Roundup: Historians' Take

Scott Gabriel Knowles: Phantom of the Shanghai World's Fair

[Scott Gabriel Knowles is an assistant professor of history at Drexel University and director of Drexel's Great Works Symposium.] If Shanghai isn’t really China (as I was repeatedly told by Shanghainese), and the Expo isn’t really Shanghai (in but not of the metropolis, they also insisted), then I really have no clue where I spent 10 days last month. I ate Swiss fondue, bought a Kyrgyz felt hat, and had my passport stamped “Trinidad” by a young Chinese woman who never looked up from

Julian E. Zelizer: "Facebook Politics" is Fleeting

[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.] The Tea Party has rekindled excitement in the potential of the internet to nurture mass political movements by using the Web to raise money and mobilize manpower.

Andrew J. Bacevich: Obama Can't Stand Up to His Generals—And That's Dangerous

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.] "The President is an elected king," wrote Randolph Bourne nearly a century ago, "but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance ... than the fact that he is pragmatically a king." Bourne thereby identified a central truth of modern American politics: Stripped to it

Daniel Farber and Richard Frank: Proposition 23 and the Damage It Would Do to California

[Daniel Farber, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, directs the law school's environmental program and is chair of UC Berkeley's Energy and Resource Group. Richard Frank is executive director of the UC Berkeley School of Law's Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.] In November, California voters will make a key decision about the state's climate change policy, with long-term impacts on our economic future. A ballot initiative, Proposition 23, would suspend Californ

Erwin Chemerinsky: Supreme Court's Conservative Majority is Making Its Mark

[Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the UC Irvine School of Law and the author of the forthcoming book, "The Conservative Assault on the Constitution."] As the Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, its sixth with John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice, the reality is that this is the most conservative court since the mid-1930s. Since Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, conservatives have sought to change constitutional law, and they have succeeded in virtually every area.

William Astore: Our State Department: A Tiny Branch of the Pentagon

[Professor Astore currently teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, PA. He writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.] Last week, a quotation and a joke captured the zeitgeist of the American moment. The quotation came from Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, related to a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Defence

Lisa Jardine: How History Can Inform Spending Cuts

[Lisa Jardine is professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, University of London.] The new academic year has begun, and I am preparing my graduate classes. So I have been reading again one of the great, lasting works of history-writing, Johan Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages.... Huizinga is a master story-teller whose material is drawn from the everyday detail, literature and poetry of the late Middle

Elwood Watson: Sex Scandals, Self-Righteousness and Sordid Revelations

Recently, Black America has been engulfed in a steady stream of riveting news. From Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s (D-Ill.) involvement in a scandal involving potential financial improprieties and a “social acquaintance,” to allegations of sexual misconduct levied against Atlanta megachurch pastor Bishop Eddie Long by several young men, the Black blogosphere has been in overdrive. There are some people in the Black community who are lamenting that these scandals reinforce the image of Bla

Christopher Bates: For Presidents, Losing Midterm Vote is the Norm

[Christopher Bates is a lecturer in the history department at Cal Poly Pomona and a writer for the History News Service.] In a matter of weeks, Americans will head to the polls, and they are likely to send many congressional Democrats into retirement. Politicians and pundits across the country will loudly declare this to be a repudiation of Democratic leadership in general and of Barack Obama's presidency in particular. Some may even assert that he's a "lame duck," rendere

Lew Irwin: Bombing of the LA Times in 1910 Set Labor Back a Generation

[Lew Irwin's book on the McNamara bombing, "Deadly Times," is due out in 2011.] Shortly after 1 a.m. on Oct. 1, 1910, 100 years ago Friday, a time bomb constructed of 16 sticks of 80% dynamite connected to a cheap windup alarm clock exploded in an alley next to the Los Angeles Times. It detonated with such violence that for blocks around, people ran panic-stricken into the streets, believing that an intense earthquake had hit the city. The explosion destroyed

Diane Ravitch: Stop Trashing Teachers!

[Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2010).] For the past week, the national media has launched an attack on American public education that is unprecedented in our history. NBC devoted countless hours to panels stacked with "experts" who believe that public education is horrible because it has so many "bad" teachers and "

Steven Leibo: The Cold War’s Hot Demise

[Dr. Steven Leibo, The Sherman David Spector Professor in the Humanities at the Sage Colleges in New York, specializes in Modern International History & Politics. Dr. Leibo has also taught at the State University of New York at Albany since 1986. A former Fulbright scholar, Prof. Leibo specializes in the relationship between Asia and the West. Leibo has extensive experience leading study tours through Vietnam. Leibo is also a documentary filmmaker. His most recent film is From Albany to Saigon:

Daniel K. Gardner: What Confucius Says is Useful to China's Rulers

[Daniel K. Gardner is a professor of history and the director of the program in East Asian studies at Smith College.] Confucius, the venerable sage who lived in the 6th century BC, is enjoying a 21st century revival. His rehabilitators? The Chinese Communist Party. Yes, that party, the one celebrating the 61st anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1. The same party whose chairman, Mao Tse-tung, vilified Confucius' "stinking corpse" during th

Jonathan Zimmerman: Colleges' Inequality Within

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] I'm a member of an overwhelmingly liberal profession that routinely condemns the growing disparities of wealth in contemporary America. But my own workplace is highly unequal, showering riches on the well-to-do

Victor Davis Hanson: The Dems’ Disastrous Model

[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.] The bookish, twice-unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once sighed that if most thinking people supported him, it still wouldn’t be enough to get elected in America because “I need a majority.” For some reason, Democrats have chosen to follow the disast

Tom Engelhardt: The War Addicts

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books), has recently been published.]Sometimes it’s the little things in the big stories that catch your eye.  On Monday, theWashington Post ran the first of three pieces adapted from Bob Woodward’s new book 

Willy Lam: Is China Afraid of Its Own People?

[Willy Lam is professor of China studies at Japan's Akita International University and adjunct professor of history at Chinese University at Hong Kong.] China and Japan's recent showdown over the Diaoyu (or Senkaku, to the Japanese) archipelago seems to have cooled down with the release of the captain of a Chinese fishing vessel who was detained by the Japanese coast guard earlier this month. Quite a few official Chinese media outlets ran big headlines proclaiming that the Japanese

R. Scott Appleby: Of Fundamentalisms, Secular and Otherwise

[R. Scott Appleby is Professor of History and Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.] The Task Force Report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy called for greater "religious literacy" across the "whole of government" and greater levels of interaction between nongovernmental institutions, American higher education and busin

Julian E. Zelizer: Address the Economic Malaise

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and author of "Jimmy Carter.”] President Obama is having trouble connecting.... Part of the problem does have to do with his personality and public persona.... In this respect, he does face similar challenges that Jimmy Carter confronted in the 1970s. Carter learned that in bad economic times the public would reacted poorly to a leader who seemed professorial and cl

Pierre Fuller: China's Charitable Past

[Pierre Fuller is completing a doctoral dissertation on Chinese charity networks and famine relief at the University of California, Irvine.] With trade imbalances helping make billionaires of more than a few Chinese, business pages have been abuzz with the promise of at least one American export to China: philanthropy. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are visiting China this week to coax commitments to charity out of their Chinese counterparts. The Americans will be in Chi