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Alan Brinkley: Liberalism in Collapse?

by Jesse Lemisch

Response by Alan Brinkley Response by Jesse Lemisch Columbia historian and leading liberal Alan Brinkley has once again illustrated in his behavior something of the hypocritical and contradictory state of much of contemporary liberalism. A year ago, Columbia Graduate Student Employees United struck (as they did again last week). In a s

Why Japan Has Even Worse Relations with North Korea than We Do

by Gavan McCormack

On 14 April, the 61st session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting, adopted a resolution drafted and submitted jointly by Japan and the EU on the situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). It called on North Korea to immediately return Japanese abductees and on the UN General Assembly to take up the question of North Korean human rights violations in general.[1] The No 1 abductee whose return is sought by Japan is Yokota Megumi

What Kind of Education Is Required in a Democracy?

by Tom Palaima

My friend Robert Ivie up at Indiana University offers a course in rhetorical theory called Democratic Deliberation. Its Web site - www.indiana.edu/~ivieweb/deliberative.htm - is worth visiting simply for its choice selection of quotations about democracy.George Bernard Shaw, as we might expect, was drily ironic: "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." H.L. Mencken was wi

Are We a Peace-Loving Country or a Violent One?

by Ira Leonard

"Increasingly, Americans are a people without history, with only memory, which means a people poorly prepared for what is inevitable about life -- tragedy, sadness, moral ambiguity -- and therefore a people reluctant to engage difficult ethical issues."-- Elliot Gorn, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (April 28, 2000)In August 2002, President George Bush began to drum up a war fever in America with a view to toppling Iraqi dictator Sad

How One Historian Deals with Reporters Who Have a Question to Ask

by Donald Ritchie

It was the Washington Post publisher Philip L. Graham who coined the expression: “News is a first rough-draft of history.”1 If that’s true, then it is in the interest of historians to do

The Significance of Pope Benedict XV

by Thomas Fleming

I'm puzzled that so little is being said in the media about the historical significance of Cardinal Ratzinger's choice of Benedict XVI as his papal name. As a German, I think we can be fairly sure he is trying to remind the world of the tragic story of his predecessor, and how close he came to bringing World War I to an early conclusion. The story has specical significance for Americans. In the spring of 1917, Pope Benedict XV called on the warring governments to make a peace of mutu

Egads! Have the Radicals Really Taken Over Our History Departments?

by Chris Bray

The scene: Miss Havisham wanders the halls of her blog, where she has stopped all the clocks. Marxists and postmodernists line the tables, untouched since that fateful day in 1986… Oh, for the old days, when history professors like William Archibald Dunning and Frederick Jackson Turner just told the objective truth and kept their politics out of their scholarship. Today, our universities are crawl

Why China Has to Steal Technology

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

There is no entry for China in Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy. Pity. For the violence and the timing of the Anti-Japanese demonstrations (justifiable as they are) as well as the Japanese Prime Minister’s apologetic response to those demonstrations clearly illustrates Sharanky’s central argument: Now we can see why nondemocratic regimes

How My Critics Have Slandered Me

by David Horowitz

Editor's Note Recently David Beito, Robert"KC" Johnson, and Ralph E. Luker wrote an article published on HNN that took David Horowitz to task for his campaign promoting ideological balance on American campuses. On the HNN blog, Cliopatria, Mr. Horowitz was criticized for allegedly mischaracterizing a controversy involving a student at the Universi

Will Tom DeLay's Fiery Rhetoric Against the Courts Lead Anywhere?

by Rodger Citron

Campaigning against the federal courts is a familiar, even venerable, political sport. Recently, however, a number of politicians have raised the stakes by escalating their attacks upon the federal judiciary and even individual judges. Before the Terri Schiavo case, there were calls for Congress to impeach judges and to pass legislation that would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction in certain cases. After Schiavo's death, Rep. Tom DeLay has continued to press his jeremiad against the fede

The Harvard Parallel Lawrence Summers Hoped Nobody Would Make

by Martin Halpern

When the Harvard Arts and Science faculty expressed their lack of confidence in university president Lawrence H. Summers on March 15, 2005, it was an act unprecedented in the history of the United States’ oldest institution of higher education. This isn’t the first time, however, that the country has witnessed Harvard faculty members and a Harvard president arrayed on opposite sides of an issue rending the body politic. In 2005 Harvard faculty and its president are opposed on issu

Getting Out: Why We Need to Remember the Dominican Republic, 1965

by Alan McPherson

U.S. planners in Iraq have gained little inspiration from the past, especially from the shopworn Vietnam analogy. That war haunts both supporters and opponents of the 2003 U.S. invasion, and more so as the occupation enters its third year.   Supporters of the Iraqi war say the"liberation" of Iraq has helped Washington kick the"Vietnam syndrome," the fear of sending U.S. youth into harm's way. Opponents answer that the conflict is a"quagmire" dragging down U.S. resources and morale

The Supreme Court and the Culture Wars

by Rick Shenkman

This article was first published by findlaw.com on August 9, 2001.Sometime this year, maybe next, a vacancy will occur on the Supreme Court. When it does the pundits will remind everybody of the bruising battle over Robert Bork. They will all say that Bork forever changed the politics of judicial appointments. They will all be wrong.They won’t be completely wrong. Bork was big. But by focusing on Bork they will be missing the larger picture. Step back and you see that s

Why We Are on Strike: A Yale Graduate Student's Story

by Philipp Ziesche

I am a sixth-year graduate student in early American history at Yale University, currently on strike with my union, the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO). In Germany, my home country, market-oriented elite universities such as Yale and Harvard are commonly presented as a desirable alternative to our own overcrowded and under-funded public higher education system. Thus, when I came to Yale from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1999, I expected to spend most of my time in

Interview with Michael J. Klarman, Winner of the 2005 Bancroft Prize

by Bonnie Goodman

Michael J. Klarman, the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, recently won the 2005 Bancroft Prize for From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. This book primarily examines the relationship between the Supreme Court and race relations in the United States. Klarman focuses on race related legal decisions that oc

Why Is Japan Suddenly Indulging in Rosy Reinterpretations of the Past?

by David McNeill and Mark Selden

Sino-Japanese relations sunk to a new low on the weekend of April 9-10 when an estimated 10-20,000 Chinese protestors surrounded the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, pelting it with missiles and shouting"Japanese pigs come out" and"Be ashamed of distorting history." Thousands more vented their rage in other parts of the capital and in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and elsewhere. The protests, demanding a boycott of Japanese goods, followed Tokyo's authorization of textbooks that many in China co

Protestant America's Selective Embrace of the Pope's Teachings

by John Fea

In one of the more interesting and ironic twists in recent American religious life, a Catholic pope has found some of his most vocal supporters among conservative evangelical Protestants.   Evangelical-Catholic relations have come a long way over the last generation, but for all their papal cheerleading, conservative evangelicals have made no effort to consider embracing the breadth of John Paul II's social teachings. As a result, their moral authority to address American culture

Did Lincoln Love Ann Rutledge or Not?

by Douglas L. Wilson

The following excerpt is from Mr. Wilson's book, Honor's Voice, and addresses the question of Lincoln's love for Ann Rutledge, which has long bedeviled the president's biographers.Eventually Abraham Lincoln fell in love. William H. Herndon learned of this love affair from a wide variety of informants in the year following Lincoln’s death, but he so sensationalized it in a public lecture in 1866 and so offended Lincoln’s family and the public’s sensi

When Did the Gay Rights Movement Begin?

by Vern Bullough

On May 1 the Equality Forum plans to commemorate the 40th anniversary of a gay march held in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Some contend that this 1965 event marked the beginning of the gay rights movement. Frank Kameny, 79, who took part in the march, recently said,"We created the mind-set for the expression of dissent." MSNBC reports that the"The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has approved a state historical marker near Independence Hall declaring the area the site of the first public demonstration for gay and lesbian rights."

Should Bloggers Be Covered by the First Amendment?

by Chris Daly

Who is a journalist? In America, where we don’t license journalists, that is not always a simple question. Lately, the issue has come up in a new light because of the claims made by people who post blogs (i.e.: web logs). Bloggers came to prominence during the 2004 election, often criticizing or correcting the “mainstream media.” Recently, the first blogger in history was issued credentials to cover the White House. And just last month, a California judge wa