Roundup: Historians' Take

Stephen Fielding: The Last Time the Liberals Supported a Minority Government

[Steven Fielding is director of the Centre for British Politics and professor of Political History in the School of Politics and IR, University of Nottingham.] Amidst all the speculation regarding negotiations about the creation of a post-election arrangement between the Conservatives and LibDems I haven’t seen any reference to the last time the Liberals (as they were then) put in a minority government. Actually, they did this twice in the 1920s, first in 1923 and then

Jonathan Zimmerman: It's Time for Schools of Education to Embrace New Routes to Teacher Certification

[Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."] Let's suppose you have spent your career as a professor at an American education school, training future teachers. Then suppose that your state decided that teachers could get certified without attending an education school at all. That's called "alternative certification," and most

Victor Davis Hanson: Greek Tragedies

[Mr. Hanson, who lived in Greece for two years, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the recently released "The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern," as well as "Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom."] Draping the Acropolis with a hammer-and-sickle banner might seem a stupid public relations stunt—especially as a bankrupt Greece seeks to reassure fore

Julian Zelizer: Gov. Daniels -- GOP's best hope for 2012?

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] Conservative pundits are in love with a candidate for 2012, and it is not Sarah Palin. If you ask many top Republicans their favorite pick for the presidential campaign, they

Simon Schama: Three-Way Race for the UK's Top Slot

[Schama is a University Professor of art history and history at Columbia University.] Once upon a time, almost two and a half centuries ago, there lived two systems of representative government, separated by an ocean. English was their common language, and talk of law and liberty their common habit, but there the resemblance stopped, for one was fair and one foul. On the eastern shore, the body politic was engorged with money. Venal interests bought the services of legislators and r

Charles L. Zelden: New Political Movements Seek a Hold on U.S. Politics

[Charles L. Zelden is a professor of history at Nova Southeastern University and editor of About Federal Government: An Encyclopedia of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches.] Angry, resentful and scared. This seems to be the state of grassroots politics today. On the left and on the right, political talk among ordinary Americans has taken on an outraged and aggressive tone — showcasing emotion over reason, distrust over unity. People feel abandoned by their

Max Boot: Maliki's Actions, and Obama's Inaction, Threaten an Iraq Democracy

[Max Boot is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to Opinion.] Since the success of the 2007 surge in Iraq, violent attacks have fallen more than 90% and Iraqis have been making steady progress toward stability and democracy. That momentum is now threatened by the actions of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri Maliki, and by the inaction of the Obama administration. Maliki, whom I met a week ago as part of a

Niall Ferguson: The Unappealing Choices After an Inconclusive British Election

[Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch, professor of history at Harvard and a contributing editor of the FT.] It has been a generation since the British electorate delivered such an inconclusive result at a general election. Not since Edward Heath posed the question “Who Governs Britain?” in February 1974 – the answer, of course, was “Not you” – has one of the two major parties failed to secure a majority in the House of Commons. But this election result was only a s

William Dalrymple: The Ghosts of Gandamak

[William Dalrymple, the author of the forthcoming “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India,” is writing a book on the First Anglo-Afghan War.] THE name Gandamak means little in the West today. Yet this small Afghan village was once famous for the catastrophe that took place there during the First Anglo-Afghan War in January 1842, arguably the greatest humiliation ever suffered by a Western army in the East. The course of that distant Victorian war followed a

Andrew Roberts: General Election 2010

[Andrew Roberts is a British journalist and historian.] This general election campaign was one of the most hard-fought in post-war history, even though its results seem eerily inconclusive. It was not just the Prime Minister who bit his nails as the four weeks progressed – so did the whole nation, as the Liberal Democrats seemed at one point to be genuinely breaking the mould of British politics, but then slipped back to lose seats overall. The way the electorate looked closely at L

Joseph J. Ellis: Immaculate Misconception and the Supreme Court

[Joseph J. Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in history for his book "Founding Brothers" and the National Book Award for "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson."] ...[T]he constitutional doctrine of original intent has always struck most historians of the founding era as rather bizarre. For they, more than most, know that the original framers of the Constitution harbored deep disagreements over the do

Michael Ruse: Three Loud Cheers for the European Community

[Michael Ruse directs the program in history and philosophy of science at Florida State University. His forthcoming book is Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science.] I first went to Spain in 1961. I was a member of the University of Bristol’s "Vagabonds' Club." Forming ourselves into groups of eight, we would cross the Channel and rent a VW van in Ostend in Belgium. Then we would drive ourselves all over the continent for a month, camping as

Jim Sleeper: The Value of a Liberal Education for Leaders

If the graying of Barack Obama as a herald of progressive change is getting you down, watch the new PBS documentary tonight at 8 pm about John Lindsay, New York City's heraldic young mayor and presidential hopeful during the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s. "Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years" was broadcast Thursday night on New York's PBS station, WNET-13, and it can be viewed in its entirety on the website. It will also air on WLIW, Channel 22, Long Island, on May 12.

Ira Chernus: Blood or Treasure? Obama’s Crucial Choice in the Middle East

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and American Jews on his blog.] Writing about U.S. Middle East policy used to be a boring job. You’d start out with “The U.S. supports Israel’s stand on...” and then just fill in the details.  No longer. Many pundits claim to smell the winds of policy change bl

Simon Szreter: Proportional Representation -- Historical Destiny Beckons?

History shows both how the two-party system has lasted for so long in our country and also why it has now outlasted its usefulness. It has entered, during the last two decades, a period of pathological obsolescence: dead on its feet, only kept alive by the life-support machine of the first-past-the-post electoral rule. The origins of the system lie in the aristocratic period of the 18th century but the system really flourished- and served British society tolerably well- during the 1

Daniel Martin Varisco: Hate, Times Squared

[Daniel Martin Varisco is Professor of Anthropology at Hofstra University.]Faisal Shahzad, not your typical terrorist: unless you think being a Pakistani Muslim makes you a typical terrorist. Anyone reading yesterday’s New York Post (Wednesday, May 5) and taking the blustered and bloated tabloid rhetoric seriously could easily make such an assumption. I do not, as a rule, read tabloids, although seeing what many others do read is a useful reality check from time t

Nicolaus Mills: Pulling a Goldman

[Nicolaus Mills is professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College and co-editor with Michael Walzer of Getting Out: Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq.] It’s time to add a new phrase to our vocabulary: “Pulling a Goldman.” There’s ample precedent for expressions that grow out of historical moments, then take on a life of their own—and given the reported $840.1 million that the Royal Bank of Scotland lost in its recent dealings with Goldman Sachs, we can co

Chalmers Johnson: Another Battle of Okinawa

[Chalmers Johnson is the author of several books, including "Blowback" and the forthcoming "Dismantling the Empire: America's Last, Best Hope."] The United States is on the verge of permanently damaging its alliance with Japan in a dispute over a military base in Okinawa. This island prefecture hosts three-quarters of all U.S. military facilities in Japan. Washington wants to build one more base there, in an ecologically sensitive area. The Okinawans vehemently o

KC Johnson: The Virginia Murder Case and the Duke "Rape" Case

[KC Johnson is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and author of Durham-in-Wonderland, a blog about the Duke lacrosse case.] It’s unsurprising that the case of University of Virginia lacrosse player George Huguely — charged with murdering women’s lacrosse player Yeardley Love — has attracted widespread media attention: A Division I athlete accused of killing another Division I athlete is extremely rare. The last such instance appears to have occurred in 2003, when former Bayl

Daniel Pipes: Why Would Anyone Want to Blow Up Times Square?

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]When news comes of Muslims engaging in violence, the triad of politicians, law enforcement, and media invariably presumes that the perpetrator suffers from some mental or emotional incapacity. (For a quick listing of examples, see my collection at"Sudden Jihad or 'Ino