Roundup: Historians' Take

David Francis Taylor: An attack on the royal carriage by angry protesters. Sound familiar?

[David Francis Taylor is a lecturer in eighteenth-century literature at the university of Toronto. His book on the theatre and politics in Georgian London will be published next year.] Tensions in central London are high. Blundering its way through the streets, seemingly oblivious to the demonstrations, the royal vehicle is soon surrounded. It struggles to push its way through the wall of angry protesters. There is a great deal of shouting. Republican sentiments are expressed. Objec

Daniel Pipes: Pouring Cold Water on WikiLeaks

[ Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]Of all the WikiLeaks revelations, the most captivating may be learning that several Arab leaders have urged the U.S. government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Most notoriously, King

James Ledbetter: What Ike Got Right

[James Ledbetter is the author of the forthcoming “Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex.”] LAST week the National Archives released a trove of drafts and notes that shed new light on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned America about the “military-industrial complex.” The release comes just in time for the speech’s 50th anniversary next month. And so while scholars and historians use these docum

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Liu Xiaobo and and the Nobel Peace Prize

[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is chair of the history department at the University of California, Irvine and the author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2010). An essay on protest in China, which he co-wrote with Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, will appear in the next issue Dissent.] THIS YEAR’S Nobel Peace Prize generated an unusual amount of attention, due largely to the bravery and eloquence of the writings of the winner, the

Richard Kirsch: What Obama Can Learn From Reagan

[Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.]He brought it up, not us. In the press conference announcing the tax deal, President Obama compared Democratic objections to the bitterness that progressives feel about the loss of the public option in the health care debate. What the president fails to comprehend is that his style of public vac

Jonathan Zimmerman: Exceptionalism and the Left

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."] Is America "exceptional"?... That's becoming the battle cry of the Republican Party in its bid to unseat President Obama in 2012. Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and other GOP presidential hopefuls have all declared Obama insufficiently attuned to Americ

Julian E. Zelizer: Why George W. Bush Must Be Smiling

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter," published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University Press.] Somewhere in Texas, former President George W. Bush must be smiling. When President Obama and the Republican leadership reached a deal on extending all of the Bush tax cuts, including a generous exemptio

Robert L. Kelly: Bones of Contention

[Robert L. Kelly is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming.] LAST winter, the Department of the Interior issued regulations for the disposition of ancient American Indian remains and funerary objects that cannot be affiliated with modern tribes. Unfortunately, these new rules will destroy a crucial source of knowledge about North American history and halt a dialogue between scientists and Indian tribes that has been harmonious and enlightening. The new

Andrew Roberts: The British Empire's WikiLeaks

[Historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, Masters and Commanders, was published in the UK in September. His previous books include Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.] It might not afford much solace for Hillary Clinton as she tries to minimize the appalling damage done by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, but much the same thing happen

Julian E. Zelizer: Obama is Dealing Away FDR's Legacy

[Julian E. Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University, is the author of "Jimmy Carter," "Arsenal of Democracy," and the editor of "The Presidency of George W. Bush."] With public attention focused on President Obama's compromise with Republican leaders to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, there has been less discussion about a feature of the deal that could have enormous long-term consequences: the payroll tax holiday.
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Eric Foner: Obama Stumbles in Lincoln's Footsteps

[Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010)] ...Many comparisons between Lincoln and Obama have no historical merit. One that has validity is that both made their national reputations through oratory rather than long careers of public service. Lincoln held no public office between 1849 and his election. Obama served briefly i

Mark LeVine: WikiLeaks: Call of Duty

[Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).] For professional historians the publication of the vast trove of diplomatic cables is a bittersweet affair. No one outside of the Washington establishment and the myriad foreign leaders shamed by r

Victor Davis Hanson: Julian Assange’s EgoLeaks

[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] Julian Assange, the public face of WikiLeaks, is, among many things, cowardly. Courageousness would involve meeting with Iranian dissidents, Russian journalists, Pakistani Christians, or Chinese human-rights activists — and then releasing a

Stanley Kutler: Every Man His Own Historian

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] In our post-factual world, history has become another battlefield, with far-flung hostilities over cultural and political differences as well as the imperial adventures abroad. But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked, we are entitled to opinions, not to our own facts.... ...[W]e have Dick Armey, once a leader in proclaiming a “Contract With America” and currently head of Freedom Works,

Jon Meacham: No Deficit of Courage

[Jon Meacham, the author, most recently, of “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” is at work on a biography of George H. W. Bush.] IS it, in fact, 1994-95 all over again? The atmospherics are certainly familiar. We have a Democratic president who appears to be tacking to the center to work with Republicans after being battered in the midterms. Jilted liberals, meanwhile, are left wondering how they could have been so blind about the man they had fallen for so hard.

Walter Russell Mead: The Crisis of the American Intellectual

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] America has everything it needs for success in the twenty-first century with one exception: a critical mass of thinkers, analysts and policy entrepreneurs who can help unleash the creative potential of the American people and build the new government and policy stru

Joseph A. Palermo: WikiLeaks Exposes More Than Documents

[Joseph A. Palermo is Associate Professor of American History at California State University, Sacramento.]The State Department documents that WikiLeaks is making public expose the desire of many mainstream journalists and commentators to stand up and be counted as the dutiful water-carriers for the prerogatives of United States foreign policy. Rather than focus on the substance of the diplomatic cables, American journalists tend to either frame the story as being about the"over-cl

Steve Hochstadt: The Meaning of Conservative Principles

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier and is available and on his blog at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.] “We are about to embark upon a great crusade, a crusade to restore Americanism, and return the control of our government to our people.” Sounds very modern, but this was Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi in 1955, leading the fight against the integration of public schools that the Su

Juan Cole: Leaks Suggest Iran Is Now Winning in the Middle East

Iran is winning and Israel is losing. That is the startling conclusion we reach if we consider how things have changed in the Middle East in the two years since most of the WikiLeaks State Department cables about Iran’s regional difficulties were written. Lebanon’s Sunni prime minister, once a virulent critic, quietly made his pilgrimage to the Iranian capital last week. Israeli hopes of separating Syria from Iran have been dashed. Turkey, once a strong ally of Israel, is now seeking better rela

Richard Greenwald: Today's Students Need Leadership Training Like Never Before

[Richard Greenwald is dean of graduate studies, director of university partnerships, and a professor of history at Drew University. His next book, The Death of 9-5: Permanent Freelancers, Empty Offices and the New Way We Work, is forthcoming in 2012 from Bloomsbury Press.] In the last few years, leadership programs have sprung up in remarkable numbers at colleges and universities across the country. Institutions as diverse as Creighton University, Arizona State University, and Highl