Roundup: Historians' Take

Steven Leibo: The Cold War’s Hot Demise

[Dr. Steven Leibo, The Sherman David Spector Professor in the Humanities at the Sage Colleges in New York, specializes in Modern International History & Politics. Dr. Leibo has also taught at the State University of New York at Albany since 1986. A former Fulbright scholar, Prof. Leibo specializes in the relationship between Asia and the West. Leibo has extensive experience leading study tours through Vietnam. Leibo is also a documentary filmmaker. His most recent film is From Albany to Saigon:

Harry Verhoeven: UN Report on Rwanda Genocide Threatens Stability in Central Africa

[Harry Verhoeven is a doctoral student at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He heads the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN) is co-authoring a research project on the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, “Point of No Return. Kabila, the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Internal Dynamics of the Great African War.”] Until recently, President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) were the international community’s aid

Jack Davis: Treat the Gulf Right and It Will Return the Favor

[Jack Davis is a professor of history at the University of Florida and author of An Everglades Provenance: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.] Somewhere beneath Gulf of Mexico waters lies the archive of Spanish West Florida. When Americans invaded Pensacola in 1818, Spanish officials fled for Cuba. Intercepted en route by pirates, they heaved the colony’s records overboard. The watery resting palce is fitting. Much of the history of five U.

Ron Chernow: The Founding Fathers Versus the Tea Party

[Ron Chernow is the author of “Alexander Hamilton” and the forthcoming “Washington: A Life.”] LIKE many popular insurgencies in American history, the Tea Party movement has attempted to enlist the founding fathers as fervent adherents to its cause. The very name invokes those disguised patriots who clambered aboard ships in Boston Harbor in December 1773 and dumped chests of tea into the water rather than submit to the hated tea tax. At Tea Party rallies, marchers brandish flags emb

Ussama Makdisi: Anti-Islamic Resolution Undermines Secular Society

[Makdisi is a professor of history at Rice University and is the author of "Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001" (Public Affairs, New York).] Islamophobia has reached America. In Austin today, a resolution by members of the Texas State Board of Education to rectify "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias" in "past Texas Social Studies textbooks" is being put to a vote. The board determines Texas public school curr

Victor Davis Hanson: A Nation of Peasants?

[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.] Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited amount of good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft; they must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy, rather than admiration of success, reigns. In contrast, Western

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Is China Strong or Weak?

[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and Editor of The Journal of Asian Studies. His most recent book is China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.] China’s government has been using unusually strong language of late to assert its sovereignty over disputed stretches of international waters near to its shores. This has led to a ratcheting up of tensions, in particular between China and the United States, with Secretary of

Niall Ferguson: Larry Summers' Brutal Brilliance

[Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, was published in November.] Larry was my boss when I first moved to Harvard, and indeed he really was pretty crucial in persuading me to mo

Jonathan Zimmerman: Newt Gingrich is Right: Obama Shares Anticolonial Values—American Values

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”]By now, you’ve probably heard about Newt Gingrich’s weird comments last week linking President Obama’s worldview to “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior." But here’s somethin

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Glass House

[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.] Preachers and professors have it hard as presidents. They sermonize too much. Finally the public gets tired of being lectured by those whom they increasingly see as no more upright than themselves. Prophets crumble from feet of clay, and sto

Bruce Ackerman: Obama, Warren and The Imperial Presidency

[Mr. Ackerman is a professor at Yale and the author of "The Decline and Fall of the American Republic," forthcoming from Harvard University Press.] President Obama's appointment of Elizabeth Warren late last week is another milestone down the path toward an imperial presidency. During America's first 150 years, Ms. Warren's appointment as a special adviser to the White House would have been unthinkable. Today, it's par for the course. Only in 1939 did Frankli

Jonathan Zimmerman: Movement Harassed by the FBI

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] So it turns out that Martin Luther King Jr.'s most trusted photographer was actually a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, passing along material about King and other civil r

James McWilliams: The Evils of Corn Syrup: How Food Writers Got It Wrong

[James McWilliams is an Associate Professor of history at Texas State University, San Marcos.] Last week the Corn Refiners Association—tired of being seen as enemy number one in the war on obesity—filed a petition with the FDA to change the name of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to "corn sugar." The drumbeat of mockery from food purists, as you might imagine, began in earnest. Mary Elizabeth Williams wondered in Salon.com, "Who'd have thought the day would come when

Daniel Pipes: "Rushdie Rules" Reach Florida

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His article,"Two Decades of the Rushdie Rules" will appear in the October issue of Commentary magazine.]Pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Florida, let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an

Timothy Snyder: Who's Afraid of Ukrainian History?

[Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale. His new book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, will be published this month.
 (October 2010).] On summer evenings, the people of the west Ukrainian city Lviv come to sing: under the statue of Taras Shevchenko, the great poet who prophesied Ukrainian independence in the nineteenth century, on the street that was renamed Liberty Boulevard when Ukraine emerged from Soviet rule in 1991. The songs tell of beautiful d

Steve Hochstadt: Fixing the World Not Our Responsibility

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday.] When Franklin Roosevelt prepared to fight Japan in the Pacific, he had to wait until we were attacked first. There was just too strong a sentiment of isolationism in the U.S., powerful reservations about using American power to intervene in the politics and wars of other countries. That all changed after World War II. We emerged from the war with the convic

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Friedman's Flawed Beijing Bulletin

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, and the author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (published in April by Oxford University Press).]There are some superb foreign journalists based in China these days, including more than a few working for American news outlets, ranging from NPR to various newspapers and magazines. They know the country well and

Tom Engelhardt: One and a Half Cheers for American Decline

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com.  His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books), has just been published.]Compare two assessments of the American futur

Todd Gitlin: This Manichaean Moment

[Todd Gitlin’s latest book (with Liel Leibovitz), The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election has just been published by Simon & Schuster.] America inclines to wars of the rhetorical absolute. Adversaries readily turn into menaces; menaces into irresistible blobs and imminent devastations. Fights burst into wars and wars are declared holy. As the nation strives to protect itself from actually existing enemies, the Manichaean strain in American life pa

Daniel Pipes: The Rushdie Rules Reach Florida

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Fla., let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted. First, buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder,