Roundup: Historians' Take

Edward Tenner: Rick Perry: Scientific Relativist?

Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European historyHistorians of science have weighed in on Texas Governor Rick Perry's invocation of Galileo to support his skepticism of the scientific majority opinion on climate change, as reported in the New York Times. And the scholars cited correctly observe that Galileo, like the theorists of global warming, had the majority of contemporary scientists behind him.

Robert S. McElvaine: Lift the U.S. Trade Embargo on Cuba

Robert S. McElvaine is a professor of history at Millsaps College. His most recent book is a 25th anniversary edition of "The Great Depression."

Andrei Cherny: FDR’s Lessons for Obama

Andrei Cherny is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the president of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He is the author of a forthcoming history of Franklin Roosevelt and his battle with big-business enemies of the New Deal.It has become a universally acknowledged truth in coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign, one repeated with increased fervor with each dismal jobs report, that no president has won reelection with an unemployment rate above 7.2 percent. But always there is the caveat: . . . since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.In the aftermath of Thursday night’s presidential address on jobs, that caveat should be more than an afterthought. FDR’s victory three-quarters of a century ago has important parallels to the situation in which President Obama finds himself and provides vital lessons if he is to be similarly successful.

Susan Matt: Are Today's Young Adults Too Emotionally Dependent on Parents?

Susan Matt, Presidential Distinguished Professor of History and Chair of the History Department, Weber State University. This paper was prepared for The Council on Contemporary Families, a research group that includes a number of historians.As colleges across the country begin the new school year, we hear a chorus of warnings about a generation of young adults unable or unwilling to “leave the nest.”  Phrases are bandied about:  “Failure to launch”; “the Peter Pan syndrome”; “boomerang kids” who can’t seem to leave home and establish an independent life.  Undergirding these warnings is a fear that the younger generation is growing soft, losing the pioneer independence and rugged individualism that once built this nation. But a glance at the past suggests it may not be the behavior of youths that has changed so much as the response by adults.  Only over the past 90 years did American culture come to define young adults’ continued reliance on parental guidance and their longing to return home as a sign of psychological maladjustment.

Julian E. Zelizer: If Obama Is a One-Term President

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton, and the author of “Jimmy Carter” and the coming book “Governing America.”“I’D rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” President Obama confessed to ABC News’ Diane Sawyer last year. Other than the “really good” part, Republicans would be happy to see this wish fulfilled.With waning approval ratings and a stagnant economy, the possibility that Mr. Obama will not be re-elected has entered the political bloodstream. Suddenly, the opposition party envisions a scenario in which its presidential candidate could defeat Mr. Obama in a referendum on his job performance. Mr. Obama needs to think hard about his own statement and consider what it takes to be a successful one-term president, in the light of history.One-term presidents usually leave office with their parties divided, the economy in crisis, wars unresolved, approval ratings in the tank and a sullen public rejecting them. Becoming a one-term president means joining a gallery of dashed hopes and crushed ambitions. Among those who were elected for just one term were men who, like Mr. Obama, came to the White House with enormous promise....

Jonathan Zimmerman: For Teachers, No Freedom to Teach about 9/11

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).In 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I, three teachers were fired from a high school in New York City. Their crime was simple: They tried to get students to think about the war....In times of war, school officials said, teachers needed to rally behind the national cause. The letter to Wilson "could give an opportunity for unpatriotic statements," a New York superintendent explained. "There are some assignments in the world that are not proper for a classroom in a public school, and this is one of them."And if you think teachers today are free to critique our own wars, you're wrong. As America prepares to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, indeed, its teachers are arguably less free than at any time since the 1960s. And that should worry anyone who cares about the values that we celebrate on 9/11 itself: human liberty, justice, and freedom....

John Campbell: Ladies, You're No Maggie Thatcher

John Campbell is the author of "The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, From Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister," which will be published by Penguin on Oct. 25. The movie "The Iron Lady," starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, will be released in December.With Ronald Reagan in his centenary year now regarded as one of the great presidents, and two of his political heirs, Michele Bachmann and possibly Sarah Palin, eyeing bids for the White House, it is a good moment to look again at Reagan's great British ally, Margaret Thatcher.More than 30 years after Britain's first woman prime minister entered Downing Street, America is still searching for its first female president. Sarah Palin has named Thatcher as one of her heroines, and Michele Bachmann compared herself to the former prime minister last week (and may well do it again during tonight's GOP debate). How do the Tea Party pretenders measure up to Britain's Iron Lady?

Fouad Ajami: From 9/11 to the Arab Spring

Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-chair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.The Arabic word shamata has its own power. The closest approximation to it is the German schadenfreude—glee at another's misfortune. And when the Twin Towers fell 10 years ago this week, there was plenty of glee in Arab lands—a sense of wonder, bordering on pride, that a band of young Arabs had brought soot and ruin onto American soil.The symbols of this mighty American republic—the commercial empire in New York, the military power embodied by the Pentagon—had been hit. Sweets were handed out in East Jerusalem, there were no tears shed in Cairo for the Americans, more than three decades of U.S. aid notwithstanding. Everywhere in that Arab world—among the Western-educated elite as among the Islamists—there was unmistakable satisfaction that the Americans had gotten their comeuppance.

Timothy Garton Ash: The Years Since 9/11 Already Look Like A Detour, Not the Main Road of History

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. His personal website is www.timothygartonash.com.Amid the plethora of conspiracy theories about 9/11, one I have not yet seen is that Osama bin Laden was a Chinese agent. Yet objectively, comrades – as communists used to say – one could argue that China has been the greatest beneficiary of America's decade-long reaction to those Islamist stabs at her heart.Put it this way: When the anniversary articles come to be written on 11 September 2031, will commentators look back on a 30 years war against Islamist terrorism, comparable to the cold war, as the defining feature of world politics since 2001? I think not. They will most likely see this longer period as being defined by the historic power shift from west to east, with a much more powerful China and a less powerful United States, a stronger India and a weaker European Union.

Victor Davis Hanson: Post-9/11 Mysteries

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.Strangely, both the media and the public rarely mention some of the most important aftershocks in the decade since 9/11. Here are some representative examples of landmark events that to this day remain mostly undiscussed.

Michael Kazin: What Happened to Labor?

Michael Kazin is the author of the new book American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is coeditor of Dissent.The American left was once in love with the labor movement. Take, for example, the careers of this quartet of famous progressives: Margaret Sanger, John Steinbeck, Betty Friedan, and Martin Luther King Jr. All were committed to audacious reform and had the ability to turn their political passions into memorable prose. And all believed, at critical times in their lives, that a powerful union movement was essential to making their nation a more decent, more egalitarian society....

Steve Krause and Matthew Paull: Why Are the Children of the ‘Greatest Generation’ So Selfish?

Steve Krause is the Director of Finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Matthew Paull retired from the CFO position at McDonald's Corporation in early 2008 and now serves on several boards.In his book The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw paid homage to the generation that emerged from the Great Depression to fight Hitler and other forms of tyranny. Their efforts were all about sacrifice so that their children could enjoy a better life. They sacrificed on the front lines of battle and back home in the factories that produced what was needed to wage war.We, on the other hand, are members of the Baby Boom generation (the authors are both 60 years old)—a cohort that is hardly known for its selflessness—and we can’t help but wonder: What, exactly, happened to the children of the “Greatest Generation?” Where is our willingness to sacrifice so that our children can enjoy a life even better than ours?So how did the Greatest Generation, known for its sacrifices, produce a generation so focused on economic self-interest and so seemingly unwilling to sacrifice for the good of the country? That is a bit of a mystery, but we will put forth two theories.

Helen Zoe Veit: Time to Revive Home Ec

Helen Zoe Veit, an assistant professor of history at Michigan State University, is the author of the forthcoming “Victory Over Ourselves: American Food in the Era of the Great War.”NOBODY likes home economics. For most people, the phrase evokes bland food, bad sewing and self-righteous fussiness.But home economics is more than a 1950s teacher in cat’s-eye glasses showing her female students how to make a white sauce. Reviving the program, and its original premises — that producing good, nutritious food is profoundly important, that it takes study and practice, and that it can and should be taught through the public school system — could help us in the fight against obesity and chronic disease today.

Richard Landes: Apocalyptic Millenial Movements are Winning the War for Minds

Richard Landes, a professor of history at Boston University, blogs at The Augean Stables. His new book, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience treats a variety of apocalyptic movements, including global jihad.When I first heard in the mid-1990s about the dreams of some jihadis and Islamists to have the green flag of Islam waving over the White House and the queen of England wearing a burka, I, like so many other Western liberals, thought that these were ludicrous fantasies. But as a student of apocalyptic millennialism, I understood that however silly such beliefs might sound to outsiders, they can have devastating consequences.

Eliyahu Stern: Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America

Eliyahu Stern, an assistant professor of religious studies and history at Yale, is the author of the forthcoming “The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism.”MORE than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law. Some of these efforts would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration, while others would go even further in stigmatizing Islamic life: a bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.”Supporters of these bills contend that such measures are needed to protect the country against homegrown terrorism and safeguard its Judeo-Christian values. The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said that “Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.”This is exactly wrong. The crusade against Shariah undermines American democracy, ignores our country’s successful history of religious tolerance and assimilation, and creates a dangerous divide between America and its fastest-growing religious minority....

Judith Stein: Wanted: A New Economy

Judith Stein is a professor of history and the author of Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (Yale University Press, 2010).In his speech on jobs Thursday, President Obama will offer tax credits for new hiring, extension of the payroll tax cut, and other small items, his aides hinted. These measure may be helpful at the margins, but the only way they, and much needed larger ones, will get people's attention is if they are attached to a narrative that makes jobs the centerpiece of a new economy that produces more of the goods that Americans consume.In 2009, the president seemed to agree when he told CNN, "We can't go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them."...

Andrew Meyer: Impressions of a Trip to China

Andrew Meyer is associate professor of history at CUNY Brooklyn College

Daniel Martin Varisco: Muslims of Color

Daniel Martin Varisco is professor of anthropology at Hofstra University.As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the simmering tea-partying Islamophobic mindset of the "Land of the Free" has come up with a memorial coloring book for children. The publisher's press release says it all:To the American people and all others who may read this child’s coloring book, We Shall Never Forget is designed to be a tool that parents can use to help teach children about the facts surrounding 9/11. This book also describes basic freedoms in America. We suggest parental guidance. As the 9/11 events are shown countless times on national media, this book will help children understand the meaning of these events. The book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth. In this book you will see what happens to a terrorist who orders others to bomb our peace loving wonderful nation.

Max Boot: Did Libya Vindicate 'Leading From Behind'?

Mr. Boot is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. After hardly mentioning Libya for months, President Obama and his aides are now taking an understandable victory lap. With Tripoli having fallen to rebel forces on Aug. 21, after six months of war, the president's supporters are even suggesting that Operation Unified Protector, as the international intervention was formally known, offers a new model for the use of force: one where the U.S. acts at low cost to defend human rights by putting allies into the lead. An anonymous administration official dubbed this "leading from behind"—a term that has raised hackles on the right but that, some argue, has been vindicated in Libya. In truth, it's too soon to tell. Recall how glorious the future looked in Afghanistan in December 2001. The Taliban had been toppled in two months, and the U.S. had brought about their downfall with a few hundred CIA officers and Special Operations Forces backed up by air power.

Andrew Roberts: Our Obsession With 'Looking Presidential'

Mr. Roberts is author most recently of The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 2011).   What does it mean to "look presidential," and why does it matter? An enormous amount of the media coverage of presidential candidates is focused on whether or not he (or, very rarely, she) "looks presidential." Grow up, America! Has the great democratic system of the Republic really come down to choosing leaders not on the basis of what they say, or even the way they say it, but on the way they fill a suit while saying it? Looking presidential can be broadly translated to mean being around 6 feet tall, relatively slim and broad-shouldered, and having a full head of preferably pepper-and-salt-colored hair and a ready, winning smile. It isn't being only 5 feet 6 inches tall and slightly balding that makes me want to blaspheme at the TV screen whenever I hear approving talk of Messrs.