Roundup: Historians' Take

Daniel Pipes: Peace Process or War Process?

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] When Barack Obama announced in June 2009 about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy,"I'm confident that if we stick with it, having started early, that we can make some serious progress this year," he displayed a touching, if naïve optimism. Indeed, his determination fits a well-established pattern of determination by politicians to"

Victor Davis Hanson: Desperately Seeking a Healthcare Bill

[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.]Speeding

Gil Troy: Playing the Race Card Makes for Ugly Politics

[Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University and visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, is the author of Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents and The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.] Barack Obama's election to the presidency was supposed to usher in a new, more mature era of race relations, but it could not evoke nirvana. There's a growing chorus complaining that this summer's hostility to his stimulus package, to

Joanne B. Freeman: Joe Wilson’s War

[Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of history at Yale, is writing a book on Congressional violence in the first half of the 19th century.] ON Tuesday, seven Republicans broke party ranks and voted to reprove Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, for calling President Obama a liar. One of the renegades was Bob Inglis, who upbraided his fellow South Carolinian for a breach of House rules. “That problem could have been fixed by an apology to the House,” Mr. Inglis expla

Bob Oakes with Doris Kearns Goodwin: In 'True Compass,' Kennedy Finally Felt Free To Reflect

[Bob Oakes has been WBUR's Morning Edition anchor since 1992.] BOSTON — The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s new memoir, “True Compass,” provides an inside look at some of the most formative times in the senator’s life. Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was a long-time family friend of Ted Kennedy’s. She spoke to us from her home about the book and its insights into Kennedy’s life and legacy.Bob Oakes: I imagine that you re

Juan Cole: Ahmadinejad's Raving Lunatic Anti-Semitism

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a sermon on Friday for"Jerusalem Day" that is full of the most vile crackpot anti-Semitism that can be imagined. Anti-Semitism as a form of bigotry typically ascribes the most abject motives and character to Jews in

Peter N. Kirstein: Address on "Constitution Day" Panel

[Peter N. Kirstein is Professor of History at St Xavier University in Chicago] Constitution Day, which is actually on Sept. 17 as if it matters, should be ignored and this university (St Xavier in Chicago) should engage in academic freedom civil disobedience and avoid any connection with such a governmental requirement. Senator Robert Byrd, a former K.K.K. member who to his credit voted for President Barack Hussein Obama and eloquently opposed the Iraq war, initiated this boosterism

David Kaiser: The Supreme Court in historical perspective

[For the past thirty years David Kaiser has been a historian of international and domestic politics, as well as an authority on some of the more famous criminal cases in American history.] To begin with my customary update, the President's health care speech--which I thoroughly enjoyed--seems to have had a mildly negative effect in the traffic in the scurrilous email comparing him to Hitler, fraudulently attributed to me (that's right), which as undoubtedly brought many of you hear

Juan Cole: Is Afghanistan Vietnam or Iraq? Arguing with Obama and Rubin

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would wait for a while before deciding whether to send more US troops to Afghanistan. The administration is said to be deeply divided on the issue, and Obama says he wants further reports from the State Department and other civilian agencies before he makes a final determination.Obama also

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left, Too Left

[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.]Ayersism As Hugo Chavez continues to shut down the media and silence critics, O

Tom Engelhardt: War Is Peace

[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

Warren Breckman: Canadians faced a hard fight for national health insurance too

[Warren Breckman teaches modern European intellectual history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Marx, the Young Hegelians & the Origins of Radical Social Theory, European Romanticism, and the forthcoming Adventures of the Symbolic: Postmarxism and Democratic Theory.] When healthcare reform became a vital issue in the Democratic presidential nomination race in 1992, the Canadian model was essentially swept out of the debate by comments from Senator Paul Tson

Why Obama Blinked: An Interview with Victor David Hanson

[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.] Frontpage Interview’s guest Victor Davis Hanson sheds light on the unfolding drama of a presi

Daniel Pipes: One Cheer for Obama's Foreign Policy

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] The Obama administration has established an alarmingly naïve and dangerous record on Arab-Israeli issues, leading me to worry about spectacular policy failures ahead. But it has initiated one innovative and positive policy deserving high praise. Instead of Israel making yet more unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, in late

Juan Cole : US Dependence on Northern Supply Routes destabilizing North, Threatening Central Asia

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Gen. Stanley McChrystal has admitted that there is no significant al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. He implies that al-Qaeda does maintain some links to the guerrillas fighting the Karzai government. But McChrystal's statement rather undermines the hawkish argument of

Multiple Historians Comment on: What Is Socialism in 2009?

It seems that whatever President Obama talks about — whether it’s overhauling health care, or regulating Wall Street, or telling schoolchildren to study hard — his opponents have called him a socialist. “Socialism” was an epithet on many placards at protests in Washington over the weekend. What does the word mean today, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? What role has the label played in American political history?Patrick Allitt: What’s All the Fuss? [P

Mark Naison: The Serena Williams Meltdown and the Politics of Gender and Race

[Mark Naison is a professor at Fordham University in New York.] Because I am a huge Serena Williams fan--I think she is the most talented women player ever to pick up a racket, and also think she’s beautiful and sexy--many of my friends have asked me to comment on Serena’s disastrous outburst in the semifinals of the US Open, an event which has taken on special significance because of the racially polarized atmosphere in the country at this moment in history. First of a

Diane Ravitch: Critical thinking? You need knowledge

[Diane Ravitch is research professor of education at New York University and co-chairman of Common Core.] The latest fad to sweep K-12 education is called “21st-Century Skills.’’ States - including Massachusetts - are adding them to their learning standards, with the expectation that students will master skills such as cooperative learning and critical thinking and therefore be better able to compete for jobs in the global economy. Inevitably, putting a priority on skills pushes oth

Dominic Sandbrook: Once upon a time there was a subject called history . . . (UK)

['White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties' by Dominic Sandbrook is published by Abacus.] In April 1942, the Luftwaffe launched a series of night bombing raids against the historic cathedral cities of Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. The targets had been picked out of the Baedeker Guide to Britain, not because they were militarily important or commanded crucial transport routes, but because they represented something vaguer but more profound.

Victor Davis Hanson: Our National 9/11 Schizophrenia

[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.] Ninety-six months ago, 19 Islamic terrorists — led by Mohamed Atta, organized by Khalid Sheik