Roundup: Historians' Take

Gadi Taub: Liberalism, Democracy, and the Jewish State

[Gadi Taub is an assistant professor of communications and public policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of a number of works of fiction, as well as of The Settler and the Struggle Over the Meaning of Zionism (in Hebrew; Miskal-Yedioth Ahronoth Books, 2006).] The future of the state of Israel is once again a topic of heated public debate. For good reasons: The possibility of a nuclear threat from a hostile Iran is one; deadlock in the peace process in the reg

Michael Schwartz: So things are improving in Iraq? A response to O’Hanlon and Pollack

[Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz) and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous internet sites, includi

Jan Whitaker: America's history of tainted consumer goods

[Jan Whitaker is a consumer historian and author of "Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class."] If future historians ask which developing economy was the bigger counterfeiter of consumer products - China or the United States - it won't be easy to decide. Product adulteration is neither a foreign monopoly nor a new issue. Current scandals might lead people to believe that food and product safety regulations were the natu

Michael Radu: Al Qaeda Confusion ... How to Think about Jihad

[Michael Radu, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of FPRI’s Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. He is currently at work on a book on Islamism in Europe.] Al Qaeda is stronger now than at any time since 9/11, say some; it is less strong than it could have become, answers the administration. Congressional Democrats say that instead of catching Bin Laden, Bush took his eyes off the ball and got mired in an irrelevant war in Iraq; the White House replies that if we don’t figh

Daniel Pipes: Ban the Burqa - and the Niqab Too

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Once-exotic forms of Muslim women's head and body garments have now become both familiar in the West and the source of fractious political and legal disputes.The hija

William R. Polk: On Insurgency & American History

[Executive Summary of the conclusion of Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism & Guerrilla Warfare from the American Revolution to Iraq. By William R. Polk, to be published on September 15, 2007 by HarperCollins. ] ... Is there some new magic formula for success? Generals David Petraeus and James Amos argue that there is. They have laid out a counterinsurgency doctrine. (December 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual). But it is not new. When tried in Vietnam, it did

Dwight T. Pitcaithley: On the Brink of Greatness ... National Parks and the Next Century

[Dwight T. Pitcaithley served as chief historian of the National Park Service from 1995 to 2005 and is currently college professor of history at New Mexico State University. He is the immediate past president of the George Wright Society.] Almost a hundred years ago, just before the creation of the National Park Service, the British ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, spoke to the American Civic Association on the subject of national parks and their importance to society.

Gary Leupp: Why Iraq's Best-Loved Athlete Can't Go Home

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.] He may be the most beloved man in Iraq right now. Younis Mahmoud, the Iraqi soccer team captain who scored the winning goal in Iraq’s final win over Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup, triggering mass jubilation in his tortured country, is a symbol of Iraqi nationhood. Mahmoud, a Sunni Muslim on a majority Shiite team, score

Deborah Lipstadt: Attention Authors: Be afraid, very afraid.... especially if you write about the Saudis and their support of terrorism

[Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving [Ecco 2005]. The book is Lipstadt's account of her successful defense against Holocaust denier, David Irving, who sued her for libel for calling him a denier.]Whenever David Irving's libel case against me comes up someone inevitably asks: How could he sue you in the UK? I explain that my book was bought and published by Pengui

Victor Davis Hanson: Back to the Future in the Middle East

[Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University , a professor emeritus at California University , Fresno , and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.] If Gen. David Petraeus can't stabilize Iraq by autumn — or if Americans decide to pull out of Iraq before he gets a fair chance — expect far worse chaos eventually to follow. We will see ethnic cleansing, mass murder of Iraqi reformers, Kurdistan threatened, emerging Turkis

Neve Gordon: Anarchists under fire

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com.] Over the past five years the Israeli peace camp has dwindled. Last month marked the occupation's 40th anniversary, and no more than 4,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv to protest against Israel's longstanding military rule. Of the demonstrators who did show up, only a few hundred are what one could call ardent activists - people who hav

Gary Leupp: Beating Back the Latest Neocon Attack Scheme

[Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.] The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the collective product of 16 US intelligence agencies concerning national security issues, was released July 17. (President Bush had received it on his desk in June.) Its ge

Walter McDougall: Will “Europe” Survive the 21st Century?

[Walter McDougall is co-chair, with David Eisenhower, of FPRI’s History Institute for Teachers and, with James Kurth, of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West. He is also the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago in 1974 and is a veteran of the Vietnam War. His books include

Mitchell Bard: Will Israel Survive? (Interview)

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Mitchell Bard, the Executive Director of the non-profit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and one of the leading authorities on U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Bard is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. Bard holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and has written and edited 18 books, including Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict and 1001 Facts Everyone Should Kn

Harriet Washington: Why Africa Fears Western Medicine

[Harriet A. Washington is the author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present.”] TO Westerners, the repatriation of five nurses and a doctor to Bulgaria last week after more than eight years’ imprisonment meant the end of an unsettling ordeal. The medical workers, who in May 2004 were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with H.I.V., have been freed, and an

Eric Alterman: We've become more unequal and that matters

[Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and for Media Matters, a journalism professor in NYC, a historian and an author.] In the decade since the passage of NAFTA, labor productivity in the U.S. manufacturing sector rose between 70 percent and 80 percent, while real wages rose only 6 percent. In Mexico, productivity rose 68 percent, while real wages rose 2 percent. In Canada, the numbers are 34 percent and 3 percent, respectively.[i] The question for any democratic

Richard Brookhiser: Where Science and Politics Intersect

In June, President George W. Bush vetoed a bill that would have funded research on stem cells harvested from human embryos. Bush said he was not against science; he encouraged research on stem cells drawn from amniotic fluid or created by genetic reprogramming. But he insisted that "our conscience calls us to pursue the possibilities of science in a manner that respects human dignity and upholds our moral values." Bush's vision of a moral dilemma caused by scientists and resolved by po

Jonathan Zimmerman: A truce in the sex ed wars?

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University and is author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century.] Hey, check it out: Abstinence education doesn't work! It's fun to be right, that's for sure. So my fellow liberals have been gloating since last April, when an exhaustive five-year study showed what we always suspected: Kids receiving "abstinence education" are no more likely to delay sexual intercourse t

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Olympic Dreams--and Nightmares

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the author, most recently, of China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times, (Indiana University Press) and Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford).] "Will the Olympics Change China?" Like other China specialists, I've been asked crystal-ball questions like this many times--even though the start of the Games on 8-8-08 (a date that many Chinese view as cho

Gary Witherspoon: The Churchill Firing ... Research misconduct is in the eye of the beholder

[Gary Witherspoon is a professor of anthropology and American Indian studies at the University of Washington.] Many conservatives believe the firing of University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill will now reduce liberal politics in academia. Many liberals believe that his firing will uphold high standards of academic scholarship. Both are wrong — because the firing of Churchill reveals a very pernicious kind of exclusionary dogmatism in scholarly research and writing and media r