Roundup: Historians' Take

Julian E. Zelizer: Which GOP Will Run Against Obama?

[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.] ...Now that President Obama has officially announced his re-election campaign, it's time to see how his opponents will position themselves. As the candidates start to emerge for 2012, it is becoming clea

Daniel Pipes: Should We Blame a Florida Pastor for Deaths in Afghanistan?

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] When Pastor Terry Jones, 59, announced an intent to burn a Koran on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2010, the U.S. government, fearing attacks on American troops abroad, put intense pressure on him to desist and eventually he called off his plans.

Harold James: Inflationary Angst Angst

[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 Globalization Cycle.] Can central banks contain inflation? We once thought they could. Over the past 20 years, central banks around the world, including the United States Federal Reserve, pursued price stability with remarkable success. But now, in the wake o

Ilan Pappe: Goldstone's Shameful U-Turn

[Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. His most recent book is Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (Pluto Press, 2010).] Gaza, (Pal Telegraph) - "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document." Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone's much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor m

Andrew Bacevich: Last Act in the Mideast

[Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His book Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War is just out in paperback.] Ever since Britain and France set out to dismember the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago, the West has been engaged in an incoherent, haphazard, episodic, but more or less relentless effort to impose its will on the Middle East. Methods have varied. Sometimes the “infidels” have employed overt force. At other ti

Terrence Cole: Life in Alaska after Prudhoe Bay

[Terrence Cole is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His most recent book is “Fighting for the 49th Star: C.W. Snedden and the Crusade for Alaska Statehood.”] FAIRBANKS — The residents of Alaska owe a debt of gratitude to Gov. Sean Parnell for proposing a cut of billions of dollars in oil taxes, but not for the substance of the proposal. He has not explained his 180-degree reversal on the tax issue. He has not explained why he now opposes the tax policy he

Bruce Ackerman: The Constitutional Clock Is Ticking on Obama's War

[Bruce Ackerman is a professor of law and political science and Oona Hathaway is a professor of international law at Yale University. They are the authors of a recent article on limited war and the U.S. Constitution published by the Michigan Law Review.] It's now clear that the Libya campaign won't last "days, not weeks," as U.S. President Barack Obama promised, but rather, months -- and maybe years. Before U.S. involvement stretches that long, however, the administration

Victor Davis Hanson: A Middle East Policy in Shambles

[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.] Almost every promise, almost every reset proclamation from Barack Obama about the struggles against, and those within, the radical Muslim world has either been withdrawn or proven bankrupt. On the day the president announced his reelection bid, his administration renounced its lou

Jon Wiener: At the New Watergate Gallery, the Truth Finally Wins Out

[Jon Wiener teaches history at UC Irvine and is a contributing editor to the Nation.] Watergate was "the ultimate stress test" for the nation, says Timothy Naftali, director of the Nixon Library. It was also a stress test for the National Archives and the Nixon Library. The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum's original exhibit about Watergate, designed in 1990 by Nixon loyalists before the National Archives took over operation of the library, explained Wate

Moshe Dann: Enough Already: Are Israeli Settlements Actually ‘Illegal’?

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] Despite all the legally binding treaties, covenants, and agreements that established the Palestine Mandate in 1922 and empowered its British administration to ensure that this area would become “the Jewish National Home,” it’s strange that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are condemned as “illegitimate,” “illegal,” and “violations of international law.” How d

Walter Russell Mead: The Virtues of Machiavelli

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] Niccolo Machiavelli is one of those rare writers so well known that his name has become an adjective; ‘Machiavellian’ means crafty and ruthless. And over the centuries, Machiavelli’s most famous book, The Prince, has vexed moralists for its seeming defiance of all

Arthur Herman: Obama's Mideast retreat

[Arthur Herman, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is writing a book on the Arsenal of Democracy.] When President Obama made his Cairo speech two years ago, apologiz ing for nearly everything America had done in the Mideast since Jimmy Carter, some of us worried that the goal was nothing less than terminating US influence there. Two signal events last week at either end of that volatile region suggest that's exactly what's happening. The first was

Niall Ferguson: Murder on the EU Express

[Niall Ferguson is a Harvard professor and Newsweek columnist.] You remember Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit Murder on the Orient Express? The problem for the great Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot was that there were far too many suspects. The strange death of the European Union may prove to be a rather similar case. So used are we to hearing the process of European integration likened to an unstoppable train that we discount the idea it could ever stop in its tracks.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China and the Latest Challenge of Prediction

[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.] Could China experience a Jasmine Revolution of the sort that has brought change to Egypt and Tunisia — or does its booming economy make this very unlikely? Why have the Chinese authorities been so spooked by Internet calls in dozens of cities for “strolls” of protest — even though few people have turned out for them? What has made Beijing, which has tolerated some demonstrations in recent years,

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Amazing Achievements

[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] By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America: (a) War-mongering liberals: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military “progress” in Libya. Even liberal television and radio commentators cite ingenious reasons why an

Jonathan Zimmerman: Why Can't the GOP and Muslims Get Along?

[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.] Stop the spread of sharia law! Ban gay marriage and abortion! As the 2012 elections inch closer, GOP lawmakers and presidential hopefuls are tripping over each other to denounce the alleged threat

Anthony Grafton: Wisconsin: The Cronon Affair

[Anthony Grafton is president of the American Historical Association and professor of history at Princeton.] ...Two points are striking. First of all, Cronon is not only a political moderate, he’s a passionate Wisconsin patriot. He moved to Madison as a child, did his B.A. at the University, and learned his environmentalism as an explorer of the Wisconsin landscape and a reader of a local hero, the naturalist Aldo Leopold. In 1992, at a time when academic stars had begun to flee str

Reza Aslan and Mark LeVine: Obama's Selective Intervention in Libya is Tarnishing the American Image Even More in the Arab World

[Reza Aslan is founder of AslanMedia.com and author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Mark LeVine is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and author, most recently, of Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House 2008) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).] If there is one thing that the Arab world's "Facebook Generation" does not

Greg Grandin: Brazil Stares Down the U.S. on Libya

[Greg Grandin is a professor of history at New York University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including most recently, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan 2009), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, as well as for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.] ...Even before Obama landed in Rio, Brazil, as a non-perma

Steven Lubet: Haley Barbour, Slavery and the Citizenship Test

[Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern. He is the author of "Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial."] Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour recently acknowledged that the Civil War was fought over slavery. As reported by Politico, Barbour recognized that "Slavery was the primary, central cause of secession." That may not seem like news, but many Southerners have insisted that the "War of Northern Aggression,&quo