Roundup: Historians' Take

Ibrahim Al-Marashi: Whose Truth? Competing Narratives in Syria and Libya

Ibrahim Al-Marashi is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at IE University in Madrid, Spain. He is co-author of Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008).

Juan Cole: Top Ten Arab Spring Advances this Week

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Walter Russell Mead: War In Syria Next?

Walter Russell Mead is professor of foreign affairs and the humanities at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest.The long-brewing crisis in Syria has entered a critical phase and it is changing the rules of the Middle East.  If the people keep marching and the regime keeps shooting, the Obama administration could face its toughest Middle East choices yet.  Will Samantha Power bomb yet another country in the region, or will she try to sleep nights with the blood of thousands of Syrians on her hands?

Francis Fukuyama: Political Order in Egypt

Francis Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest and author of the newly published The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) from which parts of this article are drawn.While academic political science has not had much to tell policymakers of late, there is one book that stands out as being singularly relevant to the events currently unfolding in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries: Samuel Huntington’s

Victor Davis Hanson: The American Soviet

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.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Donald Trump, the 'Birthers,' and the GOP's Moment of Truth

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.

Michael Kazin: The Trouble With Independents

Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent. His next book, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, will be published in August (Knopf).

Sander A. Diamond: When the Middle East Dust Settles

Sander A. Diamond is professor of history at Keuka College.The acceleration of the march of history in the Islamic world has presented a challenge. The streets of nearly every ancient city have been filled with countless demonstrators demanding a new direction for their nations and ending decades of repression.

Julian E. Zelizer: Are We Heading for Royal Weddings in U.S.?

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

Mark LeVine: Mirage and Reality in the Arab Spring

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).Reading the chronicle of the violence and death that have blanketed the western Libyan port city of Misurata during the last week, I couldn't help thinking of a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 classic, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Fouad Ajami: The Freedom Movement Comes to Syria

Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is co-chair of the Hoover Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.It was inevitable that the caravan of Arab freedom would make its appearance in Syria. It was there, three decades ago, that official terror hatched a monstrous state—and where practically everything Arabs would come to see in their politics in future decades was foreshadowed.

Richard White: Fast Train to Nowhere

IT is hard for liberals like me to find good news in the latest agreement to cut the federal budget, but there is at least one silver lining: subsidies for high-speed rail have been sharply reduced. Why is this good news?

Peter A. Coclanis: Pride and Prejudice: Contrarian Speculation on Wall Street’s Future

Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Conrad Black: The Long History of Media Bias

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Nature of Arab Unrest

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.

Dirk Vandewalle: Libya’s Divisions

Vandewalle, a professor at Dartmouth College, is author of A History of Modern Libya, published by Cambridge University Press.

Harold James: Inflationary Angst Grips Central Banks

Harold James is professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University and professor of history at the European University Institute, Florence. His most recent book is The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalisation Cycle.

Diane Ravitch: The Education of Lord Bloomberg

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her most recent book is The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. (November 2010)

Rick Perlstein: Obama's silence on state protests speaks volumes

 

Jonathan Zimmerman: Affirmative Action Isn't for White Guys

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.