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Wanted: The Truth About The Kent State Killings

by Murray Polner

Americans of a certain age may remember the murder of students on the Kent State University campus 34 years ago and the anger it once aroused. On May 4, 1970, 0hio National Guardsmen killed four college students and wounded nine others-one of them, Dean Kahler, is still paralyzed. He was, reported the FBI, 95-100 yards from the riflemen when he was wounded. Yet no one was ever found responsible nor have the questions surrounding the calamity ever been stilled.Antiwa

In Defense of Dark Union

by Leonard Guttridge

HNN Debate: The Lincoln Murder MysteryIgnoring the diatribe in the Steers-Chaconas “review essay” I offer the following in the interests of truth and common sense. The magazine identifies Edward Steers as an “acknowledged expert” on the Lincoln assassination, a subject on which he has written three books. Prior to his active interest in Lincoln's murder Steers was occupied in the

Testimony at Senate Foreign Relations Committee: U.S. Mistakes in Iraq

by Juan Cole

Mr. Cole's testimony was given on April 20, 2004.This brief addresses three areas. First, what mistakes have been made in the Coalition administration of Iraq, and why? Second, what is the current situation? Third, what steps can be taken to ensure the emergence of a stable and democratic Iraq?Mistakes The biggest U.S. failure in Iraq to date lay in American inability to understand the workings of Iraqi society. Many U.S. administr

Liberalism and the Columbia Strike

by Alan Brinkley, Jesse Lemisch, Staughton Lynd, David Montgomery

This week graduate students at Columbia staged a strike to protest the university's refusal to negotiate with GSEU (Graduate Student Employees United). An election was held two years ago to decide whether to join the union. Columbia immediately referred the matter to the National Labor Relations Board before the votes were counted. Historian Alan Brinkley, now provost, has been the public face of the university during the str

Reporter's Notebook: The New England American Studies Association -- World History Association

by Jeremy Greene

Conference:"Global New England: The Meaning of Region in the Nation and theWorld" signaled a celebration of the publ

Palestinians Have Another Chance, Thanks to President Bush

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

It was with great admiration that I watched George W. Bush cutting yet another Gordian knot - this time he told the Palestinians that they have to forget"the right of return" of the 1948-1949 refugees to Israeli territories. They will have to settle their refugees in their portion of Palestine.  Moreover, that portion will not necessarily follow the 1949 armistice lines.  Life goes on and it's time for the Palestinians and their supporters to realize that fact and stop pining over

Column: Encounters with History (Letter from Japan, Part 6)

by William Thompson

This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the sixth of his"Letters from Japan."KokuraA while ago I was cleaning out an attic. It was an old house. More than seventy years of stuff had a

Why the Ugly Rhetoric Against Gay Marriage Is Familiar to this Historian of Miscegenation

by Peggy Pascoe

We are in the midst of an attempt to ground a category of discrimination in the fundamental social bedrock of marriage law. I would argue that it is virtually impossible to understand the current debate over same-sex marriage without first understanding the history of American miscegenation laws and the long legal fight against them, if only because both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage come to this debate, knowing or unknowingly, wielding rhetorical tools

Historical Analogies: Iraq is to Vietnam is to…

by Fran Shor

We're not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germnay can attest. We're a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest as well.--President Bush, at his recent news conference Historical analogies should always be viewed with a certain skepticism. Historians, especially, are aware of critical discontinuities even as we search for those continuities that provide the narrative thread to historiography. On the other hand, hi

Iraq Needs a Strongman

by Daniel Pipes

The current insurrection in Iraq was discernable a year ago, as I already noted in April 2003:"Thousands of Iraqi Shiites chanted"‘No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam" a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites at the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces." The recent wave of violence makes those implications fully apparent. Two factors in particular made me expect Iraq

Stop with the Hindsight ... Or Should We Rerun All Our Wars?

by Thomas Fleming

I am disturbed by the lack of thoroughness in the much publicized probe of who is to blame for the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001. Why stop with the current war? Why not go back and weigh in the balance the judgment of our leaders in the opening rounds of America's previous wars? Let's start with the American Revolution. John Adams frequently admitted he knew nothing about military matters. That did not stop him from being a principal player in perpetrati

Column: A Conversation with a Survivor of Hiroshima (Letters from Japan, Part 5)

by William Thompson

This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the fifth of his"Letters from Japan."A conversation in a cab I met Keiko in the museum café where we shared a coffee and a light lunch. My brother was vi

Why I Decided to Write a History of the United States

by Walter A. McDougall

The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years. If some ghostly ship, some Flying Dutchman, were transported in time from the year 1600 into the present, the crew would be amazed by our technology and the sheer numb

Why Americans Are Satisfied with Simple Explanations of Foreign Wars

by William McKee Evans

The Civil War stands alone in the sophistication of its historiography. No educated American would take seriously a person who said the war came because the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. If we knew as much about the nation's other wars there might be fewer of them.

The Story of Frank Carlucci

by Fran Shor

In the past few months there have been a rash of media reports on the Carlyle Group, a private equity investment group with billions of dollars of assets in the defense industry and a roster of directors and consultants which includes not only well-known Reagan and Bush appointees but also international figures like John Major, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, and Fidel Ramos, the former President of the Philippines. The Chairman of the Carlyle Group, Frank Carlucci, was not only a fo

Did President Bush Mislead the Country ... Does It Matter?

by James P. Pfiffner

In his recent book and testimony Richard Clarke charged that before 9-11 the Bush administration did not pay enough attention to his warnings about the threat of terrorism from al Qaeda. But this charge has tended to overshadow Clarke's more important assertion that president Bush "has squandered the opportunity to eliminate al Qaeda and instead strengthened our enemies by going off on a completely unnecessary tangent, the invasion of Iraq." Clarke's line of reasoning raises the q

Is Allen Weinstein too Secretive to Become the Chief Archivist of the United States?

by Roger Sandilands

President Bush's intention to nominate Allen Weinstein as Archivist of the United States has raised a few eyebrows. Weinstein is best known for Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (1978) and The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (1999), co-authored with Alexander Vassiliev who was given access (for a substantial fee) to KGB archives. The KGB closed their archives to other researchers who therefore cannot check the accuracy, context or interpretation of the notes

Karl Rove's Inspired by McKinley--But It's Benjamin Harrison's Script He's Following

by Gregory J. Dehler

In reading a recent edition of my favorite political opinion magazine, I was reminded several times of Karl Rove's admiration for former President William McKinley. It seems strange since Rove's strategy over the last three years is much closer to the path followed by Benjamin Harrison than it is to the one William McKinley trod. For those who might not know, McKinley is a role model for Rove because he was instrumental in building a Republican majority after a long period of party par

The Real Problem with Outsourcing

by Jonathan Rees

A few weeks ago, Gregory Mankiw, Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic advisors, publicly praised the outsourcing of American jobs overseas. “I think outsourcing is a growing phenomenon,” he said, “but it's something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run." A bipartisan uproar ensued. Even Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert challenged these remarks. Mankiw quickly dis

Getting the State of Alabama to Improve Its History Standards: Victories and Defeats

by David T. Beito and Charles W. Nuckolls

The cause of better education in Alabama achieved an important victory on Thursday. After much delay and thoughtful debate, the state Board of Education approved a new and improved Course of Study (COS) in Social Studies for K-12. Our Ad Hoc Committee to Revise the COS is proud to have played a part in