Roundup: Historians' Take

Steven Hahn: Why Historians Make Good College Presidents

[Steven Hahn is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of A Nation Under our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration. ] Anyone familiar with academic culture might have guessed that Lawrence Summers's tenure as president of Harvard University would be rocky. It was not that he came to the university from the power centers of the federal government and was unaccustomed to the expectations and sensitivitie

David Greenberg: Let Scooter Libby Go Free

[David Greenberg is assistant professor of History and Journalism & Media Studies at Rutgers University and the author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image and Calvin Coolidge. ] In October 2005, things looked grim for the Bush White House. The president was reeling from the serial disasters of Hurricane Katrina, the botched Harriet Miers nomination, and escalating chaos in Iraq. Perhaps worst of all, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's inquiry into "Plamegate"--t

Neve Gordon: Uneasy Calm in Palestine

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com.] Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal went to Mecca after more than 130 people had been killed, hundreds wounded and a burning sense of urgency had taken over the Palestinian streets. Gazans had been confined to their homes for days, this time not as the result of an Israeli curfew or aerial atta

Stephanie Coontz: The Romantic Life of Brainiacs

[Stephanie Coontz, a historian at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families, wrote Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. ] Pity the overschooled old maid and the lonely career woman. Highly educated or high-achieving women are less likely to marry and have children than other women. If they do marry, they are more likely to divorce. Even if they don't divorce, their marriages

Martin E. Marty: Romney's Religion

[Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.] We who began "sighting" religion in American public life a half-century ago had to open a file on "religion and presidential candidates" when "Ike" ran against "Adlai." Presidents Roosevelt and Truman were very religious, but Roosevelt's form of mainstream Protestanti

Roger Morris: Donald Rumsfeld's Long March (Part 1)

[Roger Morris, who served in the State Department and on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, resigned in protest at the invasion of Cambodia. He then worked as a legislative advisor in the US Senate and a director of policy studies at the Carnegie Endowment, and writes this Rumsfeldian history from intimate firsthand knowledge as well as extensive research. A Visiting Honors professor at the University of Washington and Research Fellow of the Gre

Matthias Küntzel: Iran's Obsession with the Jews

[Matthias Küntzel is a Hamburg-based political scientist and a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: On the New Anti-Jewish War is forthcoming this year from Telos Press. This article was translated from German by Michael Bugajer and John Rosenthal.]

Paul Kennedy: The good old days of the Cold War?

[Paul Kennedy is a professor of history and the director of international security studies at Yale University, and the author of "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers."] IT WAS FUNNY, in a grim sort of way. Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates responded to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's polemical attack on the United States by remembering the 50-year Cold War as a "less complex time" and saying he was "almost nostalgic" for its return

Stephanie Coontz: Anna Nicole Smith's baby could have it a lot worse

[Stephanie Coontz, the director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”] PITY poor little Dannielynn, just 5 months old and already the potentially multimillion-dollar prize in a paternity battle waged by three of the unsavory men who partied with her mother, Anna Nicole Smith, in the last years of her troubled and tawdry life. There’s an even creepier fourth potential candidate: M

Stephen Budiansky: Military Justice Goes AWOL

[Stephen Budiansky is the author of the forthcoming book “The Bloody Shirt,” about America’s war against terrorist violence during Reconstruction.] ... when military commissions — an American invention — were first instituted 150 years ago, they were hailed around the world as an advance for humanity and principles of justice. The occasion was the Mexican-American War, the first time the United States Army had been involved in an extended military operation beyond the c

Roger Morris: Donald Rumsfeld's Long March (Part 2)

In 1976, when Jimmy Carter took the Presidency from Gerald Ford, outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went off to seek corporate wealth as head of G.D. Searle, a Skokie pharmaceutical company. His period running the business, inherited by the family of his North Shore friend and early backer Dan Searle, would become part of Rumsfeld's legend of success as a master manager, negligently accepted as fact by the media and Congressional representatives at his 2001 confirmation hearings.

Niall Ferguson: Putin has a stake in Middle East instability

[Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University.] ... To some listeners, [Vladimir] Putin's [recent] complaints were eerily reminiscent of the cold war. But as I looked around the conference hall, it struck me that his target audience was not necessarily American but rather more European and Middle Eastern. Like Michael Corleone, Putin aspires to be a businessman. His Russia is an energy empire, sitting on more than a quarter of the world's proven reser

Stanley Kutler: Pat Buchanan ... still after the Jews

[Mr. Kutler is the author of The Wars of Watergate.] Somewhat diminished, John McLaughlin endures on a hidden corner of PBS's Saturday evening programming. He hosts a resident repertory company consisting of Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, Clarence Page from the Chicago Tribune, and Tony Blankley of The Washington Times. But it is unmistakably McLaughlin's turf. He insures home field advantage for himself with the patented fair and balanced approach--thus Pat Buchanan. The group recentl

Michael Kazin: Permanent Campaign? It's a National Tradition

[Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University, is the author of"A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan."] How much American political history do political journalists know? Take the ubiquitous claim, or complaint, that the presidential campaign is starting earlier than ever. Today's candidates, marveled one reporter, are subjected to "longer, more intensive scrutiny" than in the past. Why can't they emulate their predecessors and wait until election year

Juan Cole: NYT Falls for Bogus Iran Weapons Charges

This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias:' In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.'

Gar Aperovitz: America is too big

[Gar Alperovitz, a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of “America Beyond Capitalism.”] SOMETHING interesting is happening in California. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have grasped the essential truth that no nation — not even the United States — can be managed successfully from the center once it reaches a certain scale. Moreover, the bold proposals that Mr. Schwarzenegger is now making for everything from universal health

Tom Engelhardt: Over the Cliff with George and Dick? (Thelma and Louise Imperialism)

[Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.] Let me make a

Jonathan Zimmerman: Is Tony Dungy's Born-Again Christianity Superior?

[Jonathan Zimmerman (jlzimm@aol.com) is author of"Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."] It's hard to find a problem with Tony Dungy, who coached the Indianapolis Colts to victory in last Sunday's Super Bowl. By all accounts, he treats his players with genuine respect and decency. He's also a loyal husband and father, suffering through the 2005 suicide of his son with quiet grace and dignity. And he's a"Christian," as Dungy likes to remind us. That's

Damon Linker: Mormon President? Yes, It's a Problem.

[Damon Linker is the former editor of First Things and author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. ] Within days of stepping down as governor of Massachusetts on January 4, Mitt Romney is expected to announce his candidacy for president. Shortly after that, Romney will almost certainly need to deliver a major speech about his Mormon faith--a speech in the mold of John F. Kennedy's 1960 address to the Baptist ministers of Houston, Texas, in which the candidate attempted to reassure voters that they had no reason to fear his Catholicism. Yet Romney's task will be much more complicated. Whereas Kennedy set voters' minds at ease by declaring in unambiguous terms that he considered the separation of church and state to be "absolute," Romney intends to run for president as the candidate of the religious right, which believes in blurring the distinction between politics and religion. Romney thus needs to convince voters that they have nothing to fear from his Mormonism while simultaneously placing that faith at the core of his identity and his quest for the White House.

Richard Lyman Bushman : Mormon President? No Problem.

[Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University.] itt Romney's candidacy for president has occasioned reams of speculation on how his Mormon faith would influence his conduct in the White House--some of it reminiscent of anxieties about John F. Kennedy's Catholicism that were prevalent in 1960. In a recent cover story for The New Republic, Damon Linker, who once taught at Brigham Young University and presumably knows Mormonism well, a