Roundup: Historians' Take

Edward Tenner: Bloody-Minded Philosophers

[Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.] Is the 1995 decision of the Department of Justice, the Washington Post, and the New York Times to publish the Unabomber Manifesto coming home to roost? Yes, it may have saved lives by prompting Theodore Kaczynski's brother to investigate similar quirks of style and identify him to the FBI as a possible suspect. But it also set a d

Allen C. Guelzo: The Rise of the Black Republican

[Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, and the author of "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President."] ...[A]s the economy loses steam, and President Obama's poll numbers sag, the ultimate humiliation in this summer of Democratic discontent is to find Republicans trumpeting 2010 as "The Year of the Black Republicans." This trend defies modern identity politics. In the 2008 election, 95 percent of black v

Victor Davis Hanson: The New Old World Order

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.] The post–Cold War New World Order is rapidly breaking apart. Nations are returning to the ancient passions, rivalries, and differences of past centuries. Take Europe. The decades-old vision of a united pan-continental Europe without borders is dissolving. The cradle-to-grave welfare dream proved too expensive for Europe’s shrinking and aging population. Cult

Jonathan Zimmerman: Anti-Islamic mood repeats history

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.] A little-known politician emerges from Illinois to capture the White House during a time of national turmoil and unrest. Critics whisper that he’s a secret member of a dangerous minority religion, which flouts the norms and traditions of democracy itself. Barack Obama, in 2010? No, Abraham Lincoln. In 1860. That’s right. Just as Obama’s enemies call him a closet Muslim, Lincoln’s opponents hinted

Ron Radosh: Misshaping Minds at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College has assigned, as a book that all incoming transfer students must read, the extremely slanted work "How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America." A letter from the CUNY college's administration to faculty says the assignment is an "effort to provide a common experience for this population of students." Appalled that this is the "common experience" that administrators aim to foster, faculty members alerted The New Yo

Andrew Bacevich: Obama Wants Us To Forget the Lessons of Iraq

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.] ...After seven-plus years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has concluded. Operation New Dawn, its name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid, now begins. (What ever happened to the practice of using terms like Torch or Overlord or Dragoon to describe military campaigns?) Although something like 50,000 U.S. troops remain in

Stanley Kutler: Our Enabling Media Is Worse Than Ever

[Stanley Kutler is the author The Wars of Watergate, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, and The American Inquisition: Cold War Political Trials.] Thomas Jefferson periodically expressed support for a free press as essential to an “enlightened citizenry,” but when the reality of political life settled on him during his presidency and beyond, Jefferson had harsh words for it. The newspapers, he complained in 1803, “present only the caricatures of disaffected minds.” In his “retireme

Julian E. Zelizer: Time for Obama to put cards on table

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of"Arsenal of Democracy" and a book on former President Carter and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.] If current polls are a guide, the midterm elections probably won't be good for President Obama and his party. The Democrats are in danger of losing control of the House of Represe

Van Gosse: American Democracy (the Lack Thereof)

[Van Gosse is associate professor of history at Franklin & Marshall College and specializes in American political development, the African-American struggle for citizenship and American society in the Cold War era and since.] For more than two hundred years, the rest of the world has listened to Americans boast about our "freedom," our "liberty," and, most of all, how we are the model for a perfected democracy, which everyone else should emulate.

Conrad Black: Decline, but Not Inevitable Decline

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.] For decades, I have been a militant anti-declinist in terms of America’s place in the world. The United States is a proud, determined, hard-working, talented, patriotic nation and people, and it is not over-extended in the manner of empires of the past that took over the lands of others and eventually collapsed under the weight of the over-ambitious hegemon. Thus came

Matthew Dennis: Fear and Ignorance Fuel Opposition to New York Mosque

[Matthew Dennis (mjdennis@uoregon.edu) is a professor of history and environmental studies at the University of Oregon.] Late in 2001, the president and Congress designated Sept. 11 as Patriot Day, a discretionary day of remembrance for the nearly 3,000 people killed by terrorists in lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. It was a sincere but odd tribute, given that the victims were no more and no less patriotic than

John Sainsbury: Why the Aussies Can Debate the Monarchy But Canadians Can't

[John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University.] The future of the monarchy came up as an issue in the Australian election. No surprise there. Australians have few inhibitions in discussing whether to retain the constitutional status quo or make the bold move to establish a republic.... Why could nothing like this happen in Canada? Why are our politicians so hesitant to engage with the issue of monarchy versus republic? Why, specifically, will there proba

Jeffrey Herf: Fresh Air in Central Europe

[Jeffrey Herf teaches European history at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys and The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust.] A certain kind of liberalism familiar to readers of The New Republic has been stirring in, of all places, Germany and Austria. To be sure, it operates on the margins. And, yes, the impulse to appease, run for cover and all the rest lingers there as well.

Nicolaus Mills: Sex Shop and Strip Clubs Near Ground Zero Show Double Standard over Park51

[Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and co-editor with Michael Walzer of “Getting Out: Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq.] In this debate over whether a Muslim community center should be built two blocks from where the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11, both sides have sought to capture the high ground. President Obama and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg have defended the building of the community center by inv

Christine Stansell: A Forgotten Fight for Suffrage

[Christine Stansell, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, is the author of “The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present.”] LOOKING back on the adoption of the 19th Amendment 90 years ago Thursday — the largest act of enfranchisement in our history — it can be hard to see what the fuss was about. We’re inclined to assume that the passage of women’s suffrage (even the term is old-fashioned) was inevitable, a change whose time had come. After all, voting is now business a

Sean Wilentz: New Dylan Recordings Unveiled

[Sean Wilentz is a history professor at Princeton University whose books include The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. A contributing editor at The New Republic, his new book, Bob Dylan in America, will be published in September by Doubleday.] Columbia Records announced Tuesday that it will release in October two Bob Dylan multi-CD collections that will also be available on vinyl—the latest in a long string of new collectio

Steve Hochstadt: Joe the Plumber: A Political Inspiration?

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column, which reflects the authors views and not necessarily those of the newspaper, appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier.] I went to hear Joe the Plumber the other day at a Take Back Illinois 9/12 event. I wanted to know what motivated today’s conservatives. Here is what I found out. The “9/12" movement is based on principles announced by Glenn Beck. The nine p

Richard Greenwald: A Modest Proposal for Teacher Tenure Reform

[Richard Greenwald is a labor historian and social critic. He is currently a professor of history at Drew University. His essays have appeared in In These Times, The Progressive, The Wall Street Journal among others. He is currently writing a book on the rise of freelancing and is co-editing a book on the future of work for The New Press, which features essays from the county's leading labor scholars and public intellectuals.] Teachers today feel ever more under the gun, as state fi

John Sainsbury: Catholicism’s Culture of Secrecy

[John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University, and a member of the congregation of the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria.] In April, Bishop James Wingle abruptly quit his post as head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Catharines, Ont., and disappeared overnight from public view.... The mystery of his whereabouts was resolved on July 31 — the same day that a front-page story appeared in the St. Catharines Standard under the banner headline “Wher

Julian E. Zelizer: GOP Needs a Reagan to Unite Its Factions

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Arsenal of Democracy," a book on former President Carter and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.] ...[T]he debate over the Islamic center and mosque tells us as much about the tensions that are brewing within the Republican Party as it does about the challenges facing