Roundup: Historians' Take

Tony Judt: Israel Without Clichés

[Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author, most recently, of “Ill Fares the Land.”] THE Israeli raid on the Free Gaza flotilla has generated an outpouring of clichés from the usual suspects. It is almost impossible to discuss the Middle East without resorting to tired accusations and ritual defenses: perhaps a little house cleaning is in order. No. 1: Israel is being/should be delegitimized Israel is a state

Thomas J. Sugrue: The Myth of Post-Racial America

[Thomas J. Sugrue is professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His latest book is "Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race."] The euphoria surrounding Barack Obama’s election as the first African American president seems a lifetime ago. In the days following the election, Gallup reported that more than two-thirds of Americans viewed Obama’s election as “either the most important advance for blacks in the past 100 years, or among the t

Jim Sleeper: From Beit Shemesh, a Cry to American Jews

[Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in political science at Yale University.] I won't even try to improve on the exemplary posts here by MJ Rosenberg and Jo-Ann Mort on the Flotilla mess and the Gaza blockade, but since I'm in Israel right now (for another few days), I do want to recount two experiences and mention a recent "incident" that underscores how urgent it is that U.S. policy and American-Jewish opinion shift substantially. Yesterday I went to a wedding at Bei

Juan Cole: Iran’s Green Movement: One Year Later

[Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and director of its Center for South Asian Studies. He maintains the blog Informed Comment. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).]Iran’s Green Movement is one year old this Sunday, the anniversary of its first massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran.  Greeted with great hope in much of the world, a year later it’s weake

Burt Folsom: Don’t Copy Europe

[Burt Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College.] In 1850, the U. S. was a second-rate power. We were way behind Britain in steel, railroads, and textiles. In fact, it was 1848 before we finished building our first large railroad with American-made rails. Before that we just imported most of our rails from Britain. In the area of science and chemicals, the Germans were the leaders. They invented or perfected many chemical products in the late 1800s and early 1900s, includi

Victor Davis Hanson: History Down the Danube

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor, most recently, of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome.] A German remarked on our Tour 2010 that he found it odd that, given all the graffiti one sees, there is never any defacement on the great stone stage at Nuremberg (patterned by Albert Speer after the Pergamon altar) that is immortalized in so many film clips of Hitler screaming to the

Nelson Lichtenstein: Labor’s Role in the Obama Era: A Troublesome and Unreliable Ally?

[Nelson Lichtenstein is MacArthur Foundation Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. His most recent book is The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. This article is taken from a talk given at the AFL-CIO Executive Board Meeting on March 1, 2010.] WITH A perilous set of midterm elections on the horizon, it would be understandable if labor and its li

Julian Zelizer: Carter, Obama, and the Left-Center Divide

[Julian E. Zelizer is Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. This fall, Times Books will publish his newest work, Jimmy Carter. He is also the author of Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism (Basic Books) and the editor of President George W. Bush: The First Historical Assessment (Princeton University Press).] WHEN SENATOR Ted Kennedy walked onto the podium at the 1980 Democratic Convention, the cr

Judith Stein: The Perils of Portugal

[Judith Stein is a professor of history at the City College of New York Graduate Center. She is the author of The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society, Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism, and Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies.] The British economist David Ricardo told the Portuguese in the nineteenth century to sell their wine to England in exchange for cloth. What

Steve Hochstadt: We Have Met the Environmental Enemy and He is Us

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier.] Suddenly everyone’s worried about the environment. The Gulf oil disaster, perhaps the biggest oil spill in history, and still pumping, once again puts the spotlight on how human activity can destroy our earthly home. Watch the news and everybody is angry. Some scream at BP, a repeat offender who puts profits before safety

Andre Gerolymatos: Hamas, Israel and the War for Hearts

[Andre Gerolymatos is professor of history and holds the Hellenic Studies Chair at Simon Fraser University.] The recent crisis involving Israel and Hamas at first glance appears to be part of the endless cycle of violence that has doomed the region to perpetual conflict. It's certainly not conventional warfare, although the Middle East has had its share, but a type of war that is fought mostly in the shadows with only its outcome making it to the light of day. Ordinaril

James W. Loewen: Not Aesopian Enough: A Chinese Publishing Fable

[Jim Loewen taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont. Previously he taught at predominantly black Tougaloo College in Mississippi. He now lives in Washington, D.C., continuing his research on how Americans remember their past.]In April 2008, Ma Wanli, a professor of American history at Nanchang Hangkong University in Nanchang, China, emailed me to introduce himself as the translator of the Chinese version of my U.S. best seller, Lies My Teacher Told Me

Tyler Priest: The Ties that Bind MMS and Big Oil

[Tyler Priest, clinical professor of business history and director of global studies at the University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business, is the author of “The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America.” He is member of the Mineral Management Service’s Outer Continental Shelf Scientific Advisory Committee, an uncompensated panel that advises the agency’s Environmental Studies Branch.] "There will be blame,” said “The Daily Show,” soon af

Joseph Lane: When Founders’ Envy Becomes Political Obstruction

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry. He previously taught at Hampden-Sydney and at Bowdoin College.] Asked to write about the most troubling feature of our national politics, I have considered many inviting targets—the filibuster and the Senate, the Supreme Court and the (ab-)use of judicial review, the constantly expanding modern presidency all come to mind, but in starting to write about any of the

Victor Davis Hanson: The Art of Seaborne Humiliation

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor, most recently, of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome.] A tiny flotilla of “peace ships” sets out to run an Israeli blockade of the Gaza coast. The Israeli strategy in response is intended to ensure that neither weapons nor terrorists enter the Hamas-held territory, at a time when Hamas is in a virtual war with Israel. Once t

Geoffrey Wawro: Blockading Palestine: Lessons from Exodus 1947

[Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is the General Olinto Mark Barsanti Professor of Military History and Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (Penguin Press, 2010.)] The IDF's blockade of the Gaza Strip and its interdiction of humanitarian flotillas is ironic in view of recent history. The end of World War II and the liberation of the Nazi death camps left a pool of 500,000 Jewish refu

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway: Quantcast Seeds of Doubt against Climate Science

[Naomi Oreskes is a professor of history and science studies at UC San Diego. Erik M. Conway is a historian of science living in Pasadena. They are the authors of "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming."] If some of the ongoing attacks on the credibility of climate science feel familiar, there's a reason. With their unattributed claims downplaying the severity of the problem and their vague allegat

Daniel Pipes: Islamist Turkey Overreaches

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]As typical Islamist-leftist theater to delegitimize Israel, late May's Turkish-sponsored"Free Gaza" flotilla was tediously repetitious. As an illustration that Israelis don't understand the

Victor Davis Hanson: Our 1979?

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor, most recently, of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome.] It has been sort of a topos to evoke the specter of 1979. I’ve done it repeatedly, as have other observers. Aside from the growing stagflation in the U.S. (I remember farming that year at the ending of an inflation-driven boom), that was the year that China invaded Vietnam

Moshe Dann: Ehud Barak’s Theater of the Absurd

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] There was no need to endanger Israeli troops. How could Ehud Barak not see the looming disaster? Stopping a large Gaza-bound ship could have been carried out below the waterline, or by an assault on the bridge, using smoke bombs and tear gas to take control. Dropping individual soldiers into a mob of hostile people lacks reason. The confrontation could hav