Roundup: Historians' Take

Mark LeVine: Twenty-Eight Hours in Tahrir

[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).] I arrived at Tahrir a little later than normal yesterday, at around 4. I had spent the day trying to manoeuvre around Cairo by foot and taxi to visit various human rights organisations, to assess the situation

Andrew J. Bacevich: Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘Known and Unknown’

[Andrew J Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book is ‘Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War’ (Metropolitan)] Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Adorning the dust jacket of Known and Unknown is a carefully staged photograph of its author, decked out in jeans, work shirt and sleeveless fleece jacket. He leans against a gate, mountains in the background. The image is quintessentially American.

Gabriel Herman: Morality Isn't Everything

[Gabriel Herman is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.] ...Victorious military leaders have left behind piles of dirt that make Galant's land affair appear insignificant. During a drunken party Alexander the Great drove his spear through a close friend (who was also his lover ) only because the man criticized him. When Julius Caesar wasn't waging war, he committed adultery with his enemies' wives and sometimes also with his friends' wives. (When he was wagi

Noah Feldman: Sometimes, Justice Can Play Politics

[Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, is the author of “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of F.D.R.’s Great Supreme Court Justices.”] WHAT is it about those robes? They are only flimsy bits of wools, enlivened in a few cases by some very European lace at the collar. Yet the moment our Supreme Court justices put them on, a segment of the concerned public imagines that they have become priests consecrated to the sacred order of the Constitution. Recently, Ju

Kai Bird: Why the Egypt Revolution Is Good for Israel

[Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, and the author most recently of Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, which has just been named a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography.] I long to be back in Cairo. I have fond memories of the two years I spent there from 1965 to 1967. I remember sipping sweet black tea in the Old City's Khan al-Khalili souk, hanging out on weekends at Groppi's Tea Room, and

Rashid Khalidi: The Promise of Real Democracy in Egypt

[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," "Resurrecting Empire," and "Sowing Crisis." Khalidi is a former advisor to Palestinian negotiators at the Madrid and Washington peace talks and is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.] As revolutionary events sweep Egypt, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stubbornly ins

David Sehat: Would Today's Tea Party Have Opposed the U.S. Constitution?

[David Sehat is assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. His first book, “The Myth of American Religious Freedom,” was published in January.] It was exactly this point on which the Constitution’s opponents focused, much like our current small-government party does today. They worried that the power of direct taxation would upend the dominance of the states, making them mere auxiliaries of a powerful national government. As a result, they sought a modification of t

Richard Bulliet: The Military-Mubarak Complex

[Richard Bulliet is professor of history at Columbia University and author of “Islam: The View from the Edge” and “The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.”] “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” So said President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. Americans understood this warning to refer to the incestuous relations between high-ranking military officers and the arms industry. In

Richard Miles: Ben Ali's Pillaging of Carthage Must Become a Thing of the Past

[Richard Miles teaches ancient history at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Carthage Must be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of An Ancient Civilisation and Ancient Worlds: The Search for the Origins of Western Civilisation.] One of the most interesting consequences of the recent political upheavals in Tunisia has been that Tunisian archaeologists have at last been able to speak out against the damage inflicted on the ancient site of Carthage by the regime of the former pres

Timothy Garton Ash: Not 1989. Not 1789. But Egyptians can Learn from Other Revolutions

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.] 'No one predicted this, but everyone could explain it afterwards." Said of another revolution, as true of this one. "To be honest, we thought we'd last about five minutes,"one of the organisers of the original 25 January protest which began this Egyptian revolution told the BBC. "We thought we'd get arrested straight away." If they had been, if Hosni Mubarak's security forces had o

Steve Hochstadt: Homosexuality as a Fact, Not an Issue

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College.] A few nights ago, we saw a very revealing movie. “No Strings Attached” is a silly romantic comedy. Plenty of skin was shown, but that was not the most revealing feature. I found the portrayal of gay people much more interesting. The film was targeted at young heterosexual filmgoers. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, the current heart-throbs of young people, are the stars, and the main cha

Grace Elizabeth Hale: Why Are Today's Rebels Republicans?

[Grace Elizabeth Hale is an associate professor of history and American studies at the University of Virginia] Not so long ago, rebels and radicals were reliably liberal. They were left activists and politicians like Tom Hayden, Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders; popular icons of resistance like Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or Bruce Springsteen; or maverick fictional characters like Holden Caulfield or Sal Paradise. But today, arch conservative Sarah Palin proudly plays the ro

Jonathan Zimmerman: Tenure Debate Ignores Freedom of Expression

[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.] In January 2003, first-year teacher Deborah Mayer was teaching a current-events lesson to a mixed-age classroom of third through sixth graders in Monroe County, Ind. Mayer used an article from the school magazine Tim

Victor Davis Hanson: Jerry Brown, a Modern Sisyphus

[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.] California’s new governor, Jerry Brown, must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. Right now it seems almost a hopeless task, since the state’s disastrous budget is merely a symptom, not the cause, of California’s much larger problems. Take unemployment. It currently ru

Conrad Black: Obama’s Foreign-Policy Follies ... Wrong on France, wrong on disarmament

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.] The revelation, thanks to WikiLeaks, that the United States has promised — as part of the recently ratified New START agreement — to identify precisely the Trident nuclear-tipped missiles it sells to the United Kingdom, incites again serious doubts about this administration’s notions of arms control. Its rush to disarm, and to hand over the assured military secrets of

Tariq Ramadan: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is a Democratic Partner, Not Islamist Threat

[Tariq Ramadan is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford. His latest book is “The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism.” Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.] Even as the mass demonstrations began in Tunisia, who would have thought that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime would have collapsed so quickly? Who could have predicted that Egypt would soon witness such unprecedented popular protest? A

Garry Wills: Blood Lust and the Super Bowl

[Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His latest book, Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer, was published in October 2010.] ...If we look back at photos from the past—say, the era of the football hero Red Grange in the 1920s—it is surprising to see how little protected the players were, with leather skull-cap helmets and minimal padding of the shoulders. But the players now are bigger, faster, steroid-enhanced, and trained to superhuman feats. The

Jill Lepore: “An Horrid Snow”

[Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University where she is also chair of the History and Literature Program. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995.] This winter, this is nothing. Over nine days in 1717, the Northeast endured what was ever after known as “the great snow.” At the end of February came what first looked to be beastly (“a great storm”) but what, after what followed, appeared no more than a measly, beggarl

Richard Bulliet: Egypt and Al-Qaeda

[Richard Bulliet is Professor of History at Columbia University and author of Islam: The View from the Edge and The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.] An effective transition to democracy in Egypt will strike a powerful blow against al-Qaeda. A democratic Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood participating in a pluralistic electoral system will offer disaffected Muslim youth a viable alternative to terrorism and anarchy. Helping toward the achievement of this goal should therefore

Harold James and Matteo Albanese: Goodbye to 'Globalisation'

[Harold James is professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University. Matteo Albanese is a researcher in history at the European University Institute.] The term “globalisation” first swept the world in the 1990’s and reached its highpoint of popularity in 2000 and 2001. In 2001, for instance, Le Monde contained more than 3,500 references to mondialisation. But then the figure steadily fell – more than 80% by 2006. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007