Roundup: Historians' Take

Kenneth Waltzer: Obama, Buchenwald, and the Children

[Mr. Waltzer is professor of history and director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University. He is currently completing a book tentatively titled, Telling the Story: The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald.] President Obama visited Buchenwald last week, following the path of his great uncle Charlie Payne, who was with General George Patton’s U.S. Third Army.  He connected Buchenwald with the larger story of the Nazi destruction of the Jews, accompanied by survivor

Juan Cole: Stealing the Iranian election

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]   Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen     1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, accordi

Daniel Pipes: The Middle Eastern Cold War

A cold war is"the key to understanding the Middle East in the 21st century." So argue Yigal Carmon and three of his colleagues at the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) in a recent study,"An Escalating Regional Cold War."

Julian E Zeizler and Melissa Lerner: Obama can succeed in Mideast

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Melissa Lerner graduated this spring with highest honors from Princeton, where she completed a senior thesis about presidential leadership and the Arab-Israeli conflict.] At a time when the Obama administration is dealing with a barely stable economy while trying to address long-term health care, two wars, the environment and the threat of terrorism, many ask whether it

Daniel Pipes: Assessing Binyamin Netanyahu's Speech at Bar-Ilan University

In a major speech today at the Begin-Sadat Center of Bar-Ilan University, Binyamin Netanyahu laid out his vision to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. In brief, it's a fine speech, making many needed points, but it fails on the critical point of prematurely accepting a Palestinian state.Here are some of the high points, important statements eloquently articulated:

Joseph Lane: Advice and Consent ... The U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry.] The Republicans in the Senate are outraged to discover that the Democrats have decided to move Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court to hearings in the S

Eugene R. Fidell: The Trouble With Tribunals

[Eugene R. Fidell teaches military law at Yale Law School.] IN a Manhattan courtroom last week, the first Guantánamo detainee to face a trial in a civilian court pleaded not guilty. President Obama has indicated that other terrorism cases will likewise be tried in the federal courts, but that does not necessarily spell the end for military commissions. In a speech at the National Archives in May, he confirmed that the commission system won’t be abolished, merely revised.

Andrew Meyer: The Iran that Could Have Been (and Might Yet Be)

[About Mr. Meyer: "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. "Madman of Chu" reflects my belief that the study of the history and culture of other nations is indispensible to the conduct of modern politics. "Marriage Equality Amendment" is devoted to amending the U.S. Constitution to protect the right of same-sex couple

Tom Engelhardt: Charisma and the Imperial Presidency

[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

Jeffrey T. Kuhner: Another Korean war?

[Jeffrey T. Kuhner is president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank.] North Korea threatens to engulf the Korean Peninsula in an all-out war. Pyongyang's recent test of a nuclear bomb poses a serious threat to international security and regional stability. Dictator Kim Jong-il continues to thumb his nose at global leaders, especially President Obama. The ailing strongman has denuded Mr. Obama on the world stage, revealing his soft-power strategy to b

John Steele Gordon: The Inflation Temptation

[John Steele Gordon is the author of An Empire of Wealth and a frequent contributor to COMMENTARY.] ... With the world economy now contracting rapidly and the banking systems in many countries in serious disarray, inflation is not a problem at the present. Indeed, deflation was the primary worry last fall as the financial crisis, heating up since Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008, exploded with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September. To combat the recession, the Federal R

Thomas Docherty: Being a humble servant to business in academia will be a disaster for everyone

[Thomas Docherty is professor of English and comparative literature, University of Warwick.] By insisting our universities' sole role is to fire the economy, we have lost sight of their more civilising purpose, says Thomas Docherty For some time now, the fundamental aims of a university education have been in jeopardy; and, in this time of financial crisis, the betrayal of those aims needs to be addressed. The threat comes from a Government that closed the Department fo

Timothy Garton Ash: 4 June 1989 ... A Fork in the Road

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.] Someone should institute an annual 4 June review of the Chinese, European and American models. Why 4 June? Because on that day in 1989, the European and Chinese paths out of communism definitively diverged. I will never forget standing in a newspaper office in Warsaw, amid the exhilaration of Poland's first semi-free election since the imposition of ­communist rule, and feeling my stomach turn as I watched

Sherrilyn A. Ifil: Why Race Won't Go Away for Sotomayor

[Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law and a civil rights lawyer.] ... By the end of last week, when Judge Sotomayor had been called a “Latina racist” by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and a “bigot” by right-wing radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh, things had gotten very ugly, very fast. Backtracks began Friday, when Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) condemned the attacks on Judge Sotomayor. On Sunday morning news shows, Sens. Jeff Sess

Jonathan M. Hansen: Don't close Gitmo

[Jonathan M. Hansen, author of The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890-1920, is writing a book about the history of Guantánamo Bay.] ... Instead of closing the detention centre, we should finish the job begun there over the last few years by JAG lawyers, human rights advocates and the press, who have introduced a measure of law and transparency to what has always been an obscure place. To be sure, Guantánamo has been tainted by scandal. But if w

Peter Dale Scott: America’s Afghanistan ... The National Security and a Heroin-Ravaged State

[Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War.His website, which contains a wealth of

Juan Cole: Obama, Muslim-world rock star

President Barack Obama is famously much better at playing basketball than at bowling. But to succeed in the Middle East, he needs to be good at a different game altogether: golf. There are no fast-paced victories to be had here, no dunks, no three-point shots. As in golf, the sand traps and roughs are treacherous and the course is slow, and there is time for players to quarrel and throw their irons about petulantly. Above all, as in golf, the secret of a good swing is a strong follow-through.

Tom Engelhardt: Graduating the Rest of Us, ‘09

[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

Juan Cole: Obama and Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

President Barack Obama says he will be more honest than past presidents with Israel. Israel, a great friend of the United States and a country we like and admire on its merits, has nevertheless dug itself into a very deep hole with its determination to colonize the West Bank and to keep the Palestinians stateless. These policies are what is wrong, not anything essential about Israel or

Niall Ferguson: The trillion dollar question: China or America?

[Niall Ferguson is the author of 'The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World' published in paperback by Penguin this week] Two years ago, economist Moritz Schularick and I coined the word"Chimerica" to describe what we saw as the key relationship in the then-booming global economy: China plus America. Cheap Chinese labour was making US corporations highly profitable. Spendthrift American consumers, in turn, were keeping Chinese corporations busy with export orders. And the