Roundup: Historians' Take

Victor David Hanson: The Obsolescence of a Slur

[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.] The ch

Juan Cole: Iran and Nuclear Latency

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] 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 independent

Victor Davis Hanson: Bitter Harvests to Come

[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.] Reflections on the Speech to Congress If one were to sum up the Obama speech to the joint

Susan Dunn: All the President's Meddling

[Susan Dunn, the author of the forthcoming “Roosevelt’s Gamble: How F.D.R. Fought to Change the Democratic Party,” is a professor at Williams College.] Williamstown, Mass. “PRESIDENT OBAMA is not only president of the country, but head of the Democratic Party,” said Doug Sosnik, the political director in the Clinton White House, commenting on President Obama’s aggressive move to quash the election hopes of New York’s deeply unpopular governor, David Paterson, and to pic

Jonathan Zimmerman: U.S. needs foreign teachers

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth] 'Shut up, Jackie Chan!" That's what students shouted at Danilo Danga when he first arrived in Baltimore, where he teaches at a public middle school. But Danga isn't from China, as his students' ignorant taunt implied. He's from the Philippines. So are 600 other Baltimore teachers, who now constitute 10 percent of the city's instructional force. Other districts are hiring teachers fr

William R. Polk: An Open Letter to President Obama: Analysis and Poposals on Afghanistan and Pakistan

[William R. Polk's most recent book, Understanding Iran, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in October. He is working on a new book on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, tentatively titled The Cockpit of Asia.] Dear Mr. President, Although we were separated by more than a decade, we lived a few steps apart in Hyde Park and were both professors at the University of Chicago. There I established the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and was also president of the Adlai

Victor Davis Hanson: The Past Is Not Quite Past

[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.]War II Thoughts We can learn a lot about our present dilemmas through looking a

Juan Cole: Is the media exaggerating the Iranian nuke threat?

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, reaffirmed Monday that a date would soon be set for the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the planned nuclear enrichment facility near Qom about which the Iranian government informed the IAEA on Monday a week ago. I

Walid Phares: World Must Sustain Push Against Iran's Human Rights Abuses

[Dr. Walid Phares is the author of the “War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy” and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.] As the United States and the international community meet Iran’s diplomats and hope for the nuclear crisis to be resolved, another critical front should be opened: an investigation into the Iranian regime for abuse of human rights of its own people. I don’t understand how democracies stood by idly since last June as the Ba

Stanley Kutler: Obama's Afghanistan Dilemma

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly called for expanding the war in Afghanistan. Be careful what you wish for. The bells of Afghanistan echo the Vietnam War. Like then, we have a powerful military establishment linked to civilian foreign and defense intellectuals clamoring for an expansive military adventure to protect us from an onrushing enemy. The pressure on President

Moshe Dann: Every time someone writes, speaks of 'Palestinians' a myth is reinforced

[The author, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Israel.] The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Nakba (catastrophe) for Arabs, and the aggression by five well-armed Arab countries, assisting local Arab gangs and militias that had been attacking Jews for years, placed Jews in Israel and the state in mortal danger. Fighting back, Israel eventually negotiated an armistice in 1949 that allowed a respite from open war

Stanley I. Kutler: Obama’s Afghanistan Dilemma

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly called for expanding the war in Afghanistan. Be careful what you wish for. The bells of Afghanistan echo the Vietnam War. Like then, we have a powerful military establishment linked to civilian foreign and defense intellectuals clamoring for an expansive military adventure to protect us from an onrushing enemy. The pressure on President

Juan Cole: Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, th

Haggai Ram: Israel and the Iranian Threat

[Haggai Ram teaches the history of the Middle East at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His most recent book is Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession (Stanford University Press, 2009).] Before, during and after the recent UN General Assembly meeting, the Israeli government, much like Sisyphus, who was condemned to repeat forever a meaningless task, once again stepped up its campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. The immediate objective is patently clear: to push t

Tristram Hunt: The Supreme Court is a perfectly English idea

[Tristram Hunt is a British historian, broadcaster and newspaper columnist.] A walk along the law lords corridor in the Palace of Westminster this summer was a sorry affair, with the bustle gone, the offices gutted and the empty rooms eyed up by envious peers. But to step across Parliament Square and enter the new Supreme Court, set amid the sand-blasted stone of the former Middlesex Guildhall, was to sense the anticipation of power. Here all was new and sleek with thick coatings of

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Two Decades After the Fall: Patterns of Chinese Protest--1919,1989, 2009

CHINA HAS a long, rich tradition—or, rather, multiple overlapping traditions—of dissent. For centuries prior to the 1949 Revolution, which culminated in the founding of the People’s Republic of China, aggrieved villagers and urbanites employed an array of tactics, ranging from rioting over tax rates to going to the capital with petitions detailing the failings of local officials. This varied repertoire continually evolved, and whenever new complaints arose or novel technologies of communication

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: The Autocrats' Learning Curve

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine; editor of the Journal of Asian Studies; and author, most recently, of the forthcoming book China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.] This fall, the world will mark the 60th and 20th anniversaries of two of the biggest events in communism's history. And though both dates will be marked with jubilation, the anniversaries being celebrated could not be more different. On Oct. 1, m

Daniel Pipes: Netanyahu's Quiet Success

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] Almost unnoticed, Binyamin Netanyahu won a major victory last week when Barack Obama backed down on a signature policy initiative. This about-face suggests that U.S.-Israel relations are no longer headed for the disaster I have been fearing. Four months ago, the new U.S. administration unveiled a policy that suddenly placed great emp

Andrew Meyer: Letter to President Obama on Afghanistan

[After living in mainland China and Taiwan for four years and in Japan for one year I returned to the U.S. and earned a doctoral degree in Chinese history, which I teach at a college in New York.] In your speech of March 27, 2009, you laid out in clear terms why the conflict in Afghanistan is a vital security concern to the United States. As you stated then, Afghanistan was and is a "war of necessity;" the U.S. had no choice but to engage those harboring the murderers of m

Harvey J. Kaye: FDR's Forgotten Freedoms

[Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He is currently writing The Four Freedoms and the Promise of America.]When they see footage in Michael Moore’s new film of FDR announcing his Second Bill of Rights, many Americans will wonder whatever happened to it. Harvey J. Kaye explains why we should honor his vision. Michael