Historians/History

K.I.A.: The Uncle I Never Knew

by Ralph F. Young

It was just going to be a quick ten-day vacation in Paris, part respite to recover from all the papers and final exams I had been grading and part the necessary culture jolt I always seem to need every few months. Denise and I arrived from the States on a Friday morning, and after a day of getting over our jet lag at Bruno and Marie-Camille's apartment in Place D'Italie, the four of us

Who Is Philip Zelikow?

by Alice Lemieux

Historians may identify Philip Zelikow as a scholar of the Kennedy administration and author of Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice). Since 1998 he has served as the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, which focuses on presidential recordings. But recently he has popped up in the news in connection with the 9-11 Commission. Zelikow is the executive director of the the National Commission on Terrori

The Delusions Behind the Brown Decision

by Christopher W. Schmidt

The way the story is typically told, Brown v. Board of Education was a moment in history when the Supreme Court got it right. When the eight associate justices fell in line behind Chief Justice Earl Warren’s opinion in the spring of 1954, it marked a powerful refutation of the fallacy that legalized racial segregation could ever satisfy the constitutional requirement of “equal protection of the laws.” The ruling legitimized a modern conception of racial equality, pr

The Columbia Professor Who Believes Israel Doesn't Have a Right to Exist

by Jonathan Calt Harris

"The Jews are not a nation.…The Jewish state is a racist state that does not have a right to exist." One might expect these comments to have been uttered by a neo-Nazi or a militant Islamic leader. Sadly, these words were uttered by an instructor of Middle East studies at one of America's most prestigious universities in the course of delivering a lecture at Oxford University. In title, Joseph A. Massad is an assistant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history

Historians Have Yet to Face Up to the Implications of the Katyn Massacre

by Adam Scrupski

Harvey Klehr will be speaking on the morning of 22 May 2004 at the NAS conference in the New York City's Roosevelt Hotel. He will referring to the theme of his and John Earl Haynes's In Denial, their study of the continuing refusal of American left-liberals, in the face of recently revealed evidence, to acknowledge the barbarities and in some cases outright genocide of the Soviet Union during World War II. 

It's Not too Early to Begin Writing the History of 9-11

by John Lewis Gaddis

This is chapter one of Mr. Gaddis's recently published book, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Harvard, 2004). It's in the nature of great surprises in history that you'll always remember where you were when you heard the news. This is because for most of us most of the time historical and personal experi

It's About Time Lincoln Got a Presidential Library

by Jason Emerson

More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other historical figure in world history except Napoleon Bonaparte. Hundreds of new books about Lincoln are published every year. Major centers and universities dedicated to the study of Abraham Lincoln exist in half a dozen states in America, in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and even Albania. And while there has been great discussion about how the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, currently under constructio

Why It's Right to Remember Brown

by James Patterson

When Ralph Ellison heard about the Brown v. Board of Education decision in May 1954, he wrote a friend, “what a wonderful world of possibilities for the children.” Thurgood Marshall, chief litigator for the black children, agreed, commenting later, “I was so happy, I was numb.” Marshall expected school segregation to be wiped out in the South within five years. Of course, Ellison, Marshall, and others with great expectations in 1954 were far too o

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2004 OAH Convention

by Rick Shenkman

Day 1: Thursday March 25, 2004 News HAW--Historians Against the War--persuaded the OAH executive board to pass a resolution to establish a committee to investigate reports of alleged repression involving historians. Click here for details.General Observations If you stayed away because it's Boston and you heard the weather was terrible, you m

An Open Letter to Alan Brinkley

by Rick Perlstein

Dear Alan: I hear from my sources that you are in a difficult spot right now: that when you were just a professor in the history department you were sympathetic to graduate student unionization, and now you find yourself the official voice of the Columbia Board of Trustees’ anti-union policies. I’ve read the Columbia Spectator interiview. And though I sympathize with your dilemma, I’ve come to the conclusion that so long as you keep your position—one, the other, or bo

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2004 Meeting of the European Association of American Studies

by Ellen Carol Dubois

For two years I have taught American women's history in Europe, last year for three months at the University of Utrecht the Netherlands (on an interuniversity exchange) and this year for the same length of time at the University of Bologna, Italy, as a Senior Fulbright Fellow. I have attended meetings of European Americanists, most recently the biannual meeting of the European Association of American Studies (EAAS), held in Prague, Czech Republic, April 2 through 5, 2004. Inspired by R

In Defense of Dark Union

by Leonard Guttridge

HNN Debate: The Lincoln Murder MysteryIgnoring the diatribe in the Steers-Chaconas “review essay” I offer the following in the interests of truth and common sense. The magazine identifies Edward Steers as an “acknowledged expert” on the Lincoln assassination, a subject on which he has written three books. Prior to his active interest in Lincoln's murder Steers was occupied in the

Wanted: The Truth About The Kent State Killings

by Murray Polner

Americans of a certain age may remember the murder of students on the Kent State University campus 34 years ago and the anger it once aroused. On May 4, 1970, 0hio National Guardsmen killed four college students and wounded nine others-one of them, Dean Kahler, is still paralyzed. He was, reported the FBI, 95-100 yards from the riflemen when he was wounded. Yet no one was ever found responsible nor have the questions surrounding the calamity ever been stilled.Antiwa

Why It's Unlikely the Emmett Till Murder Mystery Will Ever Be Solved

by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito

Nearly fifty years ago, one of the most sensational murders in American history took place. In August 1955, two white half brothers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, kidnapped Emmett Till, a fourteen year old black boy, from his great uncle’s home. Several days later, his brutally beaten and horribly disfigured body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River. What had Till done to merit such treatment? Witnesses said that he wolf-whistled, and perhaps made suggestive remarks, to Bryant’s

Reporter's Notebook: The New England American Studies Association -- World History Association

by Jeremy Greene

Conference:"Global New England: The Meaning of Region in the Nation and theWorld" signaled a celebration of the publ

Historical Analogies: Iraq is to Vietnam is to…

by Fran Shor

We're not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germnay can attest. We're a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest as well.--President Bush, at his recent news conference Historical analogies should always be viewed with a certain skepticism. Historians, especially, are aware of critical discontinuities even as we search for those continuities that provide the narrative thread to historiography. On the other hand, hi

Why I Decided to Write a History of the United States

by Walter A. McDougall

The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years. If some ghostly ship, some Flying Dutchman, were transported in time from the year 1600 into the present, the crew would be amazed by our technology and the sheer numb

Why Americans Are Satisfied with Simple Explanations of Foreign Wars

by William McKee Evans

The Civil War stands alone in the sophistication of its historiography. No educated American would take seriously a person who said the war came because the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. If we knew as much about the nation's other wars there might be fewer of them.

Is Allen Weinstein too Secretive to Become the Chief Archivist of the United States?

by Roger Sandilands

President Bush's intention to nominate Allen Weinstein as Archivist of the United States has raised a few eyebrows. Weinstein is best known for Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (1978) and The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (1999), co-authored with Alexander Vassiliev who was given access (for a substantial fee) to KGB archives. The KGB closed their archives to other researchers who therefore cannot check the accuracy, context or interpretation of the notes

Getting the State of Alabama to Improve Its History Standards: Victories and Defeats

by David T. Beito and Charles W. Nuckolls

The cause of better education in Alabama achieved an important victory on Thursday. After much delay and thoughtful debate, the state Board of Education approved a new and improved Course of Study (COS) in Social Studies for K-12. Our Ad Hoc Committee to Revise the COS is proud to have played a part in