Roundup: Historians' Take

Mark Schmitt: Why 2012 May Mark the End of an Era of Political Anger

Mark Schmitt is a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and former editor of The American Prospect....The early second terms of popular presidents are very often cool and productive periods. After Bill Clinton survived an anger wave in his first term, 1997 was a calm year in which legislation such as the State Children's Health Insurance Program was passed, and it also brought a surprising turn toward greater public trust in government. The same could be said of the two years after Ronald Reagan's reelection, which included enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. George W. Bush, who gave up on his major second-term initiative, Social Security privatization, within a few months, is the notable exception to this rule....The best counter-example to such a return to the mean would be FDR’s second campaign, exemplified by the “I welcome their hatred” speech at Madison Square Garden, which fully captured the tone of an angry, still-suffering nation in an ever more direct way than he had in 1932. Roosevelt went on, in his second term, to govern even more ambitiously and aggressively than in the Hundred Days, including waging war on uncooperative members of his own party. This, of course, is the model that many liberals would encourage on Obama....

Bruce Ackerman: Nixon In Iran?

Bruce Ackerman is a professor of law and political science at Yale, and the author, most recently, of The Decline and Fall of the American Republic.Where is Richard Nixon when we really need him?The time is ripe for rearranging the diplomatic chess board -- but this time, Western leaders must entice Tehran, not Beijing, into a new relationship.The present confrontational strategy isn't working. Even if Netanyahu's threatened airstrike successfully delays Iran's nuclear program, Israel faces a bleak future in the middle run. Its initial attack will alienate Americans and Europeans obliged to cope with Iranian counter-offensives on the economic and military fronts. Once the mullahs recover from their setback, an increasingly isolated Israel will be obliged to deal with the resurgent Iranian threat. With nuclear weapons technology proliferating, it will also confront threats emerging elsewhere in the Arab world. It is only a matter of time before one or another enemy penetrates Israel's air defenses. Given its small size, a single successful attack can devastate the country.

Diane Ravitch: In Defense of Facing Reality

I recently wrote two review articles for the New York Review of Books about the teaching profession. The first was a review of Pasi Sahlberg's Finnish Lessons, about the exceptional school system of Finland, which owes much to the high professionalism of its teachers.The second of the two articles was a review of Wendy Kopp's A Chance to Make History, and it focused on her organization, Teach for America.I expressed my admiration for the young people who agree to teach for two years, with only five weeks of training. But I worried that TFA was now seen -- and promoting itself -- as the answer to the serious problems of American education. Even by naming her book A Chance to Make History, Wendy Kopp reinforced the idea that TFA was the very mechanism that American society could rely upon to lift up the children of poverty and close the achievement gaps between different racial and ethnic groups.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Santorum's Lesson for Liberals

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."Rick Santorum and I go way back. That's how it feels anyway. Over the past 15 years, I've written more than a dozen columns condemning something Santorum said.This column is different. I come to praise Rick Santorum, not to bury him.Put simply, Santorum is authentic. Like him or not, he says exactly what he thinks. And that surely helps explain why he poses a pesky challenge to Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, who says exactly what he thinks will get him elected.Santorum also speaks in simple, moralistic language: Some things are good, and other things are evil. And that's the language my fellow liberals need to rediscover....

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Virtual Rose Garden

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

Lisa McGirr: The New Suburban Poverty

Lisa McGirr is a professor of history at Harvard and the author of “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right.”In many of America’s once pristine suburbs, harbingers of inner-city blight — overgrown lots, boarded up windows, abandoned residences — are the new eyesores. From the Midwestern rust-belt to the burst housing bubbles of Nevada, California and Florida, even in small pockets of still affluent regions like Du Page County, Ill., the nation’s soaring poverty rates are visibly reclaiming last century’s triumphal “crabgrass frontier.” In well-heeled Illinois towns like Glen Ellyn and Elgin, unkempt, weedy lawns blot the formerly manicured, uniform and tidy landscape.The Brookings Institution reported two years ago that “by 2008 suburbs were home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the country.” In the previous eight years, major metropolitan suburbs had seen poverty rates climb by 25 percent, almost five times faster than cities. Nationwide, 55 percent of the poor living in the nation’s metropolitan regions lived in suburbs.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Red Songs, Black Boxes and the Tale of Bo Xilai

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Professor of History at UC-Irvine, wrote China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University in 2010. He is an Asia Society Associate Fellow.The fall of Bo Xilai, the flamboyant and controversial Chongqing leader, qualifies as one of the big Chinese news stories of 2012. It does so first because it may signal the end of the short strange career of the so-called “Chongqing Model” associated with him.  This is a hard-to-pin-down catchall term for a cluster of policies and campaigns Bo introduced while in charge of the city.  The “model” involves a mixture of appeals to Mao era ideals of social equality, innovations in urban planning, dramatic moves against figures accused of being part of organized crime syndicates, and strategic use of symbols from the revolutionary past.  It may be best known for the mass singing of “red songs” that Bo promoted in Chongqing last year, which started a widespread trend.

Diane Ravitch: Another Battle in the War Against Public Schools

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University.The “parent trigger” must be understood within the current context of vilifying public education. Today, there is a national effort to privatize public schools by turning them over to privately managed charters. This movement is financed by some of the nation’s richest foundations -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation....A parent trigger — a phrase that is inherently menacing — enables 51 percent of parents in any school to close the school or hand it over to private management. This is inherently a terrible idea. Why should 51 percent of people using a public service have the power to privatize it? Should 51 percent of the people in Central Park on any given day have the power to transfer it to private management? Should 51 percent of those riding a public bus have the power to privatize it?...

Kirsten Swinth: Hillary Clinton, Cookies and the Rise of Working Families

Kirsten Swinth is an associate professor of history at Fordham University. Her work focuses on women, work and culture. She is working on a book on care and competition in postindustrial America and the making of the working family. This column was written in association with The Op-Ed Project.(CNN) -- "I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession," Hillary Clinton famously snapped on the campaign trail two decades ago Friday. Mostly, we remember the comment as a moment in the perpetual mommy wars, but I tend to think about it as a moment in the history of chocolate chip cookies....In 1992, Clinton's comment drew scorching responses from at-home mothers and cheers from fellow working moms. Such polarized reactions should be set in the context of Clinton's own life. Among the few women in her Yale Law School class, Clinton fought hard for professional success. Her remark was not merely a political misstep, but a generational declaration: a reflection of gut-level struggles women had made for workplace opportunity, even as mothers....

David A. Bell: What We’ve Lost With the Demise of Print Encyclopedias

David A. Bell is Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton, and a contributing editor for The New Republic. As the paperless future approaches, certain sorts of publications have inevitably moved into the all-digital realm faster than others. Most of us still prefer paper when it comes to beach novels, for instance, or the cherished volumes of our personal libraries. At the other extreme, scientific journals effectively went all-digital years ago, and thanks to GPS, maps and road atlases are quickly following. Last week saw another milestone: the symbolic funeral of paper encyclopedias, with the inevitable announcement that the Encyclopedia Britannica is ceasing print publication.

Julian Zelizer: Why Shouldn't a President Be a Good Politician?

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" (Times Books) and of the new book "Governing America" (Princeton University Press).Nobody likes politicians.Ever since Jimmy Carter won his way to the White House in 1976 by assuring voters that they could trust him in contrast to the more experienced opponents he faced, both Republican and Democratic candidates have tended to boast about every part of their resume that can distinguish themselves from the Washington status quo....This year, the story is the same. Although President Obama is boasting of his accomplishments in the White House as the nation's leader, he is also using Congress as a foil to lambaste the way that the "real" insiders in the capital do their business. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have tried to transform themselves from pillars of the congressional Republican establishment into conservative mavericks, while front-runner Mitt Romney talks frequently about how he would bring the skills of a CEO to Washington.

Adam Cathcart: The Sea of Blood Opera Show: A History of North Korea's Musical Diplomacy

Adam Cathcart is assistant professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and the editor of SinoNK.com.

Stephen Schlesinger: Iran Then and Now

Stephen Schlesinger, a historian and fellow at the Century Foundation in New York, City, is the author of Act of Creation, about the founding of the United Nations. With the possibility of a confrontation looming with Iran, one historical example that should command American attention in its hour of decision — but is being neglected — is the bloody conflict that Iran fought against Iraq from 1980 to 1988. It is worth recalling the fierceness of that struggle to gain some appreciation of the enormity of any decision by Washington to go to war with Iran, for it may foretell what Tehran is capable of doing when it feels its Islamic Revolution is at stake. The original clash between Iran and Iraq began shortly after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deposed the shah in 1979. Following that triumph, Khomeini in mid-1979 called for similar upheavals throughout the Middle East.

Niall Ferguson: China's Great Leap Backward

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, has just been published by Penguin Press. "To understand China you have to think in generations," my Chinese friend explained. "And the key is that after 2012 the Cultural Revolution generation will be in charge." While antiwar protesters clashed with the National Guard on American campuses and Czechs defied the Red Army in the streets of Prague, China had the Cultural Revolution. In some ways it was the ultimate ’60s teen rebellion. In other ways it was totalitarianism at its worst: a bloody revolution from above unleashed by one of the 20th century’s most ruthless despots. That it disrupted the lives of a generation is clear. Only consider its effects on the two men poised to inherit the top two positions of president and premier.

Rick Perlstein: Why Democrats Have a Problem with Young Voters

Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. He writes a weekly column for RollingStone.com.

Peter A. Coclanis: Wanted: Dedicated Deep Thinkers for the Business World

Peter A. Coclanis is a professor of history and director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.I'd like to propose the creation of a new position called the CIAO, or chief intellectual-arbitrage officer: Someone to work with the CINO not only to generate new ideas but also to ask new questions, identify new trends, explore new niches, expand geocultural boundaries, project forward, and remember the past. The CIAO would not necessarily have a science/tech or business background—in fact, such a background might detract from his or her effectiveness. Rather, I visualize the perfect CIAO as a liberal-arts type, someone who reads broadly and voraciously, is articulate, knows how to do research, can count a little, has backbone, and likes to argue.Sounds like at least a few brilliant Ph.D. students in the humanities and social sciences you've met over the years, doesn't it?...

Stephen Tuck: The Other US-UK 'Special Relationship'

Stephen Tuck is a history lecturer at Pembroke College, Oxford, a visiting fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard and the author of We Ain't What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle From Emancipation to Obama....In Britain and on the American right, there were suspicions that ethnicity played into Obama's apparent snub -- the son of a Kenyan would understandably not be enamored by the daily reminder of a prime minister whose second term had overseen the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion. But in their op-ed, Obama and Cameron pointedly began by quoting Churchill and celebrated the fact that the two nations "support the human rights and dignity of all people."...

Jonathan Zimmerman: Barnard College Flap: Competition among Women Shouldn't be over Men

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, received his BA from Columbia in 1983. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press)....You can find [sexist comments directed toward Barnard College] on Columbia’s student blogs, which have lit up with vitriol since the March 3 announcement that President Obama will speak at Barnard’s commencement ceremonies in May. Part of the anger was directed at Mr. Obama, who graduated from Columbia but has never given an address there. But the major target was Barnard itself. Its students are promiscuous gold-diggers, posters wrote, stealing Columbia men from – yes – Columbia women....Columbia was the last elite American college to admit female undergraduates. Women could attend the graduate schools as well as Barnard, founded in 1889 and named, ironically, after a Columbia president who had fought to admit undergraduate women on the same basis as men.

Jordan J. Ballor: Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol. des., University of Zurich) is a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty and author of Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church's Social Witness (Christian's Library Press, 2010), and co-editor of Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art (Christian's Library Press, 2011).Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.”

Jonathan Sarna: The Jewish Vote

Jonathan Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and has written or edited more than 20 books on American Jewish history and life.On Dec. 17, 1862, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, concerned about smuggling and enraged by the discovery that his own father was conspiring with Jewish clothing manufacturers to move southern cotton northward, issued General Orders No. 11, which expelled “Jews as a class” from the territory under his command....