Roundup: Historians' Take

Jill Lepore: Glenn Beck, Eugenics, and History

[Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University where she is also chair of the History and Literature Program. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995.] Glenn Beck likes to give history lessons. His desk is strewn with books. “Read history!” he’ll holler into the camera. He’s even got a blackboard and chalk. I got to thinking about Beck while writing about

Jesse Lemisch: Invoking "Sedition" Against Tea Partiers is Short-Sighted, Ahistorical, and Suicidal

[Jesse Lemisch is a Professor Emeritus of History at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York.] The Nation joins a great tradition (Alien and Sedition Acts, Palmer Raids, Smith Act) by invoking "sedition" against Teabaggers. It seems utterly suicidal for the Left to invoke "sedition," as Melissa Harris-Lacewell does in condemning Teabaggers in The Nation . What a proud tradition we would join by doing this: Alien a

Jonathan Zimmerman: Reaction to Violence Muted by Stereotypes

[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.] If you live in the Delaware Valley, you've surely heard about the brutal December attacks on Asian students at South Philadelphia High School. Seven kids were hospitalized with injuries sustaine

Burt Folsom: First Principles of American Governance

[Burt Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College] The vote on the healthcare bill was disappointing, and many advocates of limited government are planning tactics for the next stages of the debate–both on healthcare and on future interventions planned by the president. Such strategy sessions are worthwhile, but the larger problem is this: We don’t yet have enough Americans who recognize the advantages of limited government and the menace of centralized power and big federal

Robert Dallek: Obama Has Done What LBJ and FDR Couldn’t

[Robert Dallek is the author of books on FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. His new book, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953, will be published in October.] In June of last year, when President Obama invited nine historians, including myself, to the White House for dinner, the challenge of passing a national health insurance law, already the centrepiece of the President’s legislative agenda, was a topic of conversation. After the Presiden

Jerry Z. Muller: Antisemitism and This Recession: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

[Jerry Z. Muller is a professor of history at The Catholic University of America in Washington, and author of the recently published “Capitalism and the Jews” (Princeton University Press).] It was late 2008, and if ever the country seemed primed for a revived outbreak of the populist formula equating Wall Street with Jews and both of these with evil, this was a moment when the stars were aligned in malignant confluence.... Jewish anxiety was only heightened when, around

Joseph Crespino: Lessons on States' Rights

[Joseph Crespino, an associate history professor at Emory University, is the author of “In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution” and co-editor, with Matthew Lassiter, of “The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism.” He is writing a biography of Strom Thurmond.] Though Republicans in Washington have lost the battle over health care, state GOP leaders are taking up the flag and running with it. Even before President Barack Obama signed t

Kenneth W. Mack: How the Congressional Process Has Changed

[Kenneth W. Mack is a professor at Harvard Law School. This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe.] WHILE HISTORY’S verdict on the Obama administration will not be rendered for quite some time, the passage of health reform legislation stands as a signal achievement. Supporters say the new law places this administration within the Democratic Party’s longstanding

Tom Engelhardt: All the World's a Stage (for the U.S.)

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publis

Stanley Kutler: The Wages of De-Regulation

[Stanley Kutler, a UW-Madison professor emeritus, is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings. This column first appeared on the Huffington Post.] Toyota's reported sins have given us the scandal du jour, but typically, the media zips past the basic problem. Toyota's safety irregularities pointedly illustrate instead the failure -- if not the virtual disappearance -- of regulation, a pattern begun in the 1970s as the nation dismantled and eroded the effectiveness of

Victor Davis Hanson: Another Partisan Push for Another 'Comprehensive Reform'?

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.] Candidate Barack Obama promised immigration activists, "I think it's time for a president who won't walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes po

Walter Russell Mead: Remembering Iraq

[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.] Seven years ago this week the first bombs were falling in Iraq and the war was breaking out, a war that caused untold suffering in Iraq, led to waves of anti-American feeling around the world, polarized politics in the United States, broke the administration of Geor

Stanley Kutler: Obama v. Roberts a Pseudo-event

[Stanley Kutler, a UW-Madison professor emeritus, is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings. This column first appeared on the Huffington Post.] ...Recently, the ABC evening news offered us the ultimately silly and misplaced story of Chief Justice John Roberts’ remarks about President Barack Obama’s criticism of his court’s recent ruling, which held that corporate campaign contributions fell under “free speech,” and could not be regulated. Once again, historical me

Jonathan Tremblay: U.S. General Blames Srebrenica Massacre on Open Gay Policy

[Jonathan Tremblay is a historian and a Breaking News editor for the History News Network] Retired US general and former NATO commander John Sheehan has claimed that his UN forces failed to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina due to the heavy contingent of Dutch effectives among his troops, a force that allows soldiers to be openly homosexual. Former general Sheehan’s logic follows that western armies began a “socialization” process following

Tony Karon: Israel Won't Change Unless the Status Quo Has a Downside

[Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME.com where he analyzes the Middle East and other international conflicts. He also runs his own website, Rootless Cosmopolitan.]Uncomfortable at the spectacle of the Obama administration in an open confrontation with the Israeli government, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman -- who represents the interests of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Capitol

Baktybek Abdrisaev and Alexey Semyonov: Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution Wilts

[Mr. Abdrisaev is distinguished visiting professor of history and political science at Utah Valley University, and served as Kyrgyzstan's ambassador to the United States and Canada from 1997 to 2005. Mr. Semyonov is Vice President of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation.] Today marks the fifth anniversary of Kyrgyzstan's "Tulip Revolution," an uprising against authoritarianism that brought hope of a better life to the Kyrgyz people and inspired democratic oppositions in neighbor

Moshe Dann: Obama’s Israel Ambush Backfires

[Moshe Dann, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attack on Israel is failing spectacularly.Most Israelis — especially those in the center and left — have rallied around Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Judging by the media — especially television talk shows —

G. Derek Musgrove: CBC Investigations are Neither Conspiracy Nor Post-Racialism

[Dr. Musgrove is an Assistant Professor of History at UDC. Prior to Arriving at UDC, he was a visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in U.S. History from New York University in 2005.] In the first week of March, 2010, African American Governor of New York, David Patterson was forced to declare that he would not seek reelection amidst allegations that he improperly used the state police to silence a woman who

Victor Davis Hanson: We’ve Crossed the Rubicon

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.] President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the health care vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer t

Daniel Czitrom: Texas School Board Whitewashes History

[Daniel Czitrom is professor of history at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He is author of "Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan"; "Rediscovering Jacob Riis"; and a co-author of "Out of Many: A History of the American People."] As a co-author of an American history textbook that was effectively banned in Texas eight years ago, I get a strong feeling of déjà vu all over again as I follow the state's latest curricular w