Roundup: Talking About History

Josh Hamerman: Battling against ‘the falsification of history’

If the pen is mightier than the sword, Yedioth Ahronoth proved it last June. On June 30, just before the 30-year anniversary of the IDF’s dramatic rescue of Jewish hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, the daily Hebrew newspaper published an article debunking 20 years of myths surrounding that proud moment in Israeli history. The story, written by journalist Ariella Ringel-Hoffman, also restored the reputation of one of Israel’s most renowned military heroes. Ringel-Hoffman’s st

Martin Fletcher: Honoring victims of genocide, a universal need

[Fletcher is the Tel Aviv bureau chief for NBC News.] The blog I posted last week "Holocaust survivors always 'survivors'" provoked so many interesting -- and contradictory -- comments that I’d like to respond. Many readers shared memories, others sympathy, but a surprising number either denied the Holocaust ever happened or basically took the line: You weren’t the only ones, and stop whining already! Now there’s nothing new about that. Martin Gi

Robert Sullivan: Smithsonian needs to get back to basics

[Robert Sullivan, former associate director for public programs of the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum, is vice president of Chora, a museum consulting firm in Washington.] The Smithsonian has just awakened from a leadership nightmare. On this groggy morning after, it finds itself soiled by commercialism, Disneyfication and politicization, and sorely in need of a meticulous scrubbing. Supporters of now-departed secretary Lawrence M. Small have characterized the for

Richard Moe: A Past Worth Preserving

[Richard Moe is the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.] THIS May the nation celebrates the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown as the first permanent English settlement in America. It was a consequential event in 1607, to be sure, but we shouldn’t confuse it with the beginning of the American experience. For thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived, there were people on this continent who represented highly developed civil

Jill Lepore: Four centuries on, the battles over John Smith and Jamestown still rage

AMERICAN CHRONICLES about Captain John Smith and books on Jamestown, Virginia, which celebrates its four-hundredth anniversary this year. It is of more than passing interest that, even before he died, Captain John Smith was widely believed to be a liar, since he was also, arguably, the first American historian. The quadricentennial is a good time to take stock of John Smith, not least because the Library of America has just published a 1,300-page edition of his work. Born in Lincolnshire in 1

Nigel Hamilton: Why does the academy shun biography?

[Nigel Hamilton, a biographer and historian, is the author of "Monty" and "JFK: Reckless Youth." His latest book is "Biography: A Brief History." He is a fellow of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, UMass-Boston, where he is working on a multi-volume life of President Clinton. ] Dr. Samuel Johnson, himself an accomplished biographer (and the subject of probably the most famous biography in the English language, Boswell's "Life of John

Ken Silverstein: Reaganite Amnesia

Some years ago, I was talking to an older conservative woman about the Reagan era and she told me that whatever problems there were during that time, the president had been absolutely correct about one thing: “Something had to be done about the budget deficit.” Given that Reagan created what were then the biggest budget deficits in history, it was hard to imagine how she could say something so self-evidently ludicrous. Then Time magazine came along with a lengthy story on the supposed crisis of

Daniel Schulman: The Emails the White House Doesn't Want You to See

[Daniel Schulman is an Investigative Reporter at Mother Jones. ] On February 6, 2003, lobbyist Jack Abramoff sent an email to his former executive assistant Susan Ralston, who had since gone on to work for Karl Rove, requesting that she pass along an important message to her boss. A Louisiana Indian tribe, the Jena band of Choctaws, was seeking to acquire land for a casino, a project at odds with the interests of Abramoff's tribal clients who feared it would siphon business from the

Francis Fukuyama: The history at the end of history

[Francis Fukuyama is Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and Chairman of The American Interest.] Fifteen years ago in my book The End of History and the Last Man I argued that, if a society wanted to be modern, there was no alternative to a market economy and a democratic political system. Not everyone wanted to be modern, of course, and not everyone could put in place the institutions and policies necessary to make democracy and capitalis

Tshwarelo Hosia: In Botswana, Is History As a Discipline Dying a Natural Death?

History as a discipline is dying. Having been associated with the teaching of History for over a decade, I feel am better placed to write its obituary. As a discipline History is slowly being relegated into the background and fast drifting into oblivion. If current trends in our high schools are anything to go by the subject has no future in the school curriculum. The state in which the subject finds itself in is not helped by, the fact that history is not a core. It is an option an

Jeninne Lee-St. John: Should States Apologize for Slavery?

On Monday Maryland became only the second state after Virginia to officially seek atonement for slavery. The state's House of Delegates approved a measure, already passed by the senate and not requiring the governor's signature, expressing "profound regret for the role that Maryland played in instituting and maintaining slavery and for the discrimination that was slavery's legacy." While the apology for slavery has been grabbing all the headlines, it's the regret for the l

Kingsley Brown: Nova Scotia's racist past

[Kingsley Brown, of Antigonish, reported on civil rights in Canada and the United States.] Even if it had the money, Nova Scotia couldn’t host the 2014 Commonwealth Games, or any future ones, until Halifax cleans up unfinished business and gives Seaview Park back to remnants of the Africville community. Halifax was racist during the Clearance 40 years ago. On the evidence, it still is. Amid charges of racism, a regional school board has been summarily dismissed, the mor

Eric Rauchway: The struggle to make history relevant

[Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author, most recently, of Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America and Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. ] When Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, eulogized the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. this month, he claimed there are now no longer any historians who write about the past as if it mattered to us today. Schlesinger and his c

Bob Sipchen: Assimilation plays no part in this history lesson

The 400-foot-long mural decorating two outside walls at Theodore Roosevelt High presents a colorful depiction of the rape, slaughter and enslavement of North America's indigenous people by genocidal Europeans. On the wall of a building inside the chain-link fence, an oversized image of the school's namesake monocled Roughrider waves a sword heroically. It's an interesting clash of historical perspectives, and I'll use it to poke at the question of how we should be teach

Jay Bookman: Slavery an integral part of nation's shared ancestry

Nations, like families, have little secrets that everybody knows but nobody talks about. For the American family — if such a thing exists — that secret has always been slavery. Even now, the quiet consequences of slavery dog our conscience and degrade our public debate. And sometimes, it intrudes in ways we never would have anticipated. Let me tell you a story. My father's people come from western Virginia, near the headwaters of the James River. For 250 years they have

Budiawan: Searching for the historical truth of 1965 coup attempt

[Budiawan teaches at the Graduate Program in Religious and Cultural Studies, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He has published several articles on the politics of memory of the victims of the 1965-66 massacres both in English and Indonesian.] YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia -- Recently the Attorney General's Office banned all history textbooks used in junior and senior high schools that fail to mention Indonesian Communist Party's (PKI) role in the Sept. 30 movement.

Helena Cobban: The Haunting Legacy of Slavery

[Helena Cobban has written about (and often from) the Middle East since 1975. She writes a column on global affairs for the Christian Science Monitor , essays for Boston Review , and has published six books on international issues. ] Here in London, many people are making a pretty big deal out of the 200th anniversary of an act passed by Parliament in March 1807 that outlawed the involvement of British ships in the slave trade. Just a block or two from where I'm staying, th

Walter McDougall: On War in American History

[Walter A. McDougall is Co-Chair, with David Eisenhower, of FPRI's History Institute, and with James Kurth, of FPRI's Center for the Study of America and the West. His latest book is Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828. This article is based on his presentation made at Teaching about the Military in American History: A History Institute for Teachers, held March 24-25, 2007, at the First Di

Mackubin Thomas Owens: A Winnable War (The argument against the orthodox history of Vietnam)

[Mackubin Thomas Owens is professor of national security at the Naval War College.] In the late summer of 1963, President John Kennedy dispatched two observers to South Vietnam. Their mission was to provide the president an assessment of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. The first, Major General V

Ilan Pappe: The History of Israel Reconsidered

Professor Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University. He is the author of numerous books, including A History of Modern Palestine, The Modern Middle East, The Israel/Palestine Question and, most recently, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, published