Basic FactsPosition:
Director, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and
Museum, National Archives and Records Administration, July 2007- Current
Personal Anecdote
Among my favorite anecdotes involves a weird and nerdy coincidence. In February 1984, not too long out of College,
I made my first visit to what was then called the Public Record Office in Kew, outside London. As I awaited the
train at the end of my day,
I noticed that the evening newspapers carried the headline"Andropov dies." The Soviet
leadership had reached a point where it was as decrepit as the Soviet economy.
My next visit came on March 10, 1985. Sure enough as I reached the train station to catch the tube home, I saw the headline of the newspaper lying on the platform:"Chernenko Dies." I don't know what possessed me, but I then burst into laughter that I know the other passengers found unsettling and distinctly disrespectful to the dead. Thereafter I used to kid that Gorbachev's friends were asking me never to return to the PRO. It would be mischievous to now claim that because I never returned to the PRO, the Cold War ended and, well, you know the rest. But I did go back to the PRO plenty of times and, of course, and fortunately Mr. Gorbachev is still with us. QuotesBy Timothy J. Naftali 
history dissolve when you examine them closely. The Roosevelt administration would have had advance warning of the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had not interservice rivalry and overclassification of intelligence led to a
decision to focus on the wrong Japanese communication channel. Japanese diplomats had not been told about the
attack; Japanese admirals, on the other hand, had been. Unfortunately, US intelligence had chosen to break the
Japanese diplomatic cipher instead of that of the Japanese Admiralty. In 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald exploited a
last-minute change by the US Secret Service in the route of the presidential motorcade through central Dallas.
Oswald had delusions of grandeur and was looking to kill someone famous. A few weeks earlier he had shot at
Edwin Walker, a prominent right-wing extremist. Now he would have a chance to use his marksmanship against an
even more famous man, John F. Kennedy. Certainly there have been real conspiracies in US history -- Watergate and
Iran-Contra come to mind -- but our society is open enough that we eventually hear about them. Someone is bound
to leak to Bob Woodward. -- Timothy J. Naftali in"Blind Spot:
The Secret History of American Counterterrorism"About Timothy J. Naftali "Masterful.... Blind Spot is an excellent reminder of the value of unbiased scholarship in an environment of poisonous political partisanship." -- The New Republic review of"Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism" "tendencies" toward flexibility, realism and a moderate Republican version of decency. In his foreign policy,
these qualities helped him nudge communism toward a soft collapse and build an international alliance to eject
Saddam Hussein from Kuwait; domestically they led him to a budget compromise with Democrats, in which he acquiesced
to unpopular tax hikes for the good of the nation. Bush's flexibility had a dark side, the author notes, that came
out in his repeated tactical embrace of racial politics, from his opposition to civil rights legislation during
his 1964 Senate run to the 1988 Willie Horton ads, and in his public support for Reaganomics despite deep private
misgivings. Naftali forthrightly dissects Bush's misdeeds-especially his role in the Iran-Contra scandal-but he's
less skeptical about the substance of Bush's policies, which he pointedly contrasts with Bush Jr.'s failures; he
credits Bush's wars in Panama and Kuwait with helping America"overcome the burden of Vietnam," without wondering
whether this paved the way for the son's misadventure in Iraq. Naftali's is a brisk, useful, but not always
penetrating overview of a pivotal presidency. -- Publisher's Weekly review of"George H. W. Bush:
The American Presidents Series: The 41st President, 1989-1993" |
Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism, (New York: Basic Books, 2005);
US Intelligence and the Nazis co-author with Richard Breitman, Norman Goda, and Robert Wolfe,
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); US Intelligence and the Nazis
co-author with Richard Breitman, Norman Goda, and Robert Wolfe, (Washington, DC: National Archives Trust Fund, 2004);
The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, Volume 1, ed., (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001);
The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy, Volume 2, ed., co-editor with Philip Zelikow,
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2001; and "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964,
co-author with Aleksandr Fursenko), New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 
That was my last trip to the PRO for
a little over a year. Basic FactsTeaching Position:
Professor of American History, joint appointment in the Women's Studies program,
The Pennsylvania State University (PSU)
Personal AnecdoteAlthough in the abstract I agree with the premise that all writing is autobiographical, years of deep thought haven't yet allowed me to make the link in the case of my own work. I seem to be drawn, in my historical writing, to violent young men with serious problems with authority and/or borderline sociopathic tendencies. Urban volunteer firemen who regularly get into street battles with gang members and other firemen, filibusters and their supporters who attempt to invade neighboring countries for fun and profit, Gold Rush travelers who raise the American flag in Panama in the 1850s, and now Mexican-American War soldiers. Not only do I not see myself in them, I wouldn't even like to have them over for dinner (except to mine them for research purposes, of course). While my work has focused on the evolution of masculine norms in antebellum America, it wasn't my original intent to study gender. After my dissertation adviser died four months into my first year of graduate school, I stumbled through classes and comps, less focused on history than on my outsider status as a Southern Californian at Harvard, unable to accept the reality that winter boots, tights, and heavy overcoats were not optional in January. I started looking at urban volunteer firemen, a group of rowdy men who protected antebellum America's cities from the constant threat of fire without pay, after reading an account of their working-class republican ethos. I must admit I was attracted to a group that proudly proclaimed their own social norms and found a way to command respect from the emerging middle class whose property their protected. After compiling a database of firemen and their occupations (like a good social historian), I was, I admit, shocked and dismayed to find that a substantial portion of these"working-class" firemen were actually merchants and clerks. This was when I began to play around with the idea that what bound these men together was not working-class ideology, but some vision of manhood that was, in its own way, equally radical and deviant and important to those who proclaimed it. A number of San Francisco volunteer firemen left their firehouses in the 1850s to follow the adventurer William Walker, first to Sonora Mexico, and then to Nicaragua, so I followed them into the filibustering project. I found the same celebration of martial masculinity in the ports of Central America and at urban public meetings in support of filibusters like Walker and Narciso Lopez (who repeatedly tried to take over Cuba). Most of the filibusters got their initial taste for imperial adventuring in Mexico in 1847, so now I find myself in their company once again, reading letters from somewhat under-socialized men who have an investment in the physical domination of those they consider their inferiors. I find my undergraduates have less of a problem understanding these guys than I might have imagined before entering the world of Big Ten football. QuotesBy Amy S. Greenberg 
through force of arms, and particularly through filibustering. Other Americans, advocates of a more restrained
vision of manhood. . . . believed America's Manifest Destiny would best be accomplished through the proliferation
of her superior political and religious forms. . . . In other words, competing gender ideals at home shaped very
different visions of American expansionism. Gendered visions of women and men abroad, from Latin America to the
islands of the Pacific, justified and reinforced particular practices of manhood and womanhood in the
United States. . . . Hegemonic American masculinity, this study will attempt to show, was actually made
manifest through the process of antebellum territorial expansionism. --
Amy S. Greenberg in"Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire"About Amy S. Greenberg |
Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City (Princeton University Press, 1998)
and is currently working on The U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) in American Culture and Memory.
Greenberg is also the author of numerous scholarly journal articles, book chapters and reviews including among others:"Domesticating the Border: Manifest Destiny and the Market in the United States-Mexico Border Region,
1848-1854," in Disrupted Boundaries: Consumption in the United States-Mexico Borderlands, Alexis McCrossen,
ed. (Forthcoming from Duke University Press, 2008);"Fayaway and Her Sisters: Gender, Popular Literature, and Manifest Destiny in the Pacific, 1848-1860" in
"Whole Oceans Away": Melville and the Pacific, Jill Barnum, Wyn Kelley and Christopher Sten, eds.
(Kent State University Press, 2007);"Pirates, Patriots, and Public Meetings: Antebellum Expansionism and Urban Culture." Journal of Urban
History 31 (July 2005): 634-650."The Origins of the American Municipal Fire Department: Nineteenth-Century Change from an International
Perspective," in Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches, Michèle
Dagenais, Irene Maver, and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds. (Ashgate Press, 2003), 47-65.
Basic FactsTeaching Position:
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department (2007-2008);
Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina-Charlotte (August 2004-Present).
Personal AnecdoteGrowing up in Istanbul, I always found it awkward to read the"Welcome to Asia" and"Welcome to Europe" signs at the two ends of the less-than-a mile long suspension bridge over the Bosporus waters. These innocent looking continental demarcation signs meant very little to the millions of commuters, supposedly moving between continents every day. In high school, we were taught that Turkey is an important bridge between East and West, as well as Asia and Europe. I remember one time joking with friends that we needed to tidy up our ties and jackets while crossing the bridge from the Asian to the European side of the city, sarcastically reflecting predominant judgments associated with the two continents. I would have never predicted that I would later spend years during my graduate study examining the history and politics of the historical construct of Asia and Europe (or East and West) and its impact. And ironically, but not unsurprisingly, while I was trying to historicize these civilizational and continental categories, stereotyped civilizational identities (think clash of civilization thesis...) embellished with new political and cultural inflections gained popularity in public discourse. My undergraduate years coincided with exciting debates on Eurocentrism and post-modernism in Istanbul college classrooms and coffeehouses. It was in a senior seminar paper on Jürgen Habermas' critique of anti-modern thinking that I first remember arguing for a more global history of modernity and world order. My plan was to go either to China or Japan to have a non-Eurocentric comparative look at the question of the West and how Asian intellectuals have debated the universality of modernity in the last two centuries. But, to my frustration, the visiting Japanese professor whose guide to Istanbul I had become and who I hoped to study with in Japan told me not to come to the Far East, Tokyo, but to go to the Far West, to a university in America, if I was that interested in non-Eurocentric perspectives on global history. Only after my first semester at Harvard did I realize the wisdom of his advice. History departments at many American research universities have experts covering all the regions of the world, with ideally half of the faculty teaching non-Western fields. This intellectual presence not only provides perspectives into the different regional histories, it also allows for important insights into world and global history. Of course, I also made it to Japan where I spent two years learning Japanese and searching archives and bookstores. Looking back, I had a wonderful time during the eight years of my graduate school education, having a chance not only to immerse myself in East Asian and Middle Eastern histories, but to learn a lot about the modern histories of Africa, the Americas and Europe. I became addicted to the 4 pm seminars, accompanied by coffee or tea and cookies, though I had to limit my attendance to 2 seminars a week to be able to finish my dissertation and keep my weight. By the end of my graduate school years, I had become optimistic about the scholarly integrity and public mission of the historical profession. The events of and developments after September 11, 2001 did not change my confidence in my discipline. Yet, many of the achievements of my colleagues in dispelling historically rooted prejudices and misunderstandings among different societies were swept away by a flood of reasserted popular stereotypes about anti-Western Muslims and imperialist crusading Westerners. The 'us vs. them' dichotomy as well as the 'what went wrong?' and 'why do they hate us?' questions forced many in the academic community to take a stand. The increased public interest in answers, explanations and lessons from the past in order to understand the current situation better has affected my research as well as my teaching. Last summer, a leading European politician sympathetic to Turkey's potential membership in the European Union suggested that the Istanbul Municipality remove the"Welcome to Asia" sign on the bridge over the Bosporus, arguing that the sign and its implication of the"Asian" side of Turkey would weaken Turkey's case in the European Union. Despite my awareness of the Eurocentric constructedness of these continental borders, I realized that I would not be happy to see the “Welcome to Asia” sign go away, at least not in this way. My admittedly idealist internationalism makes me want to hold on to this feeble continental tie between Istanbul, Calcutta and Tokyo. After all, our problem is not in the borders, or continental imaginations themselves, but in the value judgments and political projects vested in them. I could not help but smile when I saw the welcome signs on both sides of the Bosporus bridge during my last visit to Istanbul. QuotesBy Cemil Aydin 
nineteenth century. While we are familiar with the grand theories on the civilization of the West formulated
by Montesquieu and other European thinkers, we should recognize that non-Western intellectuals found these
theories insufficient and noninclusive and insisted on a more universalist interpretation of the secrets of
Europe's progress. The result, as best seen in the writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Namik Kemal during the
1870s, was an optimist reformist ideology of progress and civilization that refuted any permanent
association of universal civilization with climate, Christianity, race, or even imperialism. This global
vision of non-Western intellectuals tied their reform projects to a fine formulation of the relationship
between a vision of universal civilization and the historical experience of Europe that exhibited the
culmination of this universal process of progress. Their vision of a universal West was closely linked
with a desire to become equal members of the perceived civilized international society and to benefit
from the security and prosperity this globalizing international society promised. --
Cemil Aydin in"The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia
Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought"About Cemil Aydin |
Aydin is also the author of numerous scholarly journal articles, book chapters and reviews including:"A Global anti-Western Moment? The Russo-Japanese War, Decolonization and Asian Modernity" in Sebastian Conrad/
Dominic Sachsenmaier, eds., Conceptions of World Order, ca. 1880-1935. Global Moments and Movements
(New York City: Palgrave Transnational History Series, 2007): 213-236;"The 'Question of the West' and Alternative Visions of World Order in Interwar Era Japan and Turkey: What
Does a Comparison Teach Us?" in Toshihiro Minohara and Kimura Masato, eds, Turbulent Decade: Japan's Challenge
to the International System of the 1930s (University of Toronto Press, Forthcoming in 2007);
(co-authored with Juliane Hammer)"Introduction to the Special Issue on the Critiques of the 'West'
in Iran, Turkey and Japan", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,
Vol. 26:3 (Fall 2006): 347-352;"Between Reverse Orientalism and the Global Left: Islamic Critiques
of the West in Modern Turkey," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,
Vol. 26: 3 (Fall 2006): 446-461;"Beyond Civilization: Pan-Islamism, Pan-Asianism and the Revolt against the West,"
Journal of Modern European History, Vol. 4:2 (Fall, 2006): 204-223;"Overcoming Eurocentrism? Japanese
Orientalism on the Muslim World (1913-1945)," Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies,
(Fall, 2006): 139-164;"The Politics of Conceptualizing Islam and the West," Ethics and International Affairs,
Vol. 19:1 (Winter 2005): 93-100.
