Roundup: Historians' Take

Katie Engelhart: Prosecuting Nazis in the 21st Century

This week, in Nazi news... On Saturday, another former concentration camp guard bit the dust. This time around, it was Michael Seifert, 86, who served at the Bolzano camp in northern Italy during WWII. The next day, Sunday obituaries detailed the "Beast of Bolzano's" beastliest crimes. In 2000, Seifert was convicted by a military tribunal on nine counts of murder, for crimes he committed in Nazi-occupied Italy. One of his victims was a pregnant woman, who Seif

Juan Cole: Kandahar: The Latest Casualty of an Invisible War

[Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, maintains the blog Informed Comment. His most recent book, just out in paperback, is “Engaging the Muslim World.”] Not only is it unclear that the U.S. and NATO are winning their war in Afghanistan, the lack of support for their effort by the Afghanistan president himself has driven the American commander to the brink of resignation. In response to complaints from his constituents, Afg

Moshe Dann: Who Comes from Bethlehem?

[The author, a former assistant professor of history at CUNY, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] For those who grew up outside of Israel the answer brings back familiar Christmas carols, shopping day count-downs, Santas and reindeer. On Christmas Eve, thousands of Christians flock to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to celebrate. Built in the early Byzantine period (the fourth century CE) by Queen Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine ("The Great")

Harvey J. Kaye: The Right’s Rotten History

[Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He serves as an historical adviser to the Four Freedoms Park project.] Whether or not right-wingers such as Fox News “entertainer and enlightener” Glenn Beck, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, and Texas Governor Rick Perry actually uphold Ronald Reagan’s conservatism, they are clearly sustaini

Gil Troy: American Jews May Stand Up for Jonathan Pollard

[Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, is the author of six books on American history and Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today.] Jonathan Pollard, who is now marking his 24th year in prison, has earned the dubious record of serving the longest prison term in American history for spying for an ally. Convicted of espionage in 1987, Pollard was the suburban American

Alexander Yakobson: Two States or One (Arab) State

[Alexander Yakobson teaches ancient history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is an op-ed writer for Haaretz.] Danny Rubinstein’s account, in his Summer 2010 Dissent article (“One State/Two States: Rethinking Israel and Palestine”), of the disdainful reaction of Sufyan Abu-Zayda, a prominent figure in the Palestinian Authority, to Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Bar-Ilan speech,” in which the right-wing prime minister of Israel formally accepted the two-state solution, is remarkable

Kristin Collins and Linda K. Kerber: Sexing Citizenship

[Kristin Collins is a law professor at Boston University, and is the principal author of an amicus brief filed on behalf of Ruben Flores-Villar. Linda K. Kerber is a history professor at the University of Iowa and a signatory of the amicus brief. She is also the author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship.] Tomorrow the Supreme Court will consider whether American fathers have the same rights as American mothers to ensure that their child

David Aikman: Sharia - The Deadly Threat to America

[Dr. David Aikman was a journalist with TIME Magazine for 23 years, and is now a professor of history at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He has authored more than a dozen books, including "Jesus in Beijing" (Regnery, 2003), "Billy Graham: His Life and Influence" (Thomas Nelson, 2006) and "The Delusion of Disbelief" (Tyndale, 2008). His latest book, "The Mirage of Peace" (Regal), was released in September.] Dr. David Aikman (Patrick Henry Co

Harold James: Why There's Gold Fever

[Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and Marie Curie Professor of History at the European University Institute, Florence. His most recent book is The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalisation Cycle.] There is at present a profound uncertainty about currencies. That is why the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, created such a stir with a brief reference to an enhanced role for gold in the course of a plea for

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham: A Coming Sino-U.S. Currency Battle?

[Maura Elizabeth Cunningham is contributing editor for The China Beat.]On November 19, 2009, I posted a story here at China Beat that I titled “The Good, the Bad, and the Boring.” The article was a review of Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to China, during which he held a somewhat bland town hall meeting in Shanghai, performed the de rigueur tours of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, and met with Hu Jintao and o

Julian E. Zelizer: Why Democrats Have To Go On Offense

[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.] In professional football, teams need a good offense if they hope to win the Super Bowl.... The same can be said about politics. Being good at defense is important, but you need to play offense

Pearl Duncan: Holding Back the River, Riveting Water @ World Trade Center

[The author is completing a book about the variety of her ancestors’ DNA, ancestry and genealogy, and how each intersected with dramatic historical events.] The water retakes the land, pushing against how well the seawalls hold back the Rivers. So much depends on how well the city’s seawalls hold, or do not hold. Separation of land and water is the challenge in cities that have seawalls, underwater structures, standing tall and firm in sentry poses, as bulwarks against the sea and

Jim Sleeper: Glenn Beck Shows Neo-Cons It's 1932

[Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in political science at Yale.] American Jewish Stalinists of the 1930s broke with Russian Communism in lurches, as their locomotive of history kept derailing. Some were jolted off the train by Stalin's unofficially but patently anti-Semitic "purge trials" of the mid-1930s. Others, who downplayed Russian Communism's unresolved "Jewish question" out of noble or hardened faith in its professed universalism, woke up only in 1939, when Stali

Bruce Ackerman: Is the Lame-Duck Congress Constitutional?

[Bruce Ackerman is a professor of law at Yale and the author most recently of "The Decline and Fall of the American Republic."] During the darkest days of the Depression, Time magazine spied a ray of light: Congress passed the 20th Amendment, which "promised to eliminate the legislative influence of Senators & Representatives whose constituencies have already repudiated them." This was a big deal in 1932. The new amendment culminated a decade-lon

Paul Gottfried: Glenn Beck’s Myths

[Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and author of Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers, among other works.] When Glenn Beck wants to look serious he dons oversized horn-rimmed glasses and begins to lecture about Progressivism. In his telling, Progressives have contributed significantly to our latter-day political problems. He finds their ideology—combining massive bureaucracy with a command economy and

Walter Russell Mead: Obama In Asia

[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.] President Obama has begun the second half of his presidential term with a planned ten-day tour of Asia. Even beneath the haze of skepticism (from critics who accused the President of fleeing the country in the aftermath of the disastrous midterm election) and the c

Steve Hochstadt: Do We Have Common Ground?

[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.] ...If we tune out the shouting, we might find that we American voters are not at war with each other. Tuesday’s results included several messages about national policy that most Americans agree on. Here they are:1. Americans are concerned about the deficit. Since the year 2000

Julian E. Zelizer: GOP Leaders, Beware the Newcomers

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of Jimmy Carter by Times Books, Arsenal of Democracy by Basic Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush’s administration by Princeton University Press.] John Boehner has a huge problem on his hands. Now that the elections are over, and Republicans were victorious, he will need to tame the passions of the GOP freshmen who are coming to town determined

Ron Formisano: Poor, Middle Class Vote As If Rich

[Ron Formisano is a professor of history at the University of Kentucky.] Many Americans are living poor and voting rich, especially in Kentucky. They vote for politicians who serve the interests of the very rich, of corporations that ship jobs overseas, employ and exploit illegal immigrants and violate workplace rules to protect workers.... Rich-voting ordinary folks obsess about gays and guns but ignore rising inequality that is turning this country into Pakistan, wher

Ira Chernus: Will the GOP's Victory Energize Mideast Doves?

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.]Palestine as America’s next Vietnam? Like all historical analogies, it’s far from perfect. We aren’t about to send the U.S. Army to the West Bank or Gaza to kill and die in a war that can’t be won.  Where else in the world, though, is American weaponry and political power so obviously used to suppress a Viet Cong-like movement of national liberation (a bill the Taliban hardly fit)?And w