Roundup: Historians' Take

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

Niall Ferguson: Worry about bread, not oil

[Niall Ferguson is Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University www.niallferguson.org © ] The great demographer and economist Thomas Malthus was 23-years-old the last time a British summer was this rain-soaked, which was back in 1789. The consequences of excessive rainfall in the late 18th century were predictable. Crops would fail, the harvest would be dismal, food prices would rise and some people would starve.

Kevin Boyle: 40 Years Later, the Urban Crisis Still Smolders

[Kevin Boyle teaches American history at Ohio State University and is the author of "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age."] On a sultry Sunday 40 years ago this week, the Detroit police raided an after-hours bar at the corner of 12th and Clairmount streets, in a poor black section of the city's west side. A crowd gathered to watch, the way it always does when it's too hot to be indoors and there's nothing else to do. In their rush to fin

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

Harvey J Kaye: Should the French Stop Thinking?

[Harvey Kaye is professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay and the author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.] "France is a country that thinks," Christine Lagarde, the nation's finance minister, observed recently. But Lagarde did not speak boastfully. She was not praising France's intellectual prowess or proclaiming its literary hegemony, but calling her fellow citoyens to the economic barricades. "There

Eric Alterman: Of Filibusters and “Stunts,” Then and Now

[Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, CUNY. His weblog, “Altercation,” appears at www.mediamatters.org/altercation, His seventh book, Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, will appear early next year.] Remember the Gang of 14? The “obstructionist” Senate leader Tom Daschle? The demand for “up or down votes” by e

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

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

Tom Engelhardt: The Withdrawal Follies

[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).] Withdrawal is now so mainstream. Last week, debate abo

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Cycling: Another Tour, another scandal to become part of shameful history

[Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book 'Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France' has just been published in a revised edition (Pocket Books £8.99)] If the death of Diana or 9/11 were truly shocking, because so utterly unexpected, no one can honestly say that "Tour de France rider fails dope test" is an astounding story. If anything, there is a dull inevitability about the news that Alexander Vinokourov has failed a test for blood doping on Saturday. Each year, as we piously pray tha

Juan Cole: US-Iran Alliance Against Sunni Guerrillas?

The headlines will probably concentrate on the shouting match between US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian diplomat Hassan Kazemi Qomi at their meeting in Baghdad. Crocker accused the Iranians of giving training and weapons to Shiite militias, some of which ended up being used against US troops in Iraq. The Iranian diplomat denied the charges. But in my view the money graf in this Telegraph report is this one: ' [t]he two countries did agree to form a security committee, with Iraq

Gary Leupp: Christian Rightist Bush Speechwriter Calls for Attack on Syria

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.] Neocon officials in the D

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

Juan Cole: Bush's incompetence gives al-Qaida new life

In the past week, worrying signs of a resurgence of al-Qaida surfaced in cyberspace, in Pakistan and in Washington, D.C. The Pakistani military's invasion of a major mosque and seminary complex in the country's capital set off an unprecedented, violent wave of protests and car bombings in the north of the country. A new National Intelligence Estimate warned that al-Qaida was reconstituting itself in those very areas of northern Pakistan. A U.S. threat to send Special Forces into Pakistan in sear

Daniel Pipes: Salvaging the Iraq War

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.]Two positions dominate and polarize the American body politic today. Some say the war is lost, so leave Iraq. Others say the war can be won, so keep the troops in place.I split the difference and offer a third route. The occupation is lost but the war can be won. Keep U.S

Michael Kazin: Surging for Obama

[Mr. Kazin is the author of an award-winning biography of William Jennings Bryan.] Nearly every four years, millions of Americans who belong to that minority that cares about politics fall in love with an insurgent candidate for president. In 1964, conservatives swooned over Barry M. Goldwater; four years later, anti-war liberals rallied to Eugene McCarthy or Robert F. Kennedy. More recently, Patrick Buchanan thrilled one section of the GOP but spooked everybody else; while fans of

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.: American Foreign Policy After Iraq

[Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a university distinguished-service professor at Harvard. His recent books include The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (Oxford University Press, 2002), and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Public Affairs, 2004).] What comes after Iraq? If President Bush's current surge of troops fails to produce "victory," what lessons will the United States draw for its future foreign policy? Will it turn

Mark J. Rozell: A battling president and Congress should remember why we compromise

[Mark J. Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University. He is the author of the book Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability (University Press of Kansas, 2nd edition, 2002).] A constitutional storm is rumbling along Pennsylvania Avenue. The House Judiciary Committee may hold Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, in contempt for refusing to testify this month. President George W. Bush is asserting executive privilege to keep Mi

Ted Widmer: George Bush I

[Mr. Widmer directs the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.] None of us can control our ancestors. Like our children, they have minds of their own and invariably refuse to do our bidding. Presidential ancestors are especially unruly — they are numerous and easily discovered, and they often act in ways unbecoming to the high station of their descendants. Take George Bush. By whom I mean George Bush (1796-1859), first cousin of the president’s great-great-great

Ira Chernus: The Democrats' Iraqi Dilemma

[Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.] Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops