Roundup: Historians' Take

Stan Katz: Publishing and University Prestige

[Stan Katz directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.] Some of us have wondered whether university presses were going to survive in the digital age. Many have worried that the Great Recession would prove the death knell for academic presses. It would seem that the apparent decline of traditional academic print publishing (the dramatic decrease in the number of copies purchased by academic libraries faced with mushrooming

Julian Zelizer: The Legacy of 'Drill, Baby, Drill'

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] The impact of the oil spill in the Gulf Coast is starting to be made vivid by the steady flow of still images and video that capture this catastrophe. For example, Phillippe Cousteau, the grandson of

Juan Cole: Israeli Attack on the High Seas

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Wire services are reporting that Israeli commandos killed as many as 16 peace activists and wounded over 50 others as they boarded and commandeered the six ships of the Gaza aid flotilla. Among the ships boarded, on which Israeli troops killed aid activists, was a Turkish vessel, the Marmara, on which th

James T. Patterson: The Moynihan Future

[James T. Patterson is a professor emeritus of history at Brown and the author of “Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle Over Black Family Life From L.B.J. to Obama.”] FORTY-FIVE years ago this month, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan began quietly circulating a report he had recently completed about the “tangle of pathology” — out-of-wedlock births, fatherless households — damaging low-income black families. The title said it all: “The

David Cannadine: Man and Volcano, an Explosive History

[David Cannadine is the author of The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy and Ornamentalism.] On a recent flight from Britain to the United States, my plane took a circuitous route to avoid the by-now-all-too-familiar volcanic ash, with the paradoxical result that we flew much nearer to Iceland, and much nearer to the volcano, than we otherwise would've done. It was certainly worth the detour, as my fellow passengers and I were treated to a grandstand view of on

Jonathan Zimmerman: The Truth About 'Nam

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."] At a Memorial Day parade in Milford, Conn., three years ago, Richard Blumenthal re called his return from the war in Vietnam: "We had to endure taunts and insults, and no one said, 'Welcome home,' " the Connecticut attorney general told crowd, which included relatives of a soldier killed i

Allen C. Guelzo: Don't Let the USS Olympia Sink from Memory

[Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, and the author of “Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President.”] The USS Olympia was best known for serving as the flagship for Commodore George Dewey and the little squadron of warships that resoundingly defeated the Spanish Navy at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898.... Philadelphia has been Olympia’s home since she was decommissioned in 1922, the year after she brought home the body of

Andrew J. Bacevich: Memorial Day, for a Father Whose Son was Killed in Iraq

[Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War," will be out this summer.] Where I grew up in the Midwest during the 1950s and early '60s, Memorial Day was no more about remembering the nation's war dead than Labor Day was about honoring working stiffs. It was a "free day." Falling on a Monday, Memorial Day made possible that great innovation, "t

Max Boot: America is still the best guarantor of freedom and prosperity

[Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to Opinion.] Much nonsense has been written in recent years about the prospects of American decline and the inevitable rise of China. But it was not a declining power that I saw in recent weeks as I jetted from the Middle East to the Far East through two of America's pivotal geographic commands — Central Command and Pacific Command.

Nancy L. Cohen: Nuance Matters in Abortion Debate

[Nancy L. Cohen is a historian and the author of "The Reconstruction of American Liberalism."] The idea has taken hold that Americans have become more conservative on abortion. Sarah Palin put this new conventional wisdom to political work in a speech two weeks ago when she claimed polls showed "more Americans proudly proclaiming themselves as pro-life . . . and that's a huge victory." She's not entirely wrong, but that doesn't mean she's right. You

Daniel Pipes: William Quandt's Embarrassing Memo

[Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] While working on documents at the Carter Center, a researcher from the Menachem Begin Heritage Center came across a declassified action memorandum from William Quandt, Middle East specialist on the National Security Council, to his boss, Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Click here for th

Van Gosse: Why President Obama Is Not (and Is) a Socialist

[Van Gosse is a historian and author specializing in American political development, the African-American struggle for citizenship and American society in the Cold War era and since. He is author of Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left, The Movements of the New Left 1950-1975, and the forthcoming We Are Americans: Black Politics and the Origins of Black Power in Antebellum America. His book Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History was named a CHOICE

Diane Ravitch: Why I Changed My Mind

[Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, was assistant secretary of education for research in the George H.W. Bush administration.] When I joined the administration of George H.W. Bush in 1991, I had no preconceived ideas about choice and accountability. "Choice" meant vouchers, a cause that had been rebuffed repeatedly in state referendums and by the courts; the issue had never gotten my attention. "Accountability" was one of tho

Victor Davis Hanson: Our Confessor-in-Chief

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and editor, most recently, of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome.] The first duty of national leaders is to worry about the interests of their own countries; utopian internationalism can come later. German chancellor Angela Merkel, despite her soaring European Union rhetoric, is relearning that lesson. German voters in a recent parliament

Fred Siegel: Insatiable Liberalism

[Fred Siegel is professor of history and humanities at The Cooper Union. He also taught at Columbia University, Queens College, Empire State College.]President Obama's vertiginous fall from political grace, and the corresponding ascent of the Tea Party movement, have been the subject of extensive discussion. Strikingly, the account that sheds the most light on these developments mentions neither. William Voegeli's new book, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State, was written just before Obama's outsized liberal aspirations provoked the Tea Parties to emerge. But it provides far and away the most substantial explanation to date of our current political condition.

Dmitry Shlapentokh: Kadyrov Makes Unlikely Overtures to Israel

[Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of East Against West: The First Encounter - The Life of Themistocles, 2005.] ...Despite the official stance, an Islamist insurgency continues to rage in the North Caucasus region, particularly in Dagestan, Ingushetia and neighboring Chechnya, site of two separatist wars with Moscow since the mid-1990s. An indication of this was

Andrew J. Bacevich: Will Iraq Be Forgotten Like Vietnam?

[Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, out this summer, is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.] At the very center of the town common here in Walpole, Massachusetts, as throughout much of New England, stands a very imposing flagpole. Just below Old Glory flies the POW/MIA flag, an artifact of the Vietnam War. The inscription declares “You Are Not Forgotten.” For the citizens of Walpole, what does tha

Moshe Dann: Is There a Plan B in Israel?

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.] "No," says Robert Serry, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, speaking recently at the Hebrew University's Truman Institute. "I don't know of any alternatives," he added. Nor does he seem interested in exploring other possibilities. Myopic thinking is at the root of the problem. Without a "Plan B," critical thinking is

Jim Sleeper: How and How Not to Engage Liberalism and Islam

[Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in political science at Yale University.] Dissent magazine has just posted a revelatory assessment, by Andrew F. March -- a liberal, non-Muslim scholar of Islam -- of the liberal war hawk Paul Berman's untiring efforts to unmask Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan as an insidious apologist for murderous Islamicism. March also casts a skeptical eye on Berman's efforts to discredit Western intellectuals who've indulged Ramadan as a mediator between liberalism

Andrew F. March: The Flight of the Intellectuals and Tariq Ramadan

[Andrew F. March is Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University. He is the author of Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford), which won the Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Religion, and multiple scholarly articles on Islamic law and liberalism, including three on the thought of Tariq Ramadan.] PAUL BERMAN has written an odd book. It is not intellectual history–he rightly does not claim for himself any expertise