Roundup: Talking About History

Jonathan Zimmerman: The danger of trying to put a 'positive' face on the past

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is author of"Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century," scheduled to be published in the fall by Harvard University Press.] In 1950, a U.S. Senate committee released a report on the "employment of homosexuals and other sex perverts" in the federal government. The report warned that gays "lack the emotional stability of normal persons," so they could be easily blackmaile

Harold Blook: Why Freud Matters

[Mr. Bloom's most recent book is "Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine" (Riverhead, 2005).] Sigmund Freud, one of the crucial authors and thinkers of the 20th century, was born in Moravia in 1856, and taken to Vienna as a child by his Jewish father and mother. Only a few professions were open to Jews in 19th-century Vienna, one of them being medicine. Freud consequently received a medical degree in 1881, and then wrote on hysteria. He would become the founder of modern psych

Liam Julian: Civics need to be taught in the context of history

[Liam is Associate Writer and Editor for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Before coming to Fordham, Liam was a political columnist at the Tallahassee Democrat.]Last month, the Washington Post's David Broder wrote a column trumpeting the value of teaching civics to American students. He interviewed Sandra Day O'Connor and former Colorado Governor Roy Romer (now serving as Superintendent of Los Angeles's schools), both of whom are spokespersons for the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools

Christopher Reed: Family Skeletons ... Japan’s Foreign Minister and Forced Labor by Koreans and Allied POWs

Christopher Reed is a British freelance journalist who lives in Japan, where he was first a correspondent in the 1970s. He worked for many years as the correspondent in California for the Guardian of Britain. [Aso Mining Company had been producing coal to fuel Japan’s modernization for nearly 70 years by the time Aso Taro, Japan’s current foreign minister, was born in 1940. Faced with a severe heavy labor shortage as the China war gave way to

David N. Gibbs: Reassessing Soviet Motives for Invading Afghanistan

[David N. Gibbs IS Associate Professor of History and Political Science University of Arizona.] ABSTRACT: This article reassesses Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan in 1979, based on newly available archival materials, especially from the former USSR. The article argues that these Soviet documents show that the 1979 invasion reflected defensive rather than offensive objectives. Specifically, the USSR sought to restrain extremist elements of the Afghan communist party, who were

American Council of Trustees and Alumni: How Many Ward Churchills?

Ward Churchill was not always a household name. But ever since his inflammatory remarks calling victims of 9-11 “little Eichmanns,” he has become the veritable poster boy for extremists in American academe. The controversy surrounding ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill now focuses on whether the University of Colorado will find him guilty of professional misconduct. But the case of Ward Churchill raises questions with far greater ramifications. Is there really only one Ward Chur

Humberto Fontova: Movie Critics Aghast at Andy Garcia's 'The Lost City' for telling the truth

Andy Garcia blew it big-time with his movie "The Lost City." He blew it with the mainstream critics, that is. Almost unanimously, they're ripping a movie 16 years in the making. In this engaging drama of a middle-class Cuban family crumbling during free Havana's last days, which he both directs and stars in, Garcia insisted on depicting some historical truth about Cuba – a grotesque and unforgivable blunder in his industry. He's now paying the price. Earlier, many film fe

Christopher Klemek: Remembering Jane Jacobs

On Wednesday The Chronicle spoke about Ms. Jacobs's complicated legacies with Christopher Klemek, an assistant professor of history at Florida International University. (This fall, he will move to George Washington University.) Mr. Klemek conducted several long interviews with Ms. Jacobs around 2001, when he was writing a dissertation on popular movements against "urban renewal" in Berlin, Boston, London, New York, Philadelphia, and Toronto. The University of Chicago Pres

H.D.S. Greenway: Whitewashing the Founding Fathers

LAST YEAR in Britain I went to hear Simon Schama of Columbia University lecture about his book, ''Rough Crossings," which has just been published in the United States. The British-born professor's tale was music to British ears, but could make an American a little uncomfortable. His story is the story of thousands of blacks in the 13 American Colonies who rallied to the British lines during the Revolutionary War because they believed that is where freedom lay. It is a tale not

Creation of a website for the controversy regarding Gavin Menzies's book

Dear H-Asia Listers, As has probably been apparent to some on the list, a number of persons around the globe have become a trifle upset with the fabrications of Mr. Gavin Menzies, his publishers and his co-conspirators. Rather than rebutting each claim repeatedly and diversely, it has been decided to create a website where rebuttals and criticisms can be mounted alongside the original claims. Persons interested in the issues can then access these at will. The new website

Jan TenBruggencate: Rat tracks tell story of Pacific

Rats are playing an ever more important role in the understanding of the early human travels through the Pacific. That's because, according to the best available evidence, rats were passengers or cargo on virtually all voyages of discovery by Polynesians. Nearly every Pacific island inhabited by the early Polynesians was also populated by the Pacific rat, Rattus exulans. Once they got there, rats did not play a benign role in the environment. In Hawai'i, the rise in the

Martin E. Marty: Strauss and Judaism

[Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.] The Chronicle of Higher Education keeps paying attention to religion, a fact that many of us in academe cheer. The April 14 issue features Richard Wolin's discussion of Leo Strauss ("Leo Strauss, Judaism, and Liberalism"). Strauss on religion? Wasn't he the inspiration to the neo-cons who were i

David Brion Davis: The Importance of History

I’m concerned with the erosion of interest in history -- the view expressed by even some leading teachers and intellectuals that we should “let bygones be bygones,” “free” ourselves from the boring and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future. I’m passionately committed to the cause that distinguishes us from all other animals -- the ability to transcend an illusory sense of NOW, of an eternal present, and to strive for an understanding of the forces and events

Trudy Kuehner: Teaching the History of India

AINSLIE T. EMBREE of Columbia University noted India's recent rise in U.S. headlines, especially with the joint statement issued after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's summer 2005 visit to Washington. The statement, pledging the U.S. to "help India become a major world power in the 21st century" and calling the two countries "natural partners," wouldn't have been dreamt of fifty years ago. But today, the U.S. needs India as a counterweight to China and to cooperate in

Laurie Kahn-Leavitt: Sealing up `our nation's attic'

THE NONPROFIT Smithsonian Institution and television's for-profit Showtime Networks are teaming up. The plan is to create programming based on the many remarkable collections housed at the Smithsonian's taxpayer-supported museums and show it on a new cable TV network. When I found out about this deal several weeks ago, I didn't initially object because I know how desperately the Smithsonian needs money. I was curious, however, and called several insiders at the Smithsonian. My jaw

Mae Ngai: San Francisco's Survivors

[Ms. Ngai is an assoc. prof. of history at the U. of Chicago.] ONE hundred years ago today, at 5:12 a.m., the quaking earth jolted Wong Bok Yue out of his bed in San Francisco's Chinese quarter. As the walls shook, Wong and his family fled their one-room apartment on Clay Street with nothing but the clothes on their backs. A neighbor carried Wong's two-year-old daughter, Bessie, while he carried his wife, who had bound feet. They hurried to Van Ness Avenue, where they huddled as bui

Ellen Bork: The Armenian Genocide

[Ellen Bork is deputy director at the Project for the New American Century.] IN ISTANBUL LAST OCTOBER, an acquaintance invited me to lunch with three participants in a conference of historians, journalists, and civil society activists that had recently been held at Bilgi University. Its subject was the fate of Armenians in Turkey during the early part of the 20th century. Although it received far less attention abroad than the prosecution of novelist Orhan Pamuk for spe

Richard Primus: Why Reconstruction Matters

merican constitutional law has never come fully to grips with the Civil War. A constitution is a system of government, and no system of government fulfills its basic purposes if it cannot settle divisive political issues by non-violent means. In other words, a civil war is a constitutional failure. In the American case, it may be said that the Civil War of 1861-1865 marked the catastrophic failure of the Constitution of 1787. Given the enormity of the collapse, it is remarkable t

Bringing the secrets of Antigoneia to light

Though Greece and Albania have much in common, Greece has not been officially involved in the burgeoning archaeological excavations and the activities of foreign archaeology schools in Albania in recent years. But the cooperation memorandum signed last year by the Greek Culture Ministry and the Archaeological Institute of the Tirana Academy of Sciences has paved the way.Joint research is being carried out at ancient Antigoneia under the supervision o

Gordon Wood: History's vital role in America

''HARDLY A MAN is now alive/ Who remembers that famous day and year," wrote the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, about April 18-19, 1775. Of course, Longfellow in 1860 wrote his popular poem ''Paul Revere's Ride" in order that future generations would never forget the events of that night and day. But no one reads Longfellow anymore. It is not surprising therefore that the meaning of April 19, 1775, has slipped from our memory. This is unfortunate, for Patriots Day ought n