History Department
| Title | Authored on | Link to edit Content | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ‘Please Don’t Convert to Whiteness’ | Johann N. Neem was born in India. Before he turned 3, his parents immigrated from Mumbai to San Francisco, part of the first wave of newcomers admitted to the United States after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. He didn’t feel any conflict between his immigrant identity and his… |
2020-08-25 | |
| SC private schools seeing increased interest from parents unhappy with reopening plans | Western Washington University history professor Johann Neem, an expert on America’s public schools, said he worries the collision of longstanding GOP goals on private school choice with parents’ immediate needs in a crisis could erode support for public education. Across the nation,… |
2020-08-10 | |
| Does the Covid pandemic spell the end of public schools? | We might be entering the last days of public education in America. The United States, which led the world in expanding access to public education to boys and girls in the 1800s, is poised to become the first rich nation to abandon that commitment as longstanding political efforts to undermine… |
2020-07-31 | |
| Will We Still be American after Democracy Dies? | There is a real possibility that American democracy will die come November. I hope not. I pray not. But I worry. Many scenarios that would have once appeared fantastic, now seem to be within the realm of the possible. One does not need a vivid imagination to wonder what would happen if the… |
2020-07-08 | |
| Boston's Old North Church reckoning with its dark past | Through the research of Western Washington University Associate Professor of History Jared Hardesty, one of the iconic landmarks of the American Revolution, Boston's Old North Church of Paul Revere's "one if by land, two if by sea" fame, is coming to grips with a bleaker part of… |
2020-07-06 | |
| Do as I Do, Not as I Say? The Wall Street Hypocrisy on Online Education | In a recent New York Times column, NYU business school professor Hans Taparia proclaimed (as many have before) that “the future of college is online.” Whenever I hear these words, I… |
2020-05-28 | |
| What Could a New Admissions Test Bring? | Last week's vote by the University of California Board of Regents was largely viewed as a defeat for supporters of the SAT and ACT. But it was also something else. Regents voted to establish a new admissions test within five years. If they don't, UC will cease to use standardized tests… |
2020-05-27 | |
| US Lockdown Protests Fueled by Distrust of Government, Experts | “For decades, the right has been fueling a hostility to government that has bread real and deep distrust among Americans on the right to what government, not just what government does, but who the people in government are,” said Johann Neem, an author and a history professor at Western… |
2020-05-18 | |
| The next victim of the coronavirus? American exceptionalism | The rise of Donald Trump, and the embarrassing failure of the American state to respond effectively to the coronavirus, has proved to the world that the United States is no longer exceptional nor, in… |
2020-05-04 | |
| 'The Future of the Academy' at the Association of American Colleges and Universities | Staley and others were discussing what the “college of the future” might look like. Johann Neem, chair of the history department at Western Washington University, said a key piece of that imagining is to separate the academy from the university. “Instead of the universities getting rid… |
2020-01-28 |