Roundup: Historians' Take

Will Gray: Germany to Greece: Drop Dead

[Will Gray is an associate professor of history at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.] Like New York City in the 1970s, the government in Athens today stands on the brink of defaulting. The numbers are sobering: Greece’s budget deficit tops 12% of GDP, and the government owes €20.5 billion ($27.8 billion) in debt service payments between now and the end of May 2010. The Greek government under Prime Minister George Papandreou badly needs to restructure the debt in connecti

Juan Cole: Heavy Turnout in Bloody Iraqi Election

[Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context.] Voting in Iraq began early Sunday, and turnout appeared to be heavy. The BBC analysis is that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition will do well enough at the polls to again form the government, partnering with other religious Shiite parties. According

Peter Hoffenberg: Demonizing Israel Does Not Advance Mideast Peace

[Peter Hoffenberg of Hawaii Kai is an associate professor of history at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.] The Rev. Neal MacPherson's "Island Commentary" of Feb. 24 ("Israel deserves right to exist, but not at Palestinians' expense," Star-Bulletin) claims that he and his colleagues in the Hawaii chapter of the Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) desire "peace and security for Israel and also justice for the Palestinians." Sounds eminently

Harold James: Euro-Jitters a Reflection of International Problems

[Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and Marie Curie Professor of History at the European University Institute, Florence. His most recent book is The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalisation Cycle.] It is too simplistic to explain the current wave of concern about the euro in terms of Greece’s problems. Greece has massive fiscal and competitiveness problems, but Greece (2.25% of the population of the European Union) is s

Jack Wertheimer: The High Cost of Jewish Living

[Jack Wertheimer is the Joseph and Martha Mendelson Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Most recently, he has directed a team research project for the Avi Chai Foundation on American Jewish leaders in their 20s and 30s, the findings of which are due to be released this spring.] The nexus between Jews and money, a topic of perennial curiosity for philo-Semites and anti-Semites alike, has drawn renewed interest during the economic downturn. With mo

Burt Folsom: Government Can't Compete with the Free Market

[Burt Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College.] “I do not think that this country is ready to be treated like Russia for a while.” Thus wrote Henry Ford in 1933–after President Roosevelt, through the National Recovery Act, tried to legally force all carmakers to fix prices for their cars and agree not to give customers any discounts. GM and Chrysler went along with FDR, but Ford refused to be regimented by the federal government. “There is a lot of the pioneer spirit her

John Fea: Pennsylvania is Erasing Its History

[John Fea is an associate professor of American history at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. He blogs at www.philipvickersfithian.com.] The writer Robert Penn Warren once wrote, "History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future." Gov. Rendell apparently does not agree. His recent decision to

Victor Davis Hanson: Is There a Philosophy of Hypocrisy?

[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.] ...1) Egalitarianism and equality trump all — whether freedom, individualism, or personal liberty. Usually a great deal of education, or capital tends to convince us that in a perfect world, people like us who have money or have wisdom, could make others li

Victor Davis Hanson: The U.S. Should Stand by Britain in the Falkland Islands

[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.] Almost 30 years after losing a war over the Falkland Islands, Argentina is once again warning Britain that it still wants back what it calls the Malvinas. Argentina is now angry over a British company’s oil exploration off the windswept islands

Andrei Lankov: Is the Dear Leader Losing His Grip?

[Andrei Lankov is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, and adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacifica and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.] Contrary to oft-stated accusations, Pyongyang leaders are neither irrational nor ideology-driven; they are a bunch of brilli

Andrew Roberts: Israel is No More Rogue than America

[The writer is a historian and author. His latest book is ‘The Storm of War’] Is state-sanctioned assassination justifiable, or does it somehow de-legitimise the state that undertakes it?... When Britain was at war, Winston Churchill sanctioned the assassination by its Special Operations Executive of the SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the capture (and killing if necessary) of General Heinrich Kreipe on Crete; ditto Erwin Rommel. Just as with some Mossad operations, such

Ron Radosh: Growing Anti-Semitism On The Campus

[Ronald Radosh, Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Prof. Emeritus of History at CUNY, writes regularly for Pajamas Media.com.] But even more disturbing is the growing evidence that Jewish students are having a most confused response to this development. One has to look only at the announcement by J-Street- the self-described left of center antidote to AIPAC- that it would not call its campus chapters "pro-Israel" because that would limit their ability to gain membe

Charles Postel: The Real Populist Tradition in America

[Charles Postel, an assistant professor of history at San Francisco State University, won the Bancroft Prize in American history for his book “The Populist Vision.”] When David Broder praised Sarah Palin’s speech at the National Tea Party Convention as “perfect-pitch populism,” real Populists were surely spinning in their graves. In the 1890s, American farmers and other activists rocked corporate power in a populist revolt. Now, the Washington Post columnist has passed

Jonathan Zimmerman: Should Schools be Giving Out Computers?

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory." He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.] ...According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 36 percent of American children between the ages of 8 and 18 have a computer in their bedroom. The rest have to go elsewhere in the house - or outside the house - to get

Tom Engelhardt: A Modest Proposal for Waging Better Wars

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His latest book, The American Way of War (Haymarket Books), will be published in May.]Iraq remains a mess from which the U.S. military seems

Greg Melleuish: Australia's New History Standards Neglect the Individual

[Greg Melleuish is an associate professor in the school of history and politics at the University of Wollongong.] With the release of the draft national curriculum, it can be said that history's time has finally come. For many years the study of history was on the retreat in schools in many parts of Australia, being supplanted by various forms of social studies. But now it has become one of the big four alongside English, mathematics and science. The effect

Willy Lam: China's Congressional Concerns

[Mr. Lam is a professor of China studies at Akita International University, Japan, and an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.] While China's National People's Congress is a rubberstamp legislature, its annual plenary session—which kicks off Friday—affords a good window into the thinking of the nontransparent Chinese Communist Party elite. This year's theme is the economy, stupid. That in itself isn't new, but the economic focus is shifti

Joshua Brown: Great Gaps in Presidential History (Illustration)

  Joshua Brown, co-director of the New Media Lab, is also Executive Director of the Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project (ASHP) at the CUNY Graduate Center. Before assuming those duties in 1998, Brown served as CML/ASHP's Crea

Jonathan Tremblay: Canada Hosts the Olympic Games – A Curse of Their Own

[Jonathan Tremblay is a Historian and Breaking News Editor for the History News Network] Vancouver 2010 is almost over with a few weeks of Paralympic games to go that will close this new Canadian adventure. The organizing committee, after a few weeks of holding their breaths, have looked up at the medal standings and let go a great collective sigh of relief. You see, Canada has hosted the Olympics twice before and both endeavours were arguably complete disasters for the host nation.

Leon Fink: Populism With Brains

[Leon Fink is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, author of The Maya of Morgantown: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), and editor of the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas.] When President Obama sounded a populist note in the wake of the Republican victory in the Senate race in Massachusetts, conservative commentators went wild. Left-leaning populists (think the 1896 presiden