Roundup: Talking About History

Adam Cohen: Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not

At a law school Supreme Court conference that I attended last fall, there was a panel on “The Rehnquist Court.” No one mentioned Bush v. Gore, the most historic case of William Rehnquist’s time as chief justice, and during the Q. and A. no one asked about it. When I asked a prominent law professor about this strange omission, he told me he had been invited to participate in another Rehnquist retrospective, and was told in advance that Bush v. Gore would not be discussed. The ruling

Yomiuri Editorial: Main blame lies with Tojo

The Showa War was launched and terminated by leaders who lost their grip on international reality and veered from responsible politics. Of them, we believe the person most responsible for the Showa War was Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. Likewise, more than 10 political and military leaders, including Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, should be held heavily responsible for erring in the conduct of state affairs. In addition, elite military officers and high-ranking bureaucrats who supporte

WSJ Editorial: Reaganomics at 25

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Ronald Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act. The bill cut personal income tax rates by 25% across the board, indexed tax brackets for inflation and reduced the corporate income tax rate. The anniversary is worth commemorating as a seminal moment that continues to influence policy for the better in the U.S., and around the globe. The achievement of Reaganomics can only be fully understood by recalling the miserable state of affairs a quarter

Joseph Rago: Norman Podhoretz, Unrepentant Neo-Con

If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Iraq was lost -- according, at least, to the conspiracy-minded -- on the pages of Commentary magazine and the other house organs of the neoconservative movement. Better yet, blame America's post-9/11 foreign policy on Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, regularly disinterred as the neocon godfathers. Yet however much one loathes lending credence to talk of a neocon conspiracy -- call it Cabal Theory -- it does pos

Editorial Times of London: Guenter Grass's Silence

It’s enough to make an old man cry. Just days before publication of his long-awaited autobiography entitled Peeling the Onion, Günter Grass, bleeding heart icon of the German left, has confessed he was once a member of the Nazi SS. The revelation by the Nobel prize winner, now approaching his 80th birthday, has shocked Germany’s literary and cultural world. It was Grass first and foremost who insisted the Germans “come clean” about their history and that his own generation should no

Martin E. Marty: The high-rise is a bigger God-Killer than Nietzsche ever was

[Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.comhttp://www.illuminos.com .] Sightings of religious issues in public life this week appeared along the highways and in the Jewish weekly The Forward (August 4). Columnist Jenna Weissman Joselit reminded readers that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the Interstate Highwa

Ann Louise Bardach: Portrait of the Maximum Leader as a Young Man

FIDEL CASTRO appears to have cheated death (yet again) and will celebrate his 80th birthday today. Although he has decreed that his birthday celebration will take place on Dec. 2 (the 50th anniversary of his return to Cuba from exile), he in fact came into the world, weighing 12 pounds, on Aug. 13, 1926, at 2 a.m. at his family’s estate at Birán. In 1952, when Fulgencio Batista seized power through a military coup, Fidel Castro declined an invitation to join the regime from Rafael D

Sarah Deutsch: Practicing history in Florida, is it illegal?

n June 6, 2006, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed into law the “A-Plus-Plus Plan” to reform K-12 education. Touted as a way to fix the problems voters find lacking in their local schools, it passed with much fanfare and little if any critical response. In it are policies that require entering high school students to choose a major in either an academic or technical field. Also, teachers are compelled to teach sexual abstinence as the “expected standard” of sexual health education, flag education

Leonard Cassuto: Peyton Place, 50 Years After

[Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University.] Next month marks the 50th anniversary of publication of Grace Metalious's Peyton Place, one of the most notorious novels of its time. The book exposed the petty, sordid, and urgently erotic hidden life of a small town. A best seller of precedent-setting proportions, it was also widely disparaged by the literati of the 1950s, who saw it as little more than a prurient diversion. Today millions of viewers tune in weekly

Jon Wiener: Beyond My Lai ... New Revelations of Vietnam Atrocities

How long does it take the US government to release documentation about atrocities in which US military forces killed unarmed civilians, women and children? In the case of Vietnam, it's taken almost 40 years. The 1968 My Lai massacre became public in 1969, but officials at the time said My Lai was an "isolated incident"--the same thing we hear about atrocities today in Iraq and elsewhere. After that, GIs described dozens of other My Lai-style atrocities in which they said they had taken

Susannah Rutherglen: Who was to blame for the looting of the Iraq museum?

The looting of the Iraq National Museum, in April 2003, was an example of "systematic cultural theft," says Susannah Rutherglen, a graduate student in art history at Princeton University. In a case study of the plunder, she examines who was responsible for the damage to the museum, whether the looting was preventable, and what the episode's cost was to the study of Mesopotamian culture. About 13,000 items were stolen from the museum after the fall of Baghdad, Ms. Ruthergle

Michael Nelson: Fresh understanding of the presidency is needed

[Michael Nelson is a professor of political science at Rhodes College. Most recently he edited, with Richard J. Ellis, Debating the Presidency: Conflicting Perspectives on the American Executive (CQ Press, 2006).] The presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson marked a sharp turn in the history of presidential scholarship. From FDR's New Deal 1930s until the mid-1960s, when the Johnson administration's main story line shifted from civil rights and the Great Society to its deepening and disastr

Ilan Stavans: What's civil rights history without Latinos?

[Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His latest book, "The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories," is coming out this month from Triquarterly. ] The other day, while browsing through the excellent two-volume set on the civil rights movement "Reporting Civil Rights," published by the Library of America, I was flabbergasted by a glaring absence. In that almost 1,000-page-long fiesta of journalism about

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Native Sons of Liberty

ON June 11, 1823, a man named John Redman walked into the courtroom of Judge Charles Lobb in Hardy County, Virginia, to apply for a pension, claiming to be a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Redman, more than 60 years old, testified that he had been in the First Virginia Regiment of Light Dragoons from Christmas 1778 through 1782, serving initially as a waiter to Lt. Vincent Howell. The Light Dragoons fought mainly on horseback, using sabers, pistols, and light carbines. They march

Gary J. Bass: A Shrine to Japan’s Tainted Past

[Gary J. Bass, an associate professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, is the author of "Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals."] IF Dec. 7 is the date that Americans remember for the infamy of Pearl Harbor, then Aug. 15 is the wrenching coda remembered by Japanese: the date on which, in 1945, Japan agreed to surrender in World War II. Under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, however, Aug.

Pascal Ory: Interviewed about Dreyfus case

In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the highest ranking Jewish military officer in the French army at the time, was imprisoned after being accused of passing secrets to the German embasssy in Paris. The conviction was exposed as an anti-Semitic plot by activists such as writer Emile Zola, who wrote an open letter to the President Felix Faure with the famous headline J’accuse. Finally, in 1906, Dreyfuss was exonerated of his charges and allowed back in the army. As France marks the 100t

Marshall Poe: Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong?

[Marshall Poe is the founder of MemoryArchive, a universal encyclopedia of memories.] Several months ago, I discovered that I was being “considered for deletion.” Or rather, the entry on me in the Internet behemoth that is Wikipedia was. For those of you who are (as uncharitableWikipedians sometimes say) “clueless newbies,” Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. But it is like no encyclopedia Diderot could have imagined. Instead of relying on experts to write articles according

Theodore Brown Jr.: Sen. Albert Gore Sr.'s Role in Creating the Interstate Highway System

As one of your subscribers and as a former staff member of the late U.S. Senator Albert Gore Sr., D-Tenn., I feel compelled to share with your other readers a more complete account of the creation of the Interstate Highway System than that which is provided in Logan Thomas Snyder's"Broader Ribbons Across the Land," in your June issue. Although it is true that President Eisenhower in February 1955 recommended the creation of a transcontinental highway system, the Interstate Highway System as

Neve Gordon: Academic Freedom after September 11

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com.] Immediately after September 11, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), founded by Lynn Cheney and Senator Joseph Lieberman, published a report accusing universities of being the weak link in the war against terror and a potential fifth column. As if the general hint at treason was not enough, an appendix to the report li

David Greenberg: Presidential Doodles

fter Somali militiamen killed eighteen U.S. soldiers in October 1993, President Clinton convened his national-security team. He sat silently while being briefed. Then, his aide Richard Clarke recalled, “When they had talked themselves out, Clinton stopped doodling and looked up. ‘Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.’” We imagine White House meeti