Roundup: Historians' Take

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: China’s Attempt at Gaining Soft Power is Tripped Up by Clash Over Human Rights

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history and department chair at University of California Irvine and the author, most recently, of “China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know,” published this year by Oxford University Press.] IRVINE: Since the late 1980s, China’s leaders have embraced globalization in a bid to remake the nation, and it has recently sought to leverage its growing economic power in a grand re-branding exercise. China, the exercise tried to show, w

Timothy Garton Ash: This Nobel Prize was Bold and Right – But Hits China's Most Sensitive Nerve

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.] Norway's Nobel peace prize committee has done the right thing in awarding this year's prize to Liu Xiaobo. The furious reaction of the Chinese state shows just how complicated doing the right thing will become as we advance into an increasingly post-western world. Liu Xiaobo is exactly the kind of person who deserves this prize, alongside Andrei Sakharov, Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. F

Julian E. Zelizer: 'Big Tent' Already Thing of the Past

[Julian E. Zelizer is a history professor at Princeton University. He is the author of “Jimmy Carter” and editor of “The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment.”] According to POLITICO’s John Harris, just as former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has departed from Washington, many of his congressional recruits from the class of 2006 — when he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — may soon be gone as well. Emanuel’s strate

Victor Davis Hanson: Deficits and Depression

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] We will learn in November just how angry the public is about a lot of things, from higher taxes to massive unemployment. But the popular uproar over those issues pales in comparison with the sense of humiliation over the fact that we Americans are quite broke. In 2008, the public

Conrad Black: Islam and the West

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.] It is certainly time that the West considered systematically whether it has irreconcilable differences with Islam. The belligerence of many Islamic spokesmen and the unassimilable quality of many Muslim immigrants in the West, as well as the spectacular terrorist provocations of extre

Robert Citino: On Being a Wiking

[Robert Citino is a history professor at the University of North Texas.] In the words of that great screenwriter Cameron Crowe, I'm "almost famous." Last week I was contacted by Joshua Green, Senior Editor at Atlantic Monthly. Seems there is a candidate running for Congress in northwestern Ohio who has been part of a Waffen-SS re-enactor group. Their aim, like that of re-enactors everywhere, was to "live history," in this case the history of the 5th

G. David Miller and Susan Gilson: Middle East Regional Cooperation: A Thirty-Year Assessment

[G. David Miller is a visiting professor in the Center for Regional Change and Adjunct Professor in the International Agriculture and Development Graduate Group in the School of Agriculture and Environment Science atUniversity of California, Davis. He teaches graduate courses in Micro-enterprise and in Project Design and Management. / Susan Gilson Miller is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Davis where she teaches courses on Mediterranean History and the Histor

Greg Schneider: Right to Work = Economic Growth

[Dr. Greg Schneider is a Senior Fellow with the Kansas Policy Institute and an associate professor of history at Emporia State University. He has been published widely and is the author or editor of three books on the history of conservatism.] From 1935 until 1947, it was legal for closed shops to exist. If you wanted a job in a unionized factory, you had to join the union. Congress then passed the Taft-Hartley Act, restricting the power of union political action committees and allo

Michael B. Oren: An End to Israel’s Invisibility

[Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States and a trained historian.] NEARLY 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to independence in their homeland — and more than 62 years since Israel’s creation — the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish nature of the state. “Israel can name itself whatever it wants,” said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the newspaper Haaretz, his chief negot

Sean Wilentz: The Tea Party’s Cold War Roots

[Sean Wilentz is a history professor at Princeton University whose books include The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.] A few months ago, the cable-television and radio host Glenn Beck began his Fox News show with one of his favorite props: a pipe clenched between his teeth. “I’ve got my pipe,” he told his audience, his speech slightly muddled by the stem, “because we’re going to speak about schoolish kind of things.” The t

Jonathan Zimmerman: Hester Prynne in the Internet Age

[Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University. He is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (Yale University Press).] So here's a quick thought experiment about America's latest sex scandal: What if Karen Owen was pulling an Easy A? If you've been on the Internet recently, you already know that Owen—a 2010 graduate of Duke University—described her sexual relationships with 13 male student-athlete

John Willingham: At Glenn Beck University, Hatred is the Curriculum

[John Willingham is a regular contributor to the History News Network (HNN.us) and also writes for Religion Dispatches. He is the author of The Edge of Freedom, A Novel of the Texas Revolution, to be published in early 2011.] Dull your wits and sharpen your prejudices—Beck University is back again. Now Beck’s temple of knowledge has a completely new curriculum, and this “semester” concludes with a sledgehammer course: “Presidents You Need to Hate.” This di

AC Solomon: Let's Hear It for Archaeology

[AC Solomon is an Africanist archaeologist, writer and former museum curator. She is a specialist in the history and prehistory of hunter-gatherers and their arts, and has published over thirty papers in scientific journals, including Scientific American] History matters. Michael Gove wants to shake up the school history curriculum and instil "narrative British history" in students. With the very different figures of Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama both reportedly on board

Barbara Ransby: The Rot of D’Souza’s Rant

[Barbara Ransby is a professor of history at the University of Illinois-Chicago, the author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision and a founder of the activist group Ella's Daughters.] For the past 30 years, Dinesh D’Souza has fought against virtually every demand for social and racial justice that has emerged. From his 1981 outing of closeted students at Dartmouth to his ridicule of the anti-apartheid movement to his vitriolic attacks on affirmat

Julian E. Zelizer: Why Christine O'Donnell is Not You

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Arsenal of Democracy" and a book on former President Carter and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.] In a very clever television advertisement, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell looks directly at the camera and says to voters: "I'm not a witch. ... I'm

Juan Cole: Ahmadinejad and the Limits of American and Israeli Power

[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.] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Middle East’s populist answer to the American tea party, has stirred controversy with his trip to Lebanon, which will begin Wednesday. He is planning to visit villages in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel that have been reb

Ilan Stavans: Mario Vargas Llosa: Enlightenment Over Barbarism

[Ilan Stavans is a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. He is general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, published last month.] The decision to award the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mario Vargas Llosa is a triumph of reason over the forces of chaos in Latin America. At a time when the region has moved from dictatorship to fragile civilian government marred by corruption, illiteracy, violence (particularly against women), and an a

Thomas Meaney and Stephen Wertheim: Barack Obama and the Limits of Prudence

[Thomas Meaney and Stephen Wertheim are doctoral candidates in history at Columbia University.] IF YOU have waited to see Barack Obama lose his cool, your moment has come. After the president finished giving the interview published in the October 15 issue of Rolling Stone, he charged back into the room to deliver a parting salvo. Stabbing at the air, Obama berated Democrats for “sitting on their hands complaining.” He even questioned their motives. “If people now want to take their

Stephanie Coontz: Why 'Mad Men' is TV's Most Feminist Show

[Stephanie Coontz teaches family history at the Evergreen State College. Her next book, "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s," will be published in January.] Historians are notorious for savaging historical fiction. We're quick to complain that writers project modern values onto their characters, get the surroundings wrong, cover up the seamy side of an era or exaggerate its evils -- and usually, we're right. But AMC's hit

Conrad Black: A Republican Sweep

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.] As we are now a month from the midterm elections, I will boldly predict their outcome.... The Republicans should win a majority of about 15 in the House, consigning the Pelosi era to the proverbial dustbin.... Harry Reid has been the least distinguished Senate majority leader since the trivia-question trio of Wallace H. White, Scott Lucas, an