Roundup: Historians' Take

Jerry Z. Muller: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism

[JERRY Z. MULLER is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America. His most recent book is The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought.] Projecting their own experience onto the rest of the world, Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. After all, in the United States people of varying ethnic origins live cheek by jowl in relative peace. Within two or three generations of immigration, their ethnic identities are attenu

Barry Rubin: Charisma Isn't Enough

[Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His latest book, The Truth about Syria was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in May 2007.] The U.S. presidential election is not--at least not supposed to be--like electing a high school class president. Vague promises, glib speeches, and personal popularity shouldn't be enough to gain victory. This should be especially true this year since so many Americans d

Jonathan Zimmerman: Of peace and ethnic blending

[Jonathan Zimmerman is a New York University professor teaching in Ghana this semester. E-mail him at jlzimm@aol.com.] 'Ghana Loves Obama." I saw that on a bumper sticker last month during President Bush's brief visit here. Wherever Bush went on his five-nation African tour, talk of Obama followed him. "It seemed like there was a lot of excitement for me - wait a minute, maybe you missed it!" Bush quipped, when Tanzani

Joseph Lane: Clinton Plagiarizing (and Desperate)?

[Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry. ] When Hillary Clinton’s attempts to derail Barack Obama by publicly scolding him for plagiarizing Deval Patrick drew little interest, she decided to do some plagiarism herself. First, she took John Edwards’ “Whatever happens, we will be fine” benediction for her closing comments at the Austin debate. If the only thing that stimulates an uptick in your polls is a

Eric Rauchway: The Democrats should look to the 1912 Republican primary for a lesson in embracing the people's candidate

[Eric Rauchway is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author, most recently, of Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America and Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. He also blogs for The Edge of the American West.] With Barack Obama winning 11 contests since Super Tuesday, and appearing well on his way to winning a clear majority of elected delegates, it looks unlikely that Hillary Clinton could win the Democratic n

Martin Kramer: Obama, Samantha Power and Israel

[Mr. Kramer, the author of Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, was a full-time tenured academic at Tel Aviv University. He is now an Olin Institute Senior Fellow at Harvard. Click here for his blog.] Samantha Power is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide, and she has a professorship at Harvard (in something called &quo

Juan Cole: Barack Hussein Obama, Omar Bradley, Benjamin Franklin and other Semitically Named American Heroes

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT,"introduc

Robert S. McElvaine: A Feminist Response to Robin Morgan

[Robert S. McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters and Professor of History at Millsaps College. His latest book, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America, will be published by Crown in March.] I have long been proud to call myself a feminist. Robin Morgan is among my heroes. Her justly famous 1970 essay “Goodbye to All That” is a wonderful, powerful statement that I have quoted in my writings and use in classes. At the beginning of February,

Noam Chomsky: Terrorists Wanted the World Over

[Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous best-selling political works. His latest books are Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and What We Say Goes, a conversation book with David Barsamian, both in the American Empire Project series at Metropolitan Books.

Juan Cole: Fact Check on McCain and Political Progress in Iraq

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]John McCain has been running mainly against Barack Obama in recent days, and has been running on the successes he says that the Iraqi government has racked up.McCain (and the US corporate media) manages to avoid noticing that

Jim Sleeper: Obama in a Valley of Insinuations and Lies

[Mr. Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale, is the author of The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York and Liberal Racism.] I've spent a lot of time around serious scholarship and even more around real journalism-- the kind that, in print or online, requires"leg work," climbing tenement stairs the second time or making that last phone call or watching the expression on the campaign manager's face as you pop your question. Sometimes there's no subs

Allan J. Lichtman: Sex, Lies, and John McCain

[Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C. His six books include Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 and The Keys to the White House.] I admired John McCain a great deal in 2000. In my view, McCain was one of the very few politicians who talked straight to the American people and was the victim of an unforgivable hatchet job by the Bush campaign. I don’t admire McCain any longer. Forget about the

Jonathan Zimmerman: Abstinence Programs May Be Right For Africa

[Jonathan Zimmerman, a resident of Narberth and history professor at New York University, is teaching this semester at the university’s study-abroad program in Accra, Ghana.] Accra, Ghana I used to oppose abstinence-only education. It doesn’t persuade American teenagers to delay sexual activity, as a recent five-year study confirmed. And most American parents say they want their children receive wider instruction about sexual issues—including contraception—in their sc

Sean Wilentz: How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton

[Sean Wilentz is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Norton).] After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama's promises of a pure, soul-cleansing "new" politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp--over allegations abou

Gary Leupp: Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and

Jon Wiener: Republicans for Obama

Reagan Democrats played a key role in electing a new present in 1980; now Obama Republicans seem to be emerging as a significant political force - at least in the primaries. In the Wisconsin primary, almost nine per cent of Obama's vote came from Republicans, according to exit polls. Other states that permitted Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary include Virginia, where almost seven per cent of Obama's support came from Republicans - and the Democrats dream of carrying Rep

Daniel Pipes: Destroying Sculptures of Muhammad

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] This month, Denmark's police foiled a terrorist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard, the artist who drew the strongest of the twelve Muhammad images, prompting most of the country's newspapers to reprint his cartoon as an act of solidarity and a signal to Islamists that their th

Daniel Martin Varisco: Muslims on the American Landscape

[Daniel Martin Varisco is Chair, Anthropology Department at Hofstra University.] Yesterday the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life issued a 143 page report, downloadable here, surveying the changing religious landscape of the United States. Based on interviews with some 35,000 individuals and drawing on earlier Pew research specifically on Muslims in America, this report is

Ronald Radosh: The Left Offers Obama a Strategy

[Ronald Radosh taught history at the City University of New York and is now an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute.] What is Barack Obama’s foreign policy? As it becomes clear that Obama is likely to win the Democratic nomination, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are attacking him for a lack of foreign policy experience and for proposals he has made that appear to make him appear rather naïve. Is he going to retreat from confronting our nation’s enemies, or is he going to be

David A. Hollinger: The Obama candidacy challenges our notions of identity politics

[David A. Hollinger is a professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He is author of Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, published in a third, expanded edition in 2006 by Basic Books.] .... Obama's mixed ancestry ... is not what most generates the new uncertainty about blackness. Much more important is the fact that his black ancestry is immigrant rather than American-born..... The differences in history and circumstances among various des