woman on the $20 beginning in the year 2020 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.  Several women were finalists, but in 2015, Harriet Tubman won a poll and was originally slated to replace Hamilton on the $10, but because of the immense popularity of the play, the decision was made to then replace Jackson on the $20 a year later.  Then candidate Trump in 2016 said that he thought Tubman was fantastic but opposed replacing Jackson becuase it would be “political correctness” that replaced him.  In mid 2017, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin stated that  “People have been on the bills for a long period of time. This is something we’ll consider; right now we have a lot more important issues to focus on.”  He also stated that any new bill wouldn’t be ready until 2026 despite engravers at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing stated that there was already a bill in the works by 2019.  And according to the latest article I could find about this in 2021, the Biden administration supports Tubman on the $20 but hasn’t taken any action as of that article to make that happen.  So, the future of the $20 is up in the air.

But if we remove Jackson from the $20 and replace him with someone else, where do we stop?  Using the slippery slope argument (which is always a dangerous fallacy), do we rename Washington D.C. because Washington was a slave holder?  Do we take Lincoln off of the penny or the $5 because he had almost 30 Indians executed during the Civil War for sparking an uprising in Minnesota?  Jefferson… we won’t even get into him.

As someone in the “Rethinking History” article states, if we are going to name buildings after people, should we expect them to be perfect?  Maybe we should stop naming buildings after people.  Or can we learn something from these flawed individuals (especially b/c everyone is flawed in some way or another)?

Please answer the following questions:

1. What are your thoughts about removing historical monuments or renaming buildings after historical figures?  Why?
2. I see three possible alternatives to Jackson on the $20:
   1. Keep him there and leave it as it is.
   2. Swap him out with Harriet Tubman, and leave Andrew Jackson to be talked about in history classes.
   3. Leave him on the bill but conduct better and more thorough education about Andrew Jackson’s legacy. (If you come up with another alternative, please include it in your post.)

350 words minimum total for all three answers.  Due Tuesday night by midnight, November 22. 

Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, focuses on the members of Alpha Company as they hump across Vietnam and also how they dealt with civilian life (“Speaking of Courage”). 

1. The things that the soldiers carried in battle were not just physical things but mental / emotional as well.  Henry Dobbins wore his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck as a comforter.  But after the war is over and done with, the soldiers, like Lt. Cross, carry guilt and pain around with them.

2. The novel is also about truth, especially with the story, “How to Tell a True War Story,” which seems contradictory in many cases.  But maybe that’s what the truth really is in a war-time environment – unclear.

3. The novel also captures loneliness and isolation experienced by the American soldiers while in the Vietnamese jungle.  Though the soldiers are surrounded by their comrades in arms, many don’t feel a connection to each other.  Could this be because they’ve been drafted into a war they don’t want to fight?  Or that war is the most loneliest experience – do or die on the battlefield?

4. How does shame or the idea of letting another person down motivate Tim and other soldiers in the stories?

“They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.”

Pick two of the four topics to write about and also include a brief assessment of the book. 

300 words minimum for your total response.  Due by Tuesday, May 31st by class.  

 

First thing, please listen to this podcast from the NYT The Daily podcast – https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/podcasts/the-daily/free-speech-first-amendment-supreme-court.html

It’s about 20+ minutes long and shares some more details that we haven’t looked at yet, including the oral arguments before the Court last month.   You’ll want to take some notes on this podcast b/c I’m asking that you use some evidence from the podcast in your answer.

Don’t forget that you have read the intros to both Mahanoy School District’s and Brandi Levy’s legal briefs.  We have summarized them in our Google slides file for each class.  Feel free to jump into their full briefs here (Mahanoy) and here (Levy).

Your job:  Predict how SCOTUS will rule when they release their ruling in late June / early July (see format of answer below).  Things to consider:

1. Will SCOTUS make a sweeping ruling about whether off-campus speech that is not political CAN be disciplined by the public schools?  Things to keep in mind – how will they define where off campus speech begins?  If the schools can do this, what does this say about parental rights to discipline their own children for vulgar or lewd speech?   How can this ruling, if it is done, be reconciled w/ the concept of in loco parentis?  Also, what will a broad, sweeping ruling do to all of the existing state and federal laws that require schools to discipline harassment or cyberbullying off-campus speech?

2. Will SCOTUS make a narrow ruling that only deals with this case, especially since it doesn’t involve cyberbullying or harassment like the school district asserts?  Stopping harassment has been one of the big reasons why Mahanoy and other school districts have signed onto this case with all of the additional amicus briefs supporting Mahanoy’s right to discipline off-campus speech.   But does this case rise to that level of harassment?  By making a narrow ruling that only deals with this particular case, it would not affect any existing state and federal laws that require public schools to monitor / discipline off-campus speech.  But it doesn’t solve the problem for future cases.

3. Does this case rise to the level of causing a “substantial disruption” at Mahanoy High School like is required in Tinker?  How do Fraser, Morse, or Hazelwood apply to this case, if at all?

Your answer should look like a SCOTUS legal brief:

1. Briefly summarize the situation including the procedural history.
2. Briefly summarize Mahanoy and Levy’s arguments for their side.
3. Connect any of the four previous SCOTUS rulings to this case.
4. Prediction time: What do you think SCOTUS will do?  Provide specific reasons why.  Cite evidence here from any of the readings, videos, and the podcast we have listened to.  Feel free to use any of the additional resources listed below.

Your brief is due Wednesday, June 2 by midnight.  It should be a minimum of 400 total words. 

Additional resources:

A list of all of the briefs filed in this case: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20-255.html

SCOTUSBlog article on how the Court might be considering a narrow ruling on the case – https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/04/justices-ponder-narrow-ruling-in-student-speech-case/

Oral arguments for the case argued April 28, 2021 on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov9W1luRTjw

National Constitution Center’s We the People podcast (5th one down) – Snapchat and the Schoolhouse Gate – https://constitutioncenter.org/debate/podcasts

So we spent some time reading both the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission Report, and both had a lot to say about American history, much of which was contradictory.  One expressed a pessimistic view that anti-Black racism was in America’s DNA while the other one asserted that despite the awful things that have happened in the past, the great American ideal of equality has helped guide us through the tough spots.

There has been a lot of criticism aimed at both projects as well.  Out of context quotes.  Lack of nuance.  Broad generalizations.  No historians working on an historical document.

And on Thursday, May 20, a few Republican members of the Michigan Senate introduced Senate Bill no. 460 that would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) which we are tackling after the free speech case as well as specifically the 1619 Project or any other “anti-American and racist theories.”

Now that you’ve had time to digest both, please answer the following questions:

1. What are the major strengths and weaknesses of both documents?  Give specific examples for each strength and weakness.
2. Which criticism was the harshest for both projects?  (See this Google doc w/ excerpts).  Be specific.
3. How do we balance these documents?  In essence, what is something positive that can be taken from each document to support an American history curriculum?  Be specific.  Or is finding a balance impossible – meaning there’s nothing redeemable about one or the other or both?  If so, explain why with specifics.

Due Wednesday by class.  Total words for all three answers should be at least 400 words.