Roundup: Historians' Take

Nicolaus Mills: Sex Shop and Strip Clubs Near Ground Zero Show Double Standard over Park51

[Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and co-editor with Michael Walzer of “Getting Out: Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq.] In this debate over whether a Muslim community center should be built two blocks from where the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11, both sides have sought to capture the high ground. President Obama and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg have defended the building of the community center by inv

Conrad Black: Decline, but Not Inevitable Decline

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.] For decades, I have been a militant anti-declinist in terms of America’s place in the world. The United States is a proud, determined, hard-working, talented, patriotic nation and people, and it is not over-extended in the manner of empires of the past that took over the lands of others and eventually collapsed under the weight of the over-ambitious hegemon. Thus came

Jeffrey Herf: Fresh Air in Central Europe

[Jeffrey Herf teaches European history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys and The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust.] A certain kind of liberalism familiar to readers of The New Republic has been stirring in, of all places, Germany and Austria. To be sure, it operates on the margins. And, yes, the impulse to appease, run for cover and all the rest lingers there as well.

Christine Stansell: A Forgotten Fight for Suffrage

[Christine Stansell, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, is the author of “The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present.”] LOOKING back on the adoption of the 19th Amendment 90 years ago Thursday — the largest act of enfranchisement in our history — it can be hard to see what the fuss was about. We’re inclined to assume that the passage of women’s suffrage (even the term is old-fashioned) was inevitable, a change whose time had come. After all, voting is now business a

Sean Wilentz: New Dylan Recordings Unveiled

[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 contributing editor at The New Republic, his new book, Bob Dylan in America, will be published in September by Doubleday.] Columbia Records announced Tuesday that it will release in October two Bob Dylan multi-CD collections that will also be available on vinyl—the latest in a long string of new collectio

Juan Cole: Now the U.S. Should Get Out of Iraq's Politics

[Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History and the Middle East scholar at the University of Michigan. He blogs about the contemporary Middle East at Informed Comment. His most recent book is "Engaging the Muslim World."] Americans may worry that the end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq will reignite violence and chaos there. But the fear is misplaced. Iraqi nationalists have greeted the withdrawal of the last U.S. combat brigade as

Steve Hochstadt: Joe the Plumber: A Political Inspiration?

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column, which reflects the authors views and not necessarily those of the newspaper, appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier.] I went to hear Joe the Plumber the other day at a Take Back Illinois 9/12 event. I wanted to know what motivated today’s conservatives. Here is what I found out. The “9/12" movement is based on principles announced by Glenn Beck. The nine p

Richard Greenwald: A Modest Proposal for Teacher Tenure Reform

[Richard Greenwald is a labor historian and social critic. He is currently a professor of history at Drew University. His essays have appeared in In These Times, The Progressive, The Wall Street Journal among others. He is currently writing a book on the rise of freelancing and is co-editing a book on the future of work for The New Press, which features essays from the county's leading labor scholars and public intellectuals.] Teachers today feel ever more under the gun, as state fi

John Sainsbury: Catholicism’s Culture of Secrecy

[John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University, and a member of the congregation of the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria.] In April, Bishop James Wingle abruptly quit his post as head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Catharines, Ont., and disappeared overnight from public view.... The mystery of his whereabouts was resolved on July 31 — the same day that a front-page story appeared in the St. Catharines Standard under the banner headline “Wher

Victor Davis Hanson: America — Compared to What?

[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.] ...It starts at home. The so-called cultural elite — professors, those in the arts, the foundations, the establishment media, the Kerry-Edwards-Gore-Kennedy type, multimillionaire liberal politicos, the inherited Big Money, the doyens of the race industry — are now disconnected from material r

Julian E. Zelizer: GOP Needs a Reagan to Unite Its Factions

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Arsenal of Democracy," 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.] ...[T]he debate over the Islamic center and mosque tells us as much about the tensions that are brewing within the Republican Party as it does about the challenges facing

Roberto Cintli Rodriguez: We Are Spirit

[Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, the author of "Justice: A Question of Race" and an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at XColumn@gmail.com.] In Arizona, we fight because we are spirit. Yet, in recent travels, I've gotten the distinct impression that many people think that human beings are made simply of flesh and blood, and that only things material have consequence. Human beings also have spirit

Conrad Black: Obama and the Muslims

[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 seemed, after the 2008 election, that Mr. Obama thought that, having convinced the great white moderate political center of America that it should put him in the White House to slake its concerns about 400 years of mistreatment of blacks (and, as a bonus, to be spared having to take

Jonathan Zimmerman: Final Exams at Harvard are So Twentieth Century

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.” History.] A few years ago, a student asked me why I rarely give final examinations in my classes. I paused a moment, reflecting on my own college years. “I never learned much from them,” I told her. The majority of my exams required me to regurgitate, not to think. And when the tests were over, I promptly

Eric Foner: Born in the U.S.A. Is What Makes Someone American

[Eric Foner, whose forthcoming book, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” is a professor of history at Columbia University] For almost 150 years Americans have believed that anyone born here, whatever his or her origins, can be a good citizen. There is no reason to believe the children of illegal immigrants are any different. Congress should think long and hard before tampering with this essential American principle embodied in the 14th Amendment to

Steve Conn: Goodbye Baghdad!

[Steve Conn is a history professor at The Ohio State University.] Today the last American combat troops left Iraq, nearly 7.5 years after Bush/Cheney launched this military fiasco. There is no measure of this war that makes anything other than an unalloyed disaster with few parallels in American history - not the number of deaths and injuries, the $2 trillion spent on it, nor the way it has weakened the American position in the region and the world. The Obama Admi

Max Boot: Winning the Peace in Iraq

[Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is writing a history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.] The Stryker armored vehicles of the U.S. Army's Fourth Brigade, Second Infantry Division have just rumbled out of Iraq. Their trip from Baghdad to Kuwait was only 300 miles long, but symbolically the distance was much greater. The Fourth Brigade is the last combat brigade to pull out of Iraq a

Victor Davis Hanson: Please, No More Teachable Moments

[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 president of the United States has it hard enough without needlessly wading into, and fanning, local controversies. The economy is battered by sluggish growth, high unemployment, record annual deficits, and near-unsustainable national debt. Over 50 percent of the people now disapprove of B

Andrew J. Bacevich: Presidents Flying Blind

[Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War," has just been published.] Fifty years ago this summer, with Americans riveted by a presidential contest pitting John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower contemplated his departure from the White House. As he prepared to retire from public life, Ike sketched out the ideas that would inform hi

Julian E. Zelizer: The New Party Bosses

[Julian E. Zelizer is a history professor at Princeton University. He is the editor of an essay collection, “The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment," due out this fall, and author of the coming “Jimmy Carter.”] With this year’s crop of most unusual candidates — like Sharron Angle in Nevada or World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon in Connecticut or Alvin Greene in South Carolina — some news reports give the impression that we are living i