Roundup: Historians' Take

March 18, 2005

Victor Davis Hanson: Americans Vs. America

Victor Davis Hanson, in the Rocky Mtn. News (3-17-05): Sometime in the 1960s there arose a new home-grown distrust of the United States, followed by an erosion of faith in the values of the West. Perhaps the culprit was the fiasco in Vietnam or the rise of a trendy multiculturalism that followed from it. Our schools often insisted that all cultures were to be roughly the same. History devolved more into melodrama than tragedy. America was no longer exceptional - and th

March 18, 2005

Linda Kerber: The Larger Questions Posed by the Controversy Over Lawrence Summers

Linda Kerber, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (3-18-05): [Linda K. Kerber is chair of the department of history and a lecturer in law at the University of Iowa. She is president-elect of the American Historical Association.]In the recent furor over remarks by Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University, about why so few women go into math and science, one key issue seems to be getting lost. Among

March 18, 2005

Niall Ferguson: Let the Chinese Keep Financing American Debt

Niall Ferguson, in the NYT Magazine (3-13-05): ... In effect, the Bush administration's combination of tax cuts for the Republican ''base'' and a Global War on Terror is being financed with a multibillion dollar overdraft facility at the People's Bank of China. Without East Asia, your mortgage might well be costing you more. The toys you buy for your kids certainly would. Why are the Chinese monetary authori

March 17, 2005

Yong Xue: Why the U.S. Shouldn't Welcome Japan's Help in Protecting Taiwan

Yong Xue, in the NYT (3-16-05): [Yong Xue is an assistant professor of Asian history at Suffolk University.]HALFWAY though the 10th paragraph of an otherwise bland statement issued last month by the United States and Japan is a historic sentence. Among the "common strategic objectives" of the two nations, it reads, is "the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the T

March 16, 2005

Victor Davis Hanson: How the U.S. Made a Positive Difference in the Last 15 Years

Victor Davis Hanson, in National Review (1-7-05): There is a new strange mood of acceptance among Americans about the world beyond our shores. Of course, we are not becoming naïve isolationists of 1930s vintage, who believe that we are safe by ourselves inside fortress America — not after September 11. Nor do citizens deny that America has military and moral obligations to stay engaged abroad — at

March 15, 2005

Edward Berkowitz: Proposed Major Overhauls of Social Programs Usually Fail

Edward Berkowitz, in the San Jose Mercury News (3-13-05):[Mr. Berkowitz teaches history and public policy at George Washington University. A paperback edition of his biography of former Social Security Commissioner Robert Ball will appear this summer. ] ... Though they sometimes have led to more modest reforms, high-profile domestic initiatives have not f

March 15, 2005

Daniel Pipes: Special Privileges for Muslims?

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (3-15-05): [Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org.]Throughout the West, Muslims are making new and assertive demands, and in some cases challenging the very premises of European and North American life. How to respond?Here is a general rule: Offer full rights – but turn down demands for special

March 10, 2005

Jamie Glazov: Like Reagan, Bush Is Now Using Freedom to Help End Tyranny

Jamie Glazov, at frontpagemag.com (3-10-05):The winds of liberty are blowing throughout the Middle East. A peoples’ uprising is transpiring in Lebanon, as citizens of that tortured country courageously confront, in mass numbers, their Syrian oppressors and demand their evacuation.This inspiring scene brings us back to the powerful images of Eastern Europeans rising up agai

March 9, 2005

Juan Cole: Paul Wolfowitz's Mistakes

Juan Cole, at his blog: I was looking at this report of Major Isaiah Wilson, official US army historian, which concluded that the US military lost control of Iraq by June, 2003, and has never regained control, and may well lose the guerrilla war. Then someone alerted me to an item about Paul Wolfowitz, who be

March 8, 2005

Daniel Pipes: Why All May Not Work Out as Well in the Middle East as We Now Hope

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (3-8-05):Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org.I have never quite figured out what views define a neo-conservative, and whether I am one or not, but others long ago decided this matter for me. Journalists use"neo-conservative" to describe me, editors includ

March 5, 2005

Daniel Pipes: Why Liberals Need to Start Focusing on Security

Daniel Pipes, in the NY Sun (2-23-05): [Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org.] For a free people in the age of terrorism, what is the proper balance between civil liberties and national security?This debate wracks every Western country. Looking at America, the"united we stand" solidarity that followed Septem

March 2, 2005

Juan Cole: Should We Be Scared that Iraq's Apparent New Leader Is from the Dawa Party ?

Juan Cole, at his blog (3-1-05):Things have changed, and I am not at all suggesting that a vindictive attitude is appropriate, but Dawa has a background as a terrorist organization. While in Tehran, it spun off a shadowy set of special ops units generically called "Islamic Jihad," which operated in places like Kuwait and Lebanon. The Dawa's Islamic Jihad appears to have been at the nexus of splinter groups that lat

February 27, 2005

Diane Ravitch: Academe Gone Mad?

Diane Ravitch, in the NY Sun (2-10-05): New Yorkers are accustomed to all sorts of strange outbursts and opinions, but it is hard to recall any as bizarre as those expressed by Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. After he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York, someone noticed an essay he had written three years ago in which he sneered at the victims of the World

February 18, 2005

Victor Davis Hanson Vs. Ronald Edsforth: The Iraq War

Nathaniel Ward, in the Dartmouth Review (2-11-05): During a debate Tuesday punctuated with evidence from both antiquity and current events, classicist Victor Davis Hanson mounted a vigorous defense of the war in Iraq, while Dartmouth History Professor Ronald Edsforth countered that all preemptive wars, especially in the case of Iraq, fall outside the "just war tradition.&

February 18, 2005

David M. Kennedy: Does the W in George W's Name Stand for Woodrow Wilson?

David M. Kennedy, in the Atlantic (March 2005): [David M. Kennedy teaches history at Stanford University. His most recent book, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for history. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book about the distinctiveness of the American national character.] George W. Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy proclaimed a new American right to wage preventive war. Following the catastro

February 14, 2005

Georgy Bulychev: One Way Out of the Korean Mess

Georgy Bulychev, in Japan Focus (2-14-05): [Georgy Bulychev prepared this article for Japan Focus. He is Research Director, Center for Contemporary Korean Studies, Russian Institute of Global Economy and International Relations (IMEMO). The views expressed here are solely the author's personal views and do not represent any organization.]With the North Korean announcement that it now possesses nuclear weapons, (which come

February 12, 2005

Neve Gordon: What Is Happening in the American-Dominated Middle East Is Something New: Democratic Occupation

Neve Gordon, in In These Times (2-11-05): [Neve Gordon teaches at Ben-Gurion University Israel and is the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. He can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com.] It is not surprising that, following the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on Feb. 8, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas used almost the same language to announce a cessation of hostilities between the two p

February 10, 2005

Niall Ferguson: Why We Have to Stay in Iraq

Niall Ferguson, in the WSJ (2-9-05): [Mr. Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard and author of "Colossus: The Price of American Empire" (Penguin Books, 2004).]American presidents have a professional obligation to indulge in highfalutin rhetoric, and President Bush's speechwriters have served him well this winter. "The road of providence is uneven and unpredictable, ye

February 10, 2005

Maurice Isserman: Why Ward Churchill Deserves to Be Heard Despite His Statements

Maurice Isserman, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (2-9-05):[Maurice Isserman is a professor of history and chairman of the American-studies program at Hamilton College. His most recent book is The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (PublicAffairs, 2000). Another version of this article appeared in the Hamilton student newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator. ] Over the past several

February 8, 2005

Richard Wolin: The Links in the Chain from Poland's Solidairty Movement to the Orange Revolution

Richard Wolin, in the Chronicle of hgher Education (2-7-05):[Richard Wolin is a professor of history, comparative literature, and political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.]In November a sea of billowing orange banners waved defiantly amid the subzero temperatures of Kiev's Independence Square. Orange was the color of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko's Our