Roundup: Historians' Take

James McPherson: Removing the Stain

[McPherson is the author of "Abraham Lincoln," "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" and "Battle Cry of Freedom," which won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize.] In November 1863 president Abraham Lincoln delivered a brief address at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery in Gettysburg. The Union dead buried there had given the "last full measure of devotion" in the bloodiest battle of a "great civil war" that would determine w

John Steele Gordon: Obama isn't just our first black president. He's the first who doesn't come from Northwest Europe.

[Mr. Gordon is the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power" (HarperCollins, 2004).] Inaugurations of a new president are usually a blast. Ordinary people who supported the victorious candidate want to celebrate, while those acceding to real power are understandably in an upbeat mood. After all, as James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers, "Men love Power." And in Washington, D.C., that goes double. But the

Tom Engelhardt: Greater Than the Great Depression?

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Ver

Daniel Pipes: The Democrats and Israel

With Democrats now in charge of both the executive and legislative branches, what changes might one expect in U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict?Personnel appointments so far fit the center-left mold. On the plus side, as analyst Steven Rosen observes, this means that none of the team brings a"defined left agenda of dangerous delusions – indeed, many of them are sensible and intelligent, resistant if not immune to the nonsense that blinds the majority of academicians." Especi

Richard Reeves: Kennedy’s Words, Obama’s Challenge

It was an anxious time, the beginning of 1961. In the eight years before Jan. 20, 1961, the Soviet Union had tested a hydrogen bomb and had put in orbit the first satellite, Sputnik, which passed over the United States for months. Central Intelligence Agency analysts estimated the the Soviet economy was growing at a rate of between 6 percent and 10 percent a year, compared with the United States’ growth rate of between 2 percent and 3 percent. Unemployment in America was at 7 percent and the cou

Juan Cole: King's Anti-Imperialism and the Challenge for Obama

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] The Martin Luther King, Jr. that most Americans know is the man who said,"I have a dream" at a massive rally 250,000 strong in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That speech is about racial justice an

Ron Radosh: Bush’s Legacy in History and the Press

As George W. Bush leaves office, more articles have been appearing on the issue of his legacy. Journalism, of course, is known as the first draft of history, and the consensus has been offered: Bush was the worst President in American history. This assessment began a few years ago, when he was less than half through his second term, and was begun by Princeton University’s eminent historian, Sean Wilentz, who wrote two different cover stories for Rolling Stone arguing his case. Most

Ivan Eland: Who Should Obama Look to for Advice? Jimmy Carter

[Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. He is author of the books, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.] At the request of President-elect Barack Obama, President George W. Bush convened an awkward meeting of all living former presidents at the White House to meet, an

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and John Stauffer: What would Lincoln make of a black president?

[Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the editor of “Lincoln on Race and Slavery” and the producer of the forthcoming PBS documentary “Looking for Lincoln.” John Stauffer is the author, most recently, of “Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.”] ... Much has been written about what Mr. Obama thinks about Lincoln; but not much has been said about what Lincoln would think of Barack Hussein Obama. If his marble statue at the Lincoln Memorial could become flesh and sp

Tom Palaima: MLK, Barack Obama and our hope for racial justice

[Tom Palaima is a classics professor who teaches war and violence studies and Emily Schenk is a senior in the School of Social Work, both at University of Teas at Austin.] If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came back to witness Barack Obama's inauguration, would he think that the people he led in peaceful pursuit of social justice had reached the promised land of racial equality? What could be more barrier-shattering in his eyes than our electing an African American president?

Jean Edward Smith: How F.D.R. Made the Presidency Matter

When President-elect Barack Obama takes office Tuesday he will be facing high expectations. Americans expect their presidents to hit the ground running, and the initial 100 days set the tone for a president’s first term. That was not always the case. Until the adoption of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933, presidents were not inaugurated until March 4. Congress often did not convene until the following December, and a president’s first message to Congress was usually delivered at that

Ronald Radosh: Israel Must Defeat Hamas

[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute.] As Israel goes deeper into Gaza, and intensifies its bombardment of Hamas in Gaza City, a chorus is beginning to be heard: Israel is now committing war crimes; the conditions of the people there constitute a humanitarian crisis; the only solution is negotiations with Hamas for a cease-fire that will give Gaza’s beleaguered and innocent population breathing space to begin rebuilding its shattered city. As awfu

Andreas Umland: The Unpopular Prospect of World War III ... The 20th Century Is Not Over Yet

[Dr Andreas Umland is editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.hmtl) and co-editor of the Russian web-journal "Forum for the Contemporary History and Culture of Eastern Europe" (www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forumruss.html). He also administers the website “Russian Nationalism” (groups.yahoo.com/group/russian_natio

Martin Kramer: A plan for surrender (to Hamas)

[Prof. Kramer, the author of Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, was a full-time tenured academic at Tel Aviv University. He is now a senior fellow at the Adelson Institution of Strategic studies and a Senior Fellow at the Olin Institute at Harvard. Please correct the oversight.] Israeli Yossi Alpher today publishes a piece in the International Heral

Thomas Bertonneau: Students no longer are reading serious works

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series (to be published on Fridays). By analyzing the responses of his Survey of Literature students on their exams, Thomas F. Bertonneau, who teaches at SUNY-Oswego, offers insight into where education is failing today. The first essay sets the stage. Since the mid-1980s, I have taught a standard survey of literature course to undergraduates in California, Michigan, and most recently upstate New York. This course introduces canonical

Ivan Eland: Presidencies of JFK, Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt Show Style Trumps Policies

[Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. He is author of the books, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.] The last time a young politician oozing with charm and charisma assumed the presidency was 1961. The American public was enthralled with John F. Kennedy and conti

Manan Ahmed: Failed imperial enterprises and the vocabulary we use to describe them

Yesterday, at her Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Clinton faced a number of questions about Pakistan and Afghanistan. Her most detailed conversation was with Senator Kerry - who will head the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Kerry spoke about his trip to South Asia, in the immediate aftermath of Mumbai attacks. We do not live there. We don’t li

Ruth Wisse: Bush Destroyed a Dictator. Clinton Installed One.

[Ms. Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of "Jews and Power" (Schocken, 2007).] As President George W. Bush prepares to leave office amid a media chorus of reproach and derision, there is at least one comparison with his predecessor that speaks greatly in his favor. Mr. Bush removed the most ruthless dictator of his day, Saddam Hussein, thereby offering Iraqi citizens the possibility of self-rule. Bill Clinton's analogous achi

Catherine Allgor: Laura Bush ... The Legacy of a Lady

[Catherine Allgor is the Croul Visiting Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and a writer for the History News Service. ] A week before the historic election of 2008, a small group of historians and journalists was invited to the White House to chat and lunch with First Lady Laura Bush. Organized by the Office of First Lady, this event was intended to unveil renovations made to the nation's house by Mrs. Bush. And as planned, Laura Bush gave a personal tour of the Lincoln

Julian Zelizer: On Frank Lambert's Religion in American Politics

[Julian E. Zelizer is professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books.] When Reverend Rick Warren handles the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration next week, the day after we celebrate Martin Lu