Roundup: Historians' Take

Julian Zelizer: Stakes are huge for Obama and nation

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II, to be published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] ... For several decades, starting in the 1930s with the New Deal, liberals argued the federal government should be the first responder in times of economic crisis. They made a series of arguments to support thei

Arthur Herman: Jimmy Carter and the Camp David Myth

[Mr. Herman is the author of "Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age".] Will Jimmy Carter be President Barack Obama's role model on how to bring peace to the Middle East? Some, especially in Israel, view that prospect with apprehension. Others, like Ralph Nader, have greeted the possibility with enthusiasm, urging Mr. Obama to rely on Mr. Carter's "wise and seasoned counsel" in dealings with the volatile re

Max Holland: The Politics of Postmortems

How objective and useful are intelligence postmortems of the kind produced in Washington? The press usually accords them an exalted status from the moment they are released, whether they are produced by the executive branch, Congress, or semi-independent commissions. Postmortems are regarded as a reliable account of what went wrong and why, if not an authoritative and objective one. But should postmortems be embraced at face value? Or are they subject to persona

Richard Florida: How the Crash Will Reshape America

[Richard Florida is the author of The Rise of the Creative Class and the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.] ... Big international economic crises—the crash of 1873, the Great Depression—have a way of upending the geopolitical order, and hastening the fall of old powers and the rise of new ones. In The Post-American World (published some months before the Wall Street meltdown), Fareed Zakaria argued that modern his

Mark Naison: A Crisis Grows in Brooklyn-Orgy of Luxury Building Will Produce Bank Failures

Anyone wanting to understand why America's banks are still in trouble need only spend a day driving or walking through the North Brooklyn neighborhoods of Park Slope, Dumbo, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Williamsburgh, Greenpoint and Bushwick. In these increasingly upscale neighborhoods, some of which, less than twenty years ago were considered "marginal" or even blighted, every available inch of vacant land is being filled with luxury condominium towers, most between four

Josh Marshall: Obama on Nationalization

Yesterday, after Tim Geithner's lackluster speech, President Obama told ABC that 'nationalization' of the banks"wouldn't make sense." He specifically referenced the Swedish model. And he offered two basic reasons: 1) We've got thousands of banks whereas the Swedes had only a handful. And 2) We have different political 'traditions' that don't make it credible in this country, which I

Wendy Doniger: Valentine's Day in India

[Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago and has published translations of the Rig Veda and the Laws of Manu. In March, Penguin will publish her new book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.] The Sunday Times of India invited me to write something about Hindu attitudes to women for the February 8, 2009, issue, prompted both by the annual problem caused by Valentine's Day in India and by the more specific incident of viol

Ken Pomeranz: China’s Water Woes: Past, Present, and Future

The Chinese droughts have just begun to move onto the front pages of the world's newspapers, but the droughts are just the latest sign of much more dire warnings of water woes in China. Some China experts are talking about this (see, for instance, today's event at the Wilson Center on"Temperatures Rising: Climate Change, Water, and the Himalayas"), but,

John Fabian Witt: Lincoln's Laws of War ... How he built the code that Bush attempted to destroy.

[John Fabian Witt is a professor of legal history at Columbia University and the author of Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law.] One of Abraham Lincoln's little-noted accomplishments has become his most unlikely legacy. He helped create the modern international rules that protect civilians, prevent torture, and limit the horrors of combat, the body of law known as the laws of war. Indeed, he was probably our most important law-of-war president, having crafte

Frederick Kagan: Afghanistan Is Not Vietnam

[Author Bio: Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] Just three months ago, Afghanistan was the "good" war. It was, according to all the conventional wisdom, the "real" central front in the war on terror, the war we had to win, the place to fight Al Qaeda, and the war we should have been focusing on all along. Nothing much has changed in Afghanistan since Barack Obama won the election, but conventional wisdom is swinging fast to the opp

John Brown: Some Thoughts on Obama and Public Diplomacy

[Mr. Brown was a member of the US Foreign Service for over twenty years. Currently affiliated with Georgetown University, he writes and teaches about public diplomacy.] Persons interested in foreign affairs -- among them the distinguished former Foreign Service officer Pat Kushlis; the noted scholar of the Middle East Professor

Deborah Lipstadt: European Antisemitism ... Ominous Signs and Silence from the Left

[Ms. Lipstadt is Dorot professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University.] In my attention to the Bishop Williamson matter I have really been negligent about addressing another more important topic: the rise of antisemitism in Europe.There has been a survey by

Jim Sleeper: US neo-cons jump the conservative ship

[Jim Sleeper is a writer and teacher on American civic culture and politics and a lecturer in political science at Yale. ] The high-end blogosphere has been aflutter over "Conservatism is Dead," the latest of Sam Tanenhaus' many long elegies in The New Republic for conservatism as a movement and an ideology. But no one has recalled, much less revisi

Andrew Delbanco: A New Day for Intellectuals

[Andrew Delbanco is a professor of humanities and director of American studies at Columbia University and a member of the board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. His book College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be will be published by Princeton University Press in 2010.] Soon after election day, the columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in The New York Times that the "second most remarkable thing" about the election was that "American voters have ju

Jonathan Zimmerman: Schools desperately need traditional federal aid

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.] Let’s suppose your neighborhood public school is falling down. Should the federal government help repair or replace it? No, say many Republicans in Congress. The House approved $20 billion for school construction last week, as part of President Obama’s stimulus plan. On Tuesday, under pressure from GOP critics, the Senate removed these funds from its own version of the bill. Now the House and Senate have to ha

Julian Zelizer: Bipartisanship is not always good

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Prince ton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.] This week, some politicians and pundits will boast of the bipartisan coalition that — under the leadership of Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — cut the economic recovery legislation by more than $100 billion and moved the bill through the chamber. The legislation might be the first concrete evidence that an influential bipart

Victor Davis Hanson: A Few Modest Suggestions for Our President

1) Calling for bipartisanship seems contradicted when you then allege that those who disagree are being "partisan", and you preface almost every major issue with a blanket invective against the past eight years, even when you seem to adopt many of the past policies, from rendition to FISA. Perhaps try to raise the debate from one of your opponents seeking cheap advantage to one of innate philosophical differences, and then try to cease the campaign mode. The election is over. Bush is g

Neve Gordon: Few Peacemakers in Israel's Knesset

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. You can read about his new book, Israel’s Occupation and more at www.israelsoccupation.info] Israelis have had their say at the polls, and now it is up to the world, and particularly the Obama administration, to respond. Thirty-three parties ran for the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), ranging from the well-known Kadima, Likud and Labor to a variety of lesser

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Lincoln is a good model. But he didn't face 24-hour news

[Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is published in paperback this week.] Shortly before he wrapped up the nomination for president, Barack Obama was asked, with a clear reference to his chief rival, Hillary Clinton, if he would be willing to bring in everybody who could possibly help him, "even if his or her spouse is an occasional pain in the butt". His answer was a resounding yes. "One of my heroes is Abraham

Andrew J. Bacevich: What Conservatism Should Look Like

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.] "There remains in our politics a place for an authentic conservatism," writes Sam Tanenhaus, "a conservatism that seeks not to destroy but to conserve." Which begs the question: Given our current predicament, what exactly should principled conservatives view as worth conserving? Le