Roundup: Historians' Take

Beverly Gage: The Government Had a Better Idea for Fixing Income Inquality 100 Years Ago

Beverly Gage, a Yale history professor, is the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded.A century ago, in one of his last acts of office, President William Howard Taft attempted to solve the problem of inequality in America. In August 1912, on the cusp of a brutal third-place finish in the presidential election, he created a Commission on Industrial Relations to investigate “the general condition of labor in the principal industries.” Despite its fusty charge, the commission turned out to be one of the most sensational sideshows of the Progressive Era, a cross-country journey through the wilds of American class conflict. For three years, government commissioners traipsed from city to city asking capitalists, union organizers, and reformers what it was like to work in America, and whether the spoils of industry seemed to be distributed fairly among the rich and poor. 

Benny Morris: On Iran, Israel Faces a Stark Choice

Israeli historian Benny Morris is the author, most recently, of "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."Most people in the Arab world, according to opinion polls, believe that the Holocaust never happened, that it's a Jewish invention and trick to win the world's sympathy and support. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is similarly minded; he has said so countless times.

Niall Ferguson: We're All State Capitalists Now

Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University. His latest book is Civilization: The West and the Rest.If there is one issue on which the rival candidates for the U.S. presidency agree, it's that America's global leadership will endure. Mitt Romney insistsit is not a "post-American century," while Barack Obama declaredin his State of the Union address that "anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about."They must enjoy this kind of chest-beating in Beijing.

Juan Cole: Arab World Mourns Whitney Houston

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan.  His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave MacmillanWhitney Houston’s tragic death on Saturday was a global event, because of the enormous popularity of American popular culture. Houston’s music was played worldwide, not just inside the US. In the Arab world, many stations mix Arabic pop music with American, and Arab youth of the 1990s grew up with her. Her film roles, in The Body Guard, Waiting to Exhale, and The Preacher’s Wife, also brought her to the attention of Middle Eastern movie-goers. (The Bodyguard is a bad film, but it grossed $410 million outside the United States. It is after all a depiction of American glamor, and an inter-racial love story, and has a sound track that produced one of the greatest hits in music history.) The beauty of her voice and her dynamic stylings influenced many Arab pop singers.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Xi Jinping and U.S.-China Relations in the Shadow of the Arab Spring

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.There are many things worth keeping in mind as Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping heads to Washington to meet with President Obama — including the simple fact that Chinese and American views of international issues often diverge sharply. There is never uniformity in either country on any topic, of course, but even taking into account considerable variations of opinion within each nation, the contrasts between the way some diplomatic topics are thought about on opposite sides of the Pacific can be striking. And these different worldviews can complicate meetings between leaders. At the present moment, for example, as Washington is frustrated by Beijing’s efforts to block U.N. actions in Syria, different views of the Arab Spring loom large....

Mark N. Katz: The Moscow-Damascus Alliance: A Tangled Tale

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University near Washington, D.C. He is the author of the upcoming book "Leaving without Losing: The War on Terror after Iraq and Afghanistan." (CNN) -- Many observers point to Moscow's close ties with Damascus going back to the 1950s as a reason for Russia now acting to defend the al-Assad regime in Syria against its many internal and external opponents.What has apparently been forgotten is that Moscow's ties with Syria have been plagued by tensions and disagreements throughout this entire period.Underpinning the Moscow-Damascus relationship for over half a century now has been a common antipathy toward America, Israel, and the moderate Arab states. But they have also differed on many issues.

Amy Wilentz: Impunity in Port-au-Prince

Amy Wilentz is the author of “The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier.”IT has been painful to watch as Jean-Claude Duvalier, who inherited the brutal dictatorship that once ruled Haiti, swanks around the hot spots of Port-au-Prince, flanked by the dregs of his regime — including former members of the dreaded secret police, the Tontons Macoute — as if he were just another member of the capital’s thoughtless, partying elite.

Judith Stein: Where Recessions Don't Matter -- At the Fed

Judith Stein is a professor of history at the City University of New York's City College and Graduate Center and the author of "Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s."The recent release of the 2006 minutes of the Federal Reserve Board - after the standard five-year lag - led many to wonder how the nation's chief financial stewards could have missed signs of the coming Great Recession. An examination of minutes over the last 30 years reveals that they failed to anticipate other downturns as well.Ever since the appointment of Paul Volcker as chairman in 1979, the Fed has judged inflation to be the major economic threat facing the nation, downplaying the dangers of unemployment and recession. Late that year, the Fed raised interest rates to tackle inflation caused largely by high energy prices and mortgage interest rates. In April 1980, Volcker worried about a possible recession (which soon came), but he was afraid to change course and address it because "it would be interpreted by the financial community as a sign that the Fed was 'quitting premature.' "

Jonathan Zimmerman: Distracted is the New Drunk

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" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.I never drink and drive. Now and again, though, I talk on my cellphone while speeding down a highway.What's the difference? In terms of safety, not much. Studies show that drivers using cellphones are as likely to crash as those who are intoxicated. So when I talk and drive, I'm as dangerous as if I'd been drinking.But the law lets me to do it. True, Pennsylvania recently became the 35th state to prohibit texting while driving. Yet the new measure effectively invalidated a Philadelphia ban on driving while using a handheld cellphone, which is illegal in New Jersey, New York, and seven other states.And recent research suggests that using hands-free devices while driving might actually be more dangerous than using handheld ones, because they make drivers feel safe even though they're just as distracted....

Victor Davis Hanson: A Post-American World? Not Quite

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.In a scathing denunciation of Mitt Romney last week, Fareed Zakaria praised Barack Obama for his nuanced understanding of what Zakaria has called the "Post-American World":

Adam Winkler: After Today's Prop 8 Victory, What's Next for Same-Sex Marriage?

Adam Winkler is Professor of Law at UCLA and an expert on constitutional law. His book Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America, will be published by W. W. Norton in September 2011. Today's landmark decision of a federal appeals court striking down California's Proposition 8, which denied marriage rights to same-sex couples, is cause to celebrate. While there have been a few state courts to rule that gays and lesbians are entitled to equal marriage rights under state law, never before has a federal court of appeals -- the level just below the Supreme Court -- declared that gay marriage is protected by the U.S. Constitution. Today's decision has the potential to benefit not only thousands of gay Californians but could establish the foundation for extension of marriage equality to all Americans.So what's next for Proposition 8 and the supporters of same-sex marriage?

Jonathan Zimmerman: Democrats, GOP Collude to Lure People into Gambling

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).Here’s a quick election-year quiz: Name one issue where Republicans and Democrats consistently agree, no matter where they live. And if you get this question wrong, we can go double or nothing on the next one.The answer, of course, is gambling. From taxes and the environment to abortion and same-sex marriage, it seems like America’s political parties have never been more polarized. But when it comes to state-regulated gambling, they’re often playing the same hand.

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer: The Long War Between the States (for Business)

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer is a Paul Mellon Fellow of American History at the University of Cambridge. Her book, Creating the Sunbelt, will be published later this year. The opinions expressed are her own.American firms have been on the move of late -- and not just to Mexico or China. Most major job relocations are from one U.S. state to another, according to the Department of Labor. And with unemployment remaining stubbornly high, and companies sitting on a lot of cash, states have been competing ever more fiercely to attract new businesses.Ohio reportedly has offered incentives worth $400 million to Sears to entice the company and its 6,000 employees to move from Illinois. Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia are vying intensely to be the home of a new "ethane cracker" Shell plans to build. The governors of Kansas and Missouri have intervened, personally, in a battle to host the headquarters of AMC Entertainment.

Thomas J. Sugrue: Saul Alinsky -- The Activist Who Terrifies the Right

Thomas J. Sugrue is author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race. He is David Boies Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. ...Alinsky believed that the key to organizing success was citizen participation, letting the people set the agenda, not setting it for them. Alinsky’s goal was nothing short of unleashing the power of the people to “create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which men have the chance to live by the values that give meaning to life.”

Niall Ferguson: Israel and Iran on the Eve of Destruction in a New Six-Day War

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. Jerusalem—It probably felt a bit like this in the months before the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched its hugely successful preemptive strike against Egypt and its allies. Forty-five years later, the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights.There are five reasons (I am told) why Israel should not attack Iran:1 The Iranians would retaliate with great fury, closing the Strait of Hormuz and unleashing the dogs of terror in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq.2 The entire region would be set ablaze by irate Muslims; the Arab Spring would turn into a frigid Islamist winter.

Simon Schama: Dickens Made Masterpieces Out of Modern Cruelties

Simon Schama is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He has been an essayist and critic for The New Yorker since 1994, his art criticism winning the National Magazine Award in 1996.Two hundred years on from his birth, how close is Charles Dickens to you? Do Pip and Peggotty, Carton and Copperfield, Pumblechook, Squeers, and Creakle have a place in your mind? Do you need Dickens as you need food and drink?

Rick Perlstein: What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad

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.Here is a truism about the psychology of politicians: there is almost nothing so soul-definingly traumatic for them as losing an election. You believe yourself a great man, a figure of destiny.  You love your job, or covet an even more important one—and then suddenly one day it's gone, all because the public decides it doesn’t love you any more. The trauma shapes future ideology: if you’re a conservative, say, you might become more conservative. That was the case for two pioneers of the Democratic Party's long march to the right: Joseph Lieberman, who lost a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Bill Clinton, who lost his reelection as Arkansas governor, both in 1980, a year of profound reckoning for Democrats who got blindsided by Ronald Reagan and his coattails.

Lisa Levenstein and Jennifer Mittelstadt: Obama and His Food Stamp Fight

Lisa Levenstein is an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of "A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia." Jennifer Mittelstadt is an associate professor of history at Rutgers University and the author of "From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965."The nation's food stamp program is an essential part of the American safety net. Why? Because people can't be productive — in school, at work or looking for work — if they are hungry and fearful about not having enough food to feed their families....Food stamps were first conceived during the Depression as part of a Keynesian approach to priming the economic pump. And it was the grocery industry, not social welfare advocates, that pushed for them. The architects of the program emphasized that it bolstered household consumption and shored up the retail economy.

Jean-François Mouhot: Once, Men Abused Slaves. Now We Abuse Fossil Fuels

Jean-François Mouhot is a visiting researcher at Georgetown University. He is the author of Past Connections and Present Similarities in Slave Ownership and Fossil Fuel Usage, published in the journal Climatic Change, and the book Des Esclaves Energétiques: Réflexions sur le Changement Climatique.In 2005, while teaching history at a French university, I was struck by the general disbelief among students that rational and sensitive human beings could ever hold others in bondage. Slavery was so obviously evil that slave-holders could only have been barbarians. My students could not entertain the idea that some slave-owners could have been genuinely blind to the harm they were doing.

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp: Mormons’ Double Legacy

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, a professor of American religious history, is the chairman of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the author of the forthcoming "Mormonism: A History."American society has long held a wary admiration for Mormons. Today Mormons run major corporations, serve in Congress, promote patriotic sentiments, and extol conservative social ideals. They have a world-renowned choir, named by Ronald Reagan as “America’s Choir.” Clean-cut, wholesome and polite, Mormons are archetypes of the American way.