Media Appearances
Media Appearances
Historians Alarmed as Trump Seeks to Rewrite US Story for 250th Anniversary
The Guardian
5/4/2025
Ignorance no barrier as president begins to put out approved version of history that ignores American failures
Trump’s American History Revolution
The New York Times
4/19/2025
As the 250th anniversary of America’s independence approaches, the president is moving to put his stamp on how the nation’s story is told, in Washington and beyond.
Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative?
The New Yorker
3/11/2024
The classical-education movement seeks to fundamentally reorient schooling in America. Its emphasis on morality and civics has also primed it for partisan takeover.
Professors Turn to ChatGPT to Teach Students a Lesson
The Wall Street Journal
1/25/2023
The powerful paper-writing chatbot presents an educational challenge: Ban it or build on it?
As Historians Gather, No Truce in the History Wars
The New York Times
1/8/2023
At the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, the raging battle over how to write about the past — and why — was uncomfortably front and center.
An Immigrant’s Plea: “Please Don’t Convert to Whiteness”
The Atlantic Monthly
8/25/2020
The history professor Johann N. Neem, an immigrant from India, feels as though he is losing his country.
Meet the parents who won’t let their children study literature
The Washington Post
9/2/2016
Forcing college kids to ignore the liberal arts won’t help them in a competitive economy.
Online university skips class to be more accessible
PBS News Hour
8/22/2014
College for America, an online degree program, has no classes, professors or credit hours. It’s been cited as an innovative way to make college more affordable. But how do its students qualify for a degree? Hari Sreenivasan reports from New Hampshire on a university that gives credit based on competency at the student’s own pace.
Podcasts
“Historians On”: AI in Teaching and Research
American Historical Review
12/18/2024
At the 2024 AHA annual meeting in San Francisco, historian David Trowbridge sat down with attendees to discuss topics of particular interest to historians in the present moment. In this episode of our new “Historians On” series, David speaks with Katharina Matro, Jeff McClurken, Kalani Craig, Jo Guldi, Johann Neem, Kevin Gannon, and Lauren Tilton on the topic of AI and its implications for history teaching and research.
Sean Wilentz and Johann Neem on the Stakes of This Election
Required Reading From Liberties
10/22/2024
Sean Wilentz and Johann Neem join Celeste Marcus to discuss their recent essays about the threat Trump poses to American liberal democracy.
There’s No Way to Win the School Culture Wars
Have You Heard podcast
7/18/2023
A wide segment of Americans now view public schools as partisan. That’s a major problem, argues historian Johann Neem, because the project of public education depends on ALL Americans seeing themselves and their interests represented there. Neem warns that the perception that schools are carrying out a political agenda is super-charging the privatization agenda and could undermine what’s left of our “common” schools entirely.
Democracy’s Schools
Society for History of Children and Youth podcast
2/11/2020
Join us this week as we learn about Johann N. Neem’s monograph in this interview that he gave to Kate Destler, an assistant professor in political science at Western Washington University. Neem is Department Chair and Professor in the history department at WWU.
Why Go to College?
First Things
1/30/2020
The latest installment in an ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein. On this episode, Johann Neem joins the podcast to discuss his recent book, What’s the Point of College?: Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform.