Roundup: Historians' Take

Joseph A. Palermo: University of Phoenix Mantra: Always Be Closing

[Joseph A. Palermo is Associate Professor of American History at California State University, Sacramento.]"Always Be Closing" is the slogan of"Premiere Properties," the fictional Chicago real estate office in David Mamet's play, Glengarry Glen Ross."Always Be Closing" is not only the theme of Mamet's examination of the tyranny of the"bottom line" over human relationships, but also appears to be the driving principle behind the"University" of Phoenix's administrators who cra

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama: Not the Great Stone Face

[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.] In 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an allegory about a series of small-town would-be heroes who the gullible public claimed resembled the Great Stone Face on the side of a New Hampshire mountain. The citizens assumed that these men would have

Tom Engelhardt: Killing Civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq

[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 just been published.]Consider the following statement offered by Ad

Efraim Karsh: Shimon Peres Versus the Brits

[The writer is professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College London, editor of the Middle East Quarterly and author, most recently, of Palestine Betrayed.] Shimon Peres, Israel’s 87-year-old president doesn’t usually arouse antagonism among Europeans. A tireless peace advocate for decades, and architect of the Oslo Process for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize, he has long presented Israel’s moderate face to the outside world. Y

Julian E. Zelizer: Don't Give Obama Blank Check On War

[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.] Despite all the questions surrounding the war in Afghanistan, congressional Democrats have not challenged the administration's policies since President Obama announced a

Harold James: Distressing Stress Tests

[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 Globalization Cycle.] The stress tests applied to American banks last year are widely credited with restoring financial stability in the United States and removing the fear that major financial institutions might fail. Europeans hope that the rece

Gillis J. Harp: Are We All Ideologues Now?

[Dr. Gillis J. Harp is professor of history at Grove City College and member of the faith & politics working group with The Center for Vision & Values.] New media have shaped our political culture. Some, like talk radio and all-news cable stations, are developments of older, established technologies. Others, like internet blogs, are based on comparatively new technologies. Yet, both venues have provided congenial habitats for that enemy of reasonable, constructive political

John Paul Rossi: Campaign Promises Now Ring Hollow for President Obama

[John Paul Rossi is an associate professor of history at Penn State Erie. He is co-author of “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Automobile Insurance: Samuel P. Black Jr. and the Rise of Erie Insurance, 1923-1961.”] Americans have lost faith in President Barack Obama and his economic policies. Nearly 60 percent of respondents to a Washington Post-ABC News poll reported that they did not have confidence in the president “to make the right decisions for the country’s futu

Daniel Pipes: Niqab Security Outrages at Canadian Airport

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] I visited Toronto in early March 2010 and as I left the country I passed through the usual security check at Pearson International Airport.  What made it different is that the next passengers after me in line were a man, a small child, and a person in niqab.  (I write"person" rather than"woman" as I hardly know who was under

Victor Davis Hanson: Why Are We Beginning to Hate Congress?

[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.] Recent polls show that more than 70 percent of the public holds an unfavorable view of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wins about a 10 percent approval rating; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has similarly rock-bottom poll numbers. Why this astounding —

Walter Russell Mead: The Roots of Pakistan’s Rage

[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] It’s been one disaster after another this week in Pakistan. The WikiLeaks documents opened raw wounds in Pakistan’s agonizing relationship with the United States. A plane crash on the outskirts of the capital of Islamabad killed 152 people. UK Prime Minister David

Mark LeVine: Understanding the Muslim World

[Mr. LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies at the University of California, Irvine.] What does it say about the chances for American success in Afghanistan and the larger global 'war on terror' - which despite the Obama administration's official name change to "Overseas Contingency Operations" remains deliberately far removed from any contingency that might hasten its end - that the wives of the military's most senior commanders

William Astore: Asking Too Much of Our Troops -- And Not Enough of College Students

[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.] Like many colleges today, my institution has a program to introduce new students to higher education. What's surprising, perhaps, is how little we take for granted with respect to student maturity and preparation. We don't expect they'll know how to take n

Timothy Burke: Evidence Is Old-Fashioned?

[Timothy Burke is a professor of history at Swarthmore College] So, more wailing and gnashing of teeth about Andrew Breitbart. The New York Times has a piece on plagiarism that reviews an increasingly prominent argument that contemporary college students simply don’t know that copying the words of another writer verbatim is plagiarism, that they’ve grown up in a different kind of textual environment that will eventually produce new norms for everyone. I’m s

Sandy Levinson: George Packer On the Senate

[Sandy Levinson is a professor of law and government at The University of Texas at Austin.] Everyone should read George Packer's piece in the current New Yorker (though it's possible you need to be subscriber to get it), on "The Empty Chamber: Just how broken is the Senate"? The answer is very. The filibuster is only part of the problem. The article begins with the lunatic Senate Rule XXVI, paragraph 5, which requires unanimous consent for any committees to hold hearings a

Steven Conn: Xenophobia I Can Believe In

[Steven Conn is a professor of history at Ohio State University.] Not too long ago I attempt a little piece of research. I wanted to know how many military bases the United States maintained overseas. Answer? Classified. Suffice it to say that the number runs well into the many dozens if not several hundreds. They range from the venerable and infamous, like Guantanamo Bay, to the much more recent and volatile, like the staging areas in several of the 'Stans

Juan Cole: U.S. Military Mission in Iraq Ends Not with a Bang but a Whimper

[Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History and the Middle East scholar at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on the Middle East and the West-Islam relations.] President Obama reaffirmed on Monday that the US would have all combat troops out of Iraq by the end of August, in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated by the Iraq parliament with the Bush administration in the latter’s last months. He said that the fina

Jesse Lemisch: Professors as Welfare Queens?

[Jesse Lemisch is professor emeritus of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. He is author of"Jack Tar vs. John Bull,""On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession,""The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up,""Jack Tar in the Streets";"The Politics of Left Culture" and"Pop Front Culture: I Dreamed I Saw MTV Last Night." He has also taught at Yale, University of Chicago, Northwestern Universi

Daniel Pipes: Britain's New Export: Islamist Carnage

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]Britain's largest and longest-running terrorist investigation ended last month with the conviction of three British Muslims. Their 2006 plot involved blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners wi

Michael Kazin: The Democrats’ Big Tax Problem

[Michael Kazin is co-editor of Dissent and a professor of history at Georgetown University. He is completing a history of the American left to be published in 2011 by Knopf.] I never imagined I would suspect Jonathan Chait of political naïveté. But his recent post, “How To Fight the Tax Cut Wars,” leaves me no choice. Chait gleefully maintains that Democrats “hold the whip hand” in the upcoming battle in Congress over whether to retain the Bush tax cuts that provided a windfall for