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Howard Zinn at NCSS, 2008 Indiana's Anti-Howard Zinn
Witch-hunt
by Bill Bigelow
   
Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, one of the country's most widely read history books, died on January 27, 2010. Shortly after, then-Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels got on his computer and fired off an email to the state's top education officials: "This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away."

But Gov. Daniels, now president of Purdue University, was not content merely to celebrate Howard Zinn's passing. He demanded that Zinn's work be hunted down in Indiana schools and suppressed:

"The obits and commentaries mentioned his book 'A People's History of the United States' is the 'textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.' It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?"

 
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©  2013 The Zinn Education Project, a collaboration of Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.   

Zinn Education Project
The goal of the Zinn Education Project is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history.
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