Roundup: Historians' Take

Louis Menand: Debating the Value of College in America

Menand is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. He has also taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Diane Ravitch: Waiting for a School Miracle

Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, is the author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.”TEN years ago, Congress adopted the No Child Left Behind legislation, mandating that all students must be proficient in reading or mathematics by 2014 or their school would be punished.

Anthony Grafton and James Grossman: The Wrong Way to Lower College Costs

Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History and the Humanities at Princeton University. James Grossman is the executive director of the American Historical Association.

Walter Russell Mead: Memorial Day ... The War in Iraq

Walter Russell Mead is the Henry Kissinger senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He also writes a blog for the American Interest.

Julian E. Zelizer: Is This Any Way to Do a Budget?

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter," published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University Press

Tom Engelhardt: Dumb Question of the Twenty-first Century: Is It Legal?

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books).

Walter Russell Mead: SCOTUS Makes It Official: California A Failed State

Walter Russell Mead is the Henry Kissinger senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He also writes a blog for the American Interest.

Niall Ferguson: Austerity Works

Niall Ferguson is a Newsweek columnist and Harvard professor.To judge by media coverage, President Obama’s whistle-stop European tour was largely recreational. In Dublin he reenacted the time-honored tradition of discovering his Irish roots. In London he took part in what felt like Royal Wedding: The Sequel.

Victor Davis Hanson: Reelecting Obama

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.We are beginning to see the contours of the upcoming 2012 reelection campaign of Barack Obama. Whether always officially sanctioned or not, Obama’s campaign will focus on three general themes: a) the 2008 meltdown of the economy on Bush’s watch; b) conservative heartlessness in gutting cherished entitlement programs; and c) racial bias behind any criticism of Barack Obama. 

Victor Davis Hanson: What We Might Remember This Memorial Day

The world is a better place because Adolf Hitler did not preserve his conquest of the European continent, and because the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of Hideki Tojo and his militarists imploded at Midway, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa. Italy and the Mediterranean were far better off without Benito Mussolini and his mad plans for a renewed but debased Roman Empire, which ended on his own Italian soil at exotic-named places like Anzio and Monte Cassino.

Andrew J. Bacevich: How America Screws Its Soldiers

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.Riders on Boston subways and trolleys are accustomed to seeing placards that advertise research being conducted at the city’s many teaching hospitals. One that recently caught my eye, announcing an experimental “behavioral treatment,” posed this question to potential subjects: “Are you in the U.S. military or a veteran disturbed by terrible things you have experienced?”

Timur Kuran: The Weak Foundations of Arab Democracy

Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke, is the author of “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.”...Democracy requires checks and balances, and it is largely through civil society that citizens protect their rights as individuals, force policy makers to accommodate their interests, and limit abuses of state authority. Civil society also promotes a culture of bargaining and gives future leaders the skills to articulate ideas, form coalitions and govern.

Rashid Khalidi: How Obama Enables Israel's Worst Impulses

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of six books on Middle Eastern history, including "Palestinian Identity", and "Resurrecting Empire".

Paul VanDevelder: Mississippi Flooding: Let the River Run

Paul VanDevelder's book "Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire Through Indian Territory," won the 2011 Oregon Book Award.

Clare Spark: Who is a Racist Now?

Clare Spark is a historian, with degrees from Cornell University (B.S. ‘58), Harvard Graduate School of Education (M.A.T. in Science Teaching ‘59), and UCLA (Ph.D.’93).Following are two prior blogs and a bill that is before the California legislature that would further mandate the multicultural teaching of history in California schools. It is recommended that you consult them either before or after reading this new blog.http://clarespark.com/2011/03/26/race-class-and-gender/

Daniel Martin Varisco: Crisis Hopping

Daniel Martin Varisco is professor of anthropology at Hofstra University.

R. Matthew Poteat: False Promise of Unbridled Capitalism

R. Matthew Poteat is an assistant professor of history in the Virginia Community College System.GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is finding out that the road to his party's nomination runs to the right. The far right. Take for example Pawlenty's view on capitalism:"I'm a market person, but there are certain circumstances where you've got to have government put up the guardrails or bust up entrenched interests before they become too powerful."

Luther Carpenter: Year Four of the Silent Depression

Luther Carpenter is a historian and Dissent editorial board member.AS OF May 2011, governmental (and intergovernmental) institutions have prevented a 1930s-style depression. They’ve saved the financial system. Nonetheless, the Western industrial world is crumbling.

Walter Russell Mead: The Dreamer Goes Down For The Count

Walter Russell Mead is the Henry Kissinger senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He also writes a blog for the American Interest.

Victor Davis Hanson: Back to the Pre-American World?

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. Is America’s preeminent world role over? That’s what a recent New Yorker