Roundup: Historians' Take

Victor David Hanson: Nobelitics

[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. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.]Nobel Pri

Jonathan Zimmerman: American schools were always violent

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory," which was published in July by Yale University Press.] Four boys assault their teacher, who later dies of her injuries. Across the country, newspapers compete to unearth the most lurid details of the episode. It seems the boys were annoyed at being detained after school. So they threw rocks and

David Cesarani: Stephen Fry's Auschwitz blunder: history is too serious a matter to be left to comedians and politicians

[David Cesarani is research professor in history at Royal Holloway, University of London.] We are going through another of those odd periods when corners of our daily newspapers look as if they are reporting things that happened over 65 years ago. There are rows over what the Latvians did or did not do in the second world war, arguments about why the German Luftwaffe bombed Coventry and, most recently, Stephen Fry has upset the Poles with a careless remark about Auschwitz. What all

Max Boot: How We Can Win in Afghanistan

[Max Boot is the author of War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today.] The terms counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have become common currency this decade in the wake of September 11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq. To a layman’s ear, they can sound like synonyms, especially because of our habit of labeling all insurgents as terrorists. But to military professionals, they are two very different concepts. Counterterrorism refer

Jonathan Tremblay: Stolen Artefacts: The Louvre to Return Egyptian Frescos

[Jonathan Tremblay is a historian and is currently an intern for History News Network] For many years, the Egyptian director of Antiquities, Mr. Zahi Hawass has called upon worldwide museums for the return of his country’s archaeological heritage. In this case, Egypt petitioned Paris’ Louvre museum to return some frescoes that were stolen from the Valley of the Kings in the 1980s. Indeed, Hawass claims that the Louvre knew of the artefacts’ stolen origin and nevertheless purchased t

David Greenberg: Forget about McChrystal; Obama's real problem is MacArthurism

[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.] Sixty-seven years after his famous vow, Gen. Douglas MacArthur has returned.* Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recent warnings that the White House had better heed his call for an Afghanistan surge have provoked comparisons to the showdown between President Truman and his truculent commander in Korea. To the lef

Max Holland: The Vanity of Vanity Fair

[Max Mendel Holland (born December 9, 1950, in Providence, Rhode Island) is a journalist, author, and the editor of Washington Decoded, an online newsletter from the nation's capital that began publishing March 11, 2007.] Under the editorship of Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair has become the most reliable purveyor of Camelot nostalgia. Over the last decade, either the glossy magazine or vanityfair.com has published 19 articles, book excerpts, or photo spreads about the Ke

Julian E. Zelizer: When Nobel Prize rewarded failure

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published in December by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] Did President Obama deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? That debate will likely continue for weeks to come. But the more interesting question may be about what

Lewis Sorley: The Real Afghan Lessons From Vietnam

[Mr. Sorley, a military historian and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, is the author of "A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam" (Harcourt, 1999).] More than 30 years have passed since North Vietnam, in gross violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, conquered South Vietnam. That outcome was partly the result of greatly increased logistical support to the North from its communist backers. It was also the result of Ameri

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Michelle's Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours

[Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the founder and the editor-in-chief of The Root.] First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves. This discovery, like all recoveries of the identities of ancest

Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo: The New Tammany Hall

[Fred Siegel is a visiting professor at St. Francis College and a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Dan DiSalvo is a professor at City College of New York.] Ever since the 1972 Democratic convention nominated George McGovern over the objections of the AFL-CIO, the standard wisdom has been that organized labor's power in American politics has declined dramatically. The failure of the current Democrat-dominated Congress to pass labor's highest legislative

William J. Astore: Obama at the Precipice

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular. He has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.] It's early in 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a critical decision. Should he escalate in Vietnam? Should he say "yes" to the request from U.S. commanders for more troops? Or should he change strategy, downsize the American commitment, even

Juan Cole: Obama as Nobelist, Obama as game-changer

I was listening to National Public Radio on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, and they brought on some nonentity from one of Rupert Murdoch's faux "magazines," who delivered himself of the remark that when he heard the news, he broke out laughing. He laughed at Obama. He is being paid by the Aussie media monopolist, the billionaire bully, to laugh at Obama. The Right in the US objected to Obama getting the peace prize on the alleged grounds that

Victor Davis Hanson: The War in Afghanistan

[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. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College.]Two-Front Wars — Theirs and Ours Something is not quite right about the convent

John Milton Cooper: Obama's Prize, Wilson's Legacy

[John Milton Cooper, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of the forthcoming “Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.”] PRESIDENT OBAMA’S surprise Nobel Peace Prize is only the second in the last century that a sitting president has received. The first was presented in December 1920, when the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament awarded Woodrow Wilson the peace prize for 1919. Beyond the coincidence of both men residing in the White House, however, Presid

Howard Zinn: Nobel Prize for Promises?

[Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright and social activist, and has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award and the Lannan Literary Award. He is perhaps best known for "A People's History of the United States."] I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be give

Daniel Pipes: That Nobel Peace Prize: Bashes Bush, Handcuffs Obama

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] "He won what?" is the universal first reaction. And second, at least on the Right: "Why did they do that?" Even the Nobel committee's citation does not pretend Barack Obama has actually achieved anything. Rather, it was given to him "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international di

Tom Engelhardt: War of the Worlds

[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 Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.] An unremarkable paragraph in a piece in my hometown paper recently caught my eye. It was headlined

Juan Cole: Does Iran really want the bomb?

[Salon contributor Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Engaging the Muslim World."] When you tool around the blogosphere and the news sites, the discourse about Iran's nuclear program is maddeningly contradictory. But I think a single hypothesis can account for all the known facts. These are: 1. Iran is making a drive to close the fuel cycle and to be capable of independe

Ron Radosh: McChrystal vs. Obama: Is This Another MacArthur vs. Truman?

[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York.] Writing in The Washington Post, Yale Law School Professor Bruce Ackerman attempts to chastise General Stanley McChrystal for standing behind his well known recommendations on the military strategy for the United States to follow in Afghanistan. What upsets the professor is McChrystal’s audacity to challenge the wisdom of the expert from Delaware,