Recently Published

Feeding Popular Hunger for Good History and Good Journalism

by David Nord

The Texas State Board of Education, God's gift to op-ed writers everywhere, recently announced that there is a creeping Muslimization of world history textbooks.  They warned of the rising influence of Middle Eastern interests in the U.S. textbook publishing business.Liberal commentators and religious libertarians denounced the board's resolution as misinformed in fact and offensive in principle.  But this latest skirmish in the culture wars in Texas got me thinking about someth

The President and Religious Pluralism

by Ian Reifowitz

America is at war with Islam.  At least that’s what some have declared.  President Obama has countered that in fact we are at war with a specific group of radical fundamentalist Muslims.  More profoundly, however, he has repeatedly defined Americanness itself as the antithesis of a fundamentalism that feeds on a clash of civilizations and cultures.At Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan on March 28, Obama contrasted the concept of a pluralistic democracy represented by the U.S. with al-

The Travails of Modern Islam

by Daniel Pipes

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.It occurred to me that I should try and fit what I know into the mission of this organization, so I will try something new.  It will be a certain level of abstraction and I invite you in the Q&A to become far more specific.I am a historian of the Muslim world and, in addition to the day-to-day issues that come up, I look at this civilizational unit as a whole.  That's what I'll do now.To start with, the Islam

Does the First Amendment Separate Church and State?

by Jon Butler

Delaware Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell's recent comment—wondering whether "separation of church and state" is "in the First Amendment"—raises a serious point that has escaped both O'Donnell and her many critics:  that Thomas Jefferson's use of the phrase "separation between Church & State" in an 1802 letter was actually a narrowly focused explanation of the Amendment, whose full breadth probably would displease O'Donnell even

Misrepresenting the Moynihan Report—Will It Ever Stop?

by James T. Patterson

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” reached the White House in March 1965, it sparked great enthusiasm among

How Many Nuclear Weapons Does the U.S. Government Need?

by Lawrence S. Wittner

A good case can be made that the U.S. government, the first to develop nuclear weapons, would be much better off today without them.  They fail to de

Veiling Shari`a in a Judeo-Christian Cloak: Imam Ra'uf's and Muqtedar Khan's Latest Ruse

by Timothy R. Furnish

A current tactic favored by Muslim apologists is to posit perfect harmony between Islam and Western (particularly American) civilization,  or between Islam and the other two monotheistic faiths.  In an example of the former, last month Imam Feisal Abdul Ra’uf, mastermind of the Ground Zero/Cordoba/Park 51 mosque, gave a

Channelling George Washington: The General and Alexander Hamilton

by Thomas Fleming

“You’ve been very patient with this old coot, as he unburdens his mind of his worries about our unpredictable country.  Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” “Alexander Hamilton. I’ve been fasci

Mr. President, Tear Down This Wall

by Lisa Szefel

With the public outcry surrounding the suicides of six young gay Americans in the span of one month, we are in the midst of a Richard Wright moment.  In 1940 Wright published Native Son, which traced the story of twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas, a good black man who embarks on a crime spree, playing into stereotypes that connect race to violence.  The novel suggests the invisible yet debilitating effects of growing up black in a society fringed with racial hatred during Jim C

The New Dark Financial Ages

by James Livingston

It’s been two months since Timothy Geithner welcomed us to what he called economic recovery in a New York Times op-ed. It’s been about that long since I argued here that the so-called recov

John Buchanan Documents

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The Dangers of Politicized Conservative History

by Ron Radosh

Having spent a good deal of time writing about the crude left-wing history of our country by charlatans like Howard Zinn and Oliver Stone, I have become wary of politicized history in general, whether it comes from the precincts of the far Left or the far Right.This time the culprits are on the Right, one of the biggest examples being Glenn Beck.  On this website, some time ago, I

On Elena Kagan’s Senior Thesis: Sound Anti-Communist Labor History

by Ron Radosh

Some conservatives have been criticizing Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan for her 1981 Princeton senior thesis in history, “To The Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933.”  Not me. As a historian who has read widely in socialist and communist history, and written about the topic myself, I found her thesis to be academically first-rate, based on a wide-ranging use of primary

Is Malcom Gladwell Right That Social Media is Useless for Change?

by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

An article called “Small Change:  Why the revolution will not be tweeted” by Malcolm Gladwell in the October 4, 2010 New Yorker poses an important question:  What, if anything, is the potential contribution of web-based "social networking" to social movements and social change?  The article’s answer, drawing primarily on an account of the civil rights movement, is that social movements t

A Loyal Retainer for Capitalism in East Asia

by R. Taggart Murphy

Sixty-five years ago, the United States emerged from the Second World War as the undisputed hegemon of world capitalism.  But within a generation, neither the American will nor the American ability to continue managing the global capitalist order could be taken for granted.  This essay will argue that the key to understanding the repair and continued re-enforcement of American economic and financial primacy since the system-shaking tremors of the 1970s can be found in the postwar exp

New Social Media’s Mark on the Historical Struggle for University Autonomy in Guatemala

by Heather A. Vrana

On August 9, 2010, a few dozen students from Guatemala’s national university stood under the banner of a group called the Estudiantes por Autonomía / Students for Autonomy (EPA). Students arranged bright green traffic barricades to block both entrance gates of the Universidad de San Carlos (USAC).  They occupied the campus for fifty-four days, through August and into September, despite circling police helicopters and threats of expulsion, until early October when representatives of the E

Another Look at the Black and Tans: Daniel Masterson on Northern Ireland

by Priscilla Hart

In June 2010 the British government revealed its long-awaited judgment in the emotionally charged case of “Bloody Sunday,” also known as the “Bogside Massacre.” Nearly forty years earlier, on January 30, 1972, in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland, thirteen protesters, many of them teenagers, were shot dead by British paratroopers during a civil rights demonstration held by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to protest discriminatory practices against Catholics, as well as

The Separation of Church and State Is Rooted in American Christianity

by Johann Neem

Many Americans are worried that America’s Christian heritage is being threatened.  Even if the threat is more perceptual than actual, it has mobilized important religious leaders and politicians to question the separation of church and state.  Indeed, many conservatives construe efforts to separate church and state as an attack on America’s Christian majority.  Many liberals, on the other hand, treat the separation of church and state as solely a political issue, a way to protect the

Who Started the Tea Party?

by Jill Lepore

In 1975, the New York Times Magazine published a cover story called “Who Owns 1776?” written by J. Anthony Lukas and illustrated with haunting photographs o

Appraising the Emancipation Proclamation

by Louis P. Masur

The estate of Robert Kennedy has picked an opportune moment to auction one of its treasures—a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln.  Next month marks the sesquicentennial of Lincoln’s election and inaugurates what promises to be