Roundup: Historians' Take

David Aikman: Arab Unrest and the Status of Women

[Dr. David Aikman was a journalist with TIME Magazine for 23 years, and is now a professor of history at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He has authored more than a dozen books, including "Jesus in Beijing" (Regnery, 2003), "Billy Graham: His Life and Influence" (Thomas Nelson, 2006) and "The Delusion of Disbelief" (Tyndale, 2008). His latest book is "The Mirage of Peace" (Regal), and he is currently working on a book about the end of Christian America.

Juan Cole: Qaddafi’s Scorched Earth Policy, at Home and Abroad

[Juan Cole, who maintains the blog Informed Comment, is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author, most recently, of Engaging the Muslim World.] Muammar Qaddafi is still trying to play the al-Qaeda card, arguing that his murderous regime is what stands between Europe and the emigration to it of thousands of Muslim extremists. He told Turkish television that his regime is a key element of stability in the Eastern Mediterranean, a

Victor Davis Hanson: The Triumph of the Therapeutic Mind

[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.] Beyond the political posturing over state and federal budgets, there looms an age-old philosophical divide over human nature, perhaps defined as the therapeutic versus the tragic view of our existence. The therapeutic view — thanks to the b

Nelson Lichtenstein: The Long History of Labor Bashing

[Nelson Lichtenstein is a professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the author of The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business (Metropolitan Books, 2009) and the editor, with Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, of The American Right and U.S. Labor: Politics, Ideology, Imagination, forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press.] When he was still Preside

Paul A. Rahe: The Intellectual as Courtier

[Paul A. Rahe is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and author, most recently, of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift and Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty (both Yale University Press, 2009).] What would it take to elicit servility from an intellectual? Money would help, of course. Just ask the Harvard professors who founded the Monitor Group—which for a time shilled for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in return for a quarter of a million dollars a month. And query the

Rashid Khalidi: The Arab Spring

[Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood.] Suddenly, to be an Arab has become a good thing. People all over the Arab world feel a sense of pride in shaking off decades of cowed passivity under dictatorships that ruled with no deference to popular wishes. And it has become respectable in the West as well. Egypt is now thought of as an exciting and

Martin Shaw: The Global Democratic Revolution: A New Stage

[Martin Shaw is professorial fellow in international relations and human rights at Roehampton University, London, and an honorary research professor of international relations at the University of Sussex. His books include War and Genocide: Organised Killing in Modern Society (Polity, 2003); The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq (Polity, 2005); and What is Genocide? (Polity, 2007).] The epic events across the Arab world in the first months of 2011, div

Samuel Moyn: The Rights of Man Return

[Samuel Moyn, who teaches European history at Columbia University, is author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard, 2010).] WHEN EGYPTIANS entered the streets, Barack Obama began to flirt with a shift in a long-standing American policy, before events overtook him and forced his hand. Nearly two years ago, revolts had broken out after a stolen election in Iran, but Obama didn’t claim “human rights” were being violated. Instead, he said that while the Unite

Niall Ferguson: The ominous rise of Asia’s bachelor generation

[Niall Ferguson is a Harvard professor and Newsweek columnist.] In 1927, Ernest Hemingway published a collection of short stories titled Men Without Women. Today, less than a century later, it sums up the predicament of a rising proportion of mankind. According to the United Nations, there are far more men than women on the planet. The gender gap is especially pronounced in Asia, where there are 100 million more guys than girls. This may come as a surprise to people in

Jon Wiener: Professors Paid by Qaddafi: Providing "Positive Public Relations"

[Jon Wiener teaches US history at UC Irvine. His most recent book is Historians in Trouble.] Joseph Nye of Harvard’s Kennedy School wrote in the New Republic in 2007 that Muammar Qaddafi was interested in discussing “direct democracy.” Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics wrote in the Guardian the same year that Libya under Qaddafi could become “the Norway of North Africa.” Benjamin Barber of Rutgers University wrote in the Washington Post, al

Stanley Kutler: Gov. Walker Does ‘Something Big’

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] The tea-party-enabled Wisconsin Legislature is working overtime to protect its governor. On the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that protests at military funerals are protected speech, two of the more benighted majority Republican state legislators offered their version of protected speech. They introduced a bill to prohibit telephone callers from lying about their identity as well as giving a f

Moshe Dann: How Must the West Guide the New Middle East?

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] Two enormous appetites have suddenly arrived at the Middle East’s table: democracy and consumerism. Ravished from years of famine and abuse, the people revolted and opened the doors to the well-stocked pantry and kitchen. Yet despite having overthrown tyrants, they are not now unruled. Two strict overseers are watching: Islamists and the military. Crowded with tribes, Sunnis and Sh

Paul A. Rahe: The Vanity of the Intellectual

[After reading Litterae Humaniores at Wadham College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1971-1974, Paul A. Rahe completed a Ph.D. in ancient history at Yale University under the direction of Donald Kagan in 1977. In subsequent years, he taught at Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa, where he spent twenty-four years before accepting a position at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History and Political Science] Intellectuals have

Andrew Roberts: The Top 10 Quotes from Gaddafi's Green Book

[Historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, Masters and Commanders, was published in the UK in September. His previous books include Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.] Watching Colonel Gaddafi’s public statements over the past two weeks, especially his long rants comparing his political role with that of Queen Elizabeth II and his TV interview claiming that all

Victor Davis Hanson: Libya without Gaddafi

[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.] One of the most surreal experiences of my life — even apart from having a ruptured appendix and emergency surgery in a Gaddafi-government clinic — was a spring assignment in Libya to lecture on the Roman ruins there (which are quite impressive, since the ne

Jonathan Zimmerman: Education Programs Lack Intellect

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”] A few days ago, I ran into a student whom I hadn’t seen since the first day of class. With a slightly embarrassed smile, he told me that he had dropped my course. “Too much work,” he grinned. “I thought education classes were supposed to be guts.” Alas, he’s right. A “gut” is an easy course, and ed school cou

Daniel K. Gardner: Three Reasons Arab Wave Won't Reach China

[Daniel K. Gardner is Dwight W. Morrow professor of history and director of the Program in East Asian Studies at Smith College and the author of ChinaMusings.com.] In the past week or so, a lot of Western press has been given over to the question, “Is China the next Egypt?” Why this question is receiving so much attention puzzles me. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking: We’d like to see every country under authoritarian rule become more democratic. But looking at China today, even if

Victor Davis Hanson: Caught in the Middle East Minefield

[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.] America seems trapped in an exploding Middle East minefield. Revolts are breaking out amid the choke points of world commerce. Shiite populations are now restive in the Gulf monarchies. Not far away, Iran’s youth are sick and tired of the count

Dirk Vandewalle: The Many Qaddafis

[Dirk Vandewalle, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth, is the author of “Modern Libya.”] TWO images serve as bookends to the four-decades-old rule of Libya’s ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The first is the picture taken a few days after the Sept. 1, 1969, coup that brought him to power: it shows a handsome, pencil-thin revolutionary in military uniform, kneeling in the desert sand to pray. The other was taken two days ago: Colonel Qaddafi in bedouin garb as an uprisin

James McWilliams: B. R. Myers and the Myth of 'Sustainable' Food

[James McWilliams is an Associate Professor of history at Texas State University, San Marcos, and author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.] B. R. Myers's much-discussed condemnation of foodies and the writers who enable them is, in many ways, a masterpiece of invective. Globe-trotting gourmets, sanctimonious Slow Foodsters, and gonzo adventure eaters all come in for their share of Myers's signature drubbing. Critics of the piece have c