Roundup: Historians' Take

Mark Lilla: The Tea Party Jacobins

[Mark Lilla is a historian of ideas at Columbia University in New York City.] A little over a decade ago I published an article in these pages titled “A Tale of Two Reactions” (May 14, 1998). It struck me then that American society was changing in ways conservative and liberal commentators just hadn’t noticed. Conservatives were too busy harping on the cultural revolution of the Sixties, liberals on the Reagan revolution’s “culture of greed,” and all they could agree on was that Ame

David S. Landes: The Enterprise of Nations

[David S. Landes is professor emeritus of history and economics at Harvard University and the author of several books, including The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1998). This essay is excerpted from The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times (2010), edited by David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, published by Princeton University Press.] Western entrepreneurship and technological progress go back centuries and have changed t

Timothy Snyder: Springtime for Stalin

[Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale. His most recent book is The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke. His new book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, will be published in September 2010.] Three and a half months after a Ukrainian court convicted Stalin of genocide against the Ukrainian nation during the famine of 19321933, a new monument in honor of the Soviet dictator has been erected in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia. Separati

Nicolaus Mills: Richard Blumenthal, Liberal Guilt, and Vietnam

[Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America's Coming of Age as a Superpower (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).] Once thought to be a lock to take over the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, Richard Blumenthal, the liberal attorney general of Connecticut, is now on the defensive as a result of saying that he served in Vietnam when he did not. In Connecticut, where he

Alan Brinkley: When Washington Took On Wall Street

[Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University.] J.P. Morgan Jr. was terrified. He was the most famous and arguably the most powerful banker in the United States, and also among the most secretive. But in May 1933, in the aftermath of the greatest financial crisis in the history of the United States, he was being called to testify before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency to explain how the catastrophe had occurred. Morgan dreaded the prospe

Marcy S. Sacks: The Danger of Careless Rhetoric About Civil Rights

[Marcy S. Sacks is associate professor of history at Albion College in Michigan, and she is writing a book about boxer Joe Louis.] The day after becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for the Senate seat in Kentucky, political neophyte and “tea party” enthusiast Rand Paul insisted to National Public Radio, “I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would’ve, had I been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism.”

Baktybek Abdrisaev and Alexey Semyonov: Nurturing Central Asia's Democratic Blossom

[Mr. Abdrisaev, distinguished visiting professor of history and political science at Utah Valley University, was Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to the United States and Canada from 1997 to 2005. Mr. Semyonov is vice president of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation.] Is Central Asian democracy an oxymoron? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, sweeping changes have come to the region. It has emerged as an important center for energy production, and two of the states, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,

Charles Armstrong: The Korean War Never Ended

[Charles Armstrong is a professor of history and director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. He has written several books on North and South Korea and is currently writing a book on North Korean foreign relations since the Korean War.] The Korean War began 60 years ago on June 25, 1950, and it still hasn't ended. Fighting on the Korean Peninsula may have stopped with a cease-fire in July 1953, but North and South Korea have remained in a tense state of armed t

Jonathan Zimmerman: Ethnic Studies End Up Shortchanging Everyone

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] In the late 1840s, following a brief war with Mexico, the United States acquired the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, along with parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wy

Daniel Pipes: How Islamists Came to Dominate European Islam

The 7/7 bombings in London, in which Islamists killed 52 and injured 700, prompted British authorities to work with Muslims to avoid future violence.However, rather than turn to anti-Islamist Muslims who reject the triumphalist goal of applying Islamic law in Europe, they promoted non-violent Islamists, hoping these would persuade coreligionists to express their hatred of the West in lawful ways. This effort featured Tariq Ramadan (b. 1962), a prominent Islamist intellectual. For

Saul Cornell: Elena Kagan and the Case for an Elitist Supreme Court

[Saul Cornell, PhD, holds the Paul and Diane Guenther chair in American history at Fordham University. He is the author of “The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828” and “A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America.”] The announcement of Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s nomination to fill the US Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice John Paul Stevens has prompted a familiar complaint.

Anthony Milner: History Shows Australia Would Be More Successful Finding Friends in East Asia

[Anthony Milner, Basham professor of Asian history, Australian National University, is a convener of the Asialink National Forum being held today at Parliament House, Canberra.] SUGGESTIONS in the past week concerning the possible down-grading of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum seem curious. I was as surprised as most. But would it make sense for Australia to put more effort into engaging East Asian or Asian regionalism rather than focusing so strongly on our long-term

Julian Zelizer: Democrats Shouldn't Be So Blue Anymore

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] For several weeks, Democrats have been feeling blue about the 2010 midterm elections. Many have been worried about the possibility of a precipitous decline in the size of the

Arthur Herman: Obama at West Point ... Lessons Unlearned

[Arthur Herman’s most recent book, Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.] On Saturday, Pres. Barack Obama gave a commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point, which in effect told the thousand or so soon-to-be second lieutenants that, if he has his way, they’ll soon be out of a job. Obama outlined for the cadets his vision of a new international order

Victor Davis Hanson: The New Old German Problem

[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.] I’ve been walking the last two days through Munich. Much of the city core was bombed out by the allies by spring 1945. Yet today there is little evidence of such destruction. The museums are among the best in the world, the streets and parks spotless, the infrastructure superb, and the

Thomas Sugrue: Stories and Legends [of Barack Obama]

[Thomas J. Sugrue is David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. This essay, which appeared in the June 7, 2010 issue of The Nation, is adapted from his book, ot Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (Princeton, 2009).] "Rosa sat so Martin could walk/Martin walked so Obama could run/Obama is running so our children can fly!" Circulated widely during the last weeks of the 2008 presidential election, this short piece of verse e

David Greenberg and Tony Michels: Elena Kagan Could Have Been a Great Historian

[David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers and author of three books of political history, has written the "History Lesson" column since 1998. Tony Michels teaches history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York.] Given the absence of judicial opinions by Elena Kagan, observers have taken to mining her other writings for clues about what kind of justice she would be—right

Julian Zelizer: Bad Midterms Not Always Bad for White House

[Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, is the author of “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security — From World War II to the War on Terrorism.”] ...Two years after conservatives welcomed the “Reagan Revolution,” Democrats had a net gain of 26 seats in the House. House Speaker Tip O’Neill had nationalized the midterm elections, focusing on “fairness” and railing against Reagan’s domestic policies. Dem

Diarmaid MacCulloch: Benedict Rewrites History of Vatican II

[Diarmaid MacCulloch is professor of the history of the church at the University of Oxford. His forthcoming book is A History of Christianity: the first three thousand years] On 12 May Pope Benedict XVI spoke about truth, history and the church. His backdrop was the surreal and voluptuous Gothic of the Jerónimos Monastery, overlooking the great river-mouth of the Tagus in Portugal, from which the first explorers of medieval Europe sailed to circle Africa and India and eventually to

Mary L. Dudziak: Rand Paul's Constitutional Confusion

[Mary L. Dudziak is Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at the University of Southern California.] Upon his successful nomination to be Republican Senate candidate from Kentucky on Tuesday, Rand Paul announced: “I have a message. A message from the Tea Party....We’ve come to take our government back.” Just where he hopes to take it has become clearer in a round of post-election interviews. The topic of the day