Roundup: Historians' Take

Timothy Garton Ash: A Referendum on Europe? Bring it on...

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. As we approach the 40th anniversary of Britain joining what was then just the European Economic Community, there is only one good way forward for the tortuous domestic politics of Britain's so-called European policy. This is for the leaders of the three main parties in the Westminster parliament to commit themselves to hold a straightforward "in or out" referendum once the shape of the new European Union that is emerging from the eurozone crisis, and the terms available in it for Britain, have become clear. Since the eurozone is now likely to be saved, but only quite slowly, step-by-step, à la Merkel, and since Britain's position can only be clarified once the political consequences of saving the eurozone have emerged, that moment will arrive some time in the life of the next parliament: between 2015 and 2020, on current plans. This is what David Cameron's tantrically delayed Europe speech, which he has now scheduled for mid-January, should promise.

Max Felker-Kantor: Obama Should Treat Gun Control like LBJ Did Civil Rights

Max Felker-Kantor is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Southern California. He is currently working on his dissertation exploring riots, state response, and social movements during the 1960s and 1970s.“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,” President Barack Obama said in a statement responding to the fatal shooting of at least 26 individuals, including 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut Friday morning. This shooting caps a year filled with mass shootings, including five killed in Georgia, seven killed in Oakland, six killed in Seattle, 12 killed in Colorado, seven killed in Wisconsin, six killed in Minneapolis, and three killed in Oregon (a full map is available here). The American people should take the time to mourn the loss of those killed in these senseless acts of violence. But they should also use them as a time for serious introspection into our collective psyche and culture.

Beverly Gage: History Suggests Gun Change is Possible

Beverly Gage, a Yale history professor, is the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded....Like millions of other heartsick people, I am inclined to despair at this list, to think that though all of this must change, it never will. But as a historian I am reminded that change often comes slowly, and with great pain and effort. A century ago, there were forms of graphic, brutal violence considered so thoroughly American that they could never be banished from the national landscape. Today they no longer exist. In the story of how these changes happened, there may be a model—or a least a bit of hope—for the present.

Juan Cole: Israel’s Apartheid Deepens, Along With Its Global Isolation

Juan R.I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.Palestinian leaders are responding to the aggressive policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, deploying new legal strategies, and, in Gaza, a mass rally reminiscent of Arab Spring protest tactics. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is reportedly considering taking Israel to the International Criminal Court over Netanyahu’s recent announcement that Israel will build 3,000 new dwellings for settlers in the E-1 area of the West Bank. Abbas indicated that this step would be a last resort, but it is a threat to be taken seriously.

Thomas J. Sugrue: Workers’ Paradise Lost

Thomas J. Sugrue, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of “The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.”THE 211 Bar and Grill is a little watering hole near Michigan’s Black Lake, in a place that natives call “up north.” Its walls are adorned with prizewinning pike, deer heads, even a wolverine. But its most striking ornament is a patch of wall where visiting autoworkers proudly scrawl their union affiliations: “Fighting Local 600.” “Local 22 — Hamtramck.”That wall testifies to more than 75 years of union power in Michigan. Given that history, many were surprised this week when Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, signed legislation preventing unions from forcing workers to pay dues. But, in fact, it’s been a long time since Michigan was a workers’ paradise.

Nelson Lichtenstein: The Right-to-Work Coup in Michigan

Nelson Lichtenstein is MacArthur Foundation Chair in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He is the co-author and co-editor of “The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination.”Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s decision to sign a right-to-work law is just the latest battle in Midwestern Republican legislators’ convulsive campaign to eviscerate union political clout. Lansing, Michigan, now follows Madison, Wisconsin, Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana, as a state capital flooded by union partisans — in a spirited, but vain, effort to forestall these laws.Unions stand at the core of the Democratic coalition today. They are the last organizations remaining on the liberal side that can effectively appeal to white, working-class men in the Rust Belt swing states. They were crucial to President Barack Obama’s victory there.

Victor Davis Hanson: Ripples from the Election

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.Now that the election is over, we are starting to see the contours of what lies ahead for the next four years. Here are some likely consequences from the Obama victory.

Paul Campos: Justice Antonin Scalia in Hot Water Again Over Homosexual Comments

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado at Boulder....Scalia would claim that for the Supreme Court to pay attention to public opinion polls is a crime against jurisprudential nature. This may well be—but like many other so-called crimes against nature, it is an exceedingly common one.  For many decades the American right wing has made a veritable fetish out of the idea that the court is in the hands of a decadent cultural elite imposing its taste for various perversities on the public at large. This fantasy bears little relation to the banal reality, which is that the court both reflects and is shaped by public opinion, although in a somewhat chaotic and highly inefficient way. For example, it’s hardly a coincidence that the court began to take an interest in same-sex marriage only after that concept was well on its way to being institutionalized by the broader political process—not to mention publicly endorsed by the president of the United States.

Stephanie Coontz: The Death of Marriage Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Stephanie Coontz, Evergreen State college professor and author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage” and “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap,” squared off against Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Centre for Children and Families in an online debate on governmental pro-marriage policies, produced by The Economist. Haskins argued that pro-marriage policies promote the "general welfare" because there is a direct correlation between married parents and well-adjusted children, and that "children in single parent-families, despite government benefit programmes [sic] for the poor, have around a four times greater chance of living in poverty than children in married-couple families."Coontz's rebuttal:Rumours of the death of marriage are greatly exaggerated. Marriage rates are calculated on the basis of how many women over age 18 are married. With the age of first marriage at an all-time high, the percentage of married women has shrunk to new lows. But most women will still marry at some point in their lives. The real change is that marriage is no longer the master event that organises people’s entire lives and within which they make all their major life transitions, and there is increasing class divergence in those transitions.

Jonathan Zimmerman: U.S. Colleges Need Affirmative Action for Conservative Professors

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).Bill O’Reilly is right. As a devout Democrat and a frequent O’Reilly critic, I never imagined I’d write that sentence. But last week, the conservative Fox news talk-show host said something that makes real sense to me: Universities should institute affirmative action for conservative professors, so all the professors don’t think the way I do.

Michael B. Smith: History With a Beer Chaser

Michael B. Smith teaches history at Ithaca College. Without the help and inspiration of Derek Chang, Jeff Cowie, Joel Dinnerstein, Finis Dunaway, Adriane Lentz-Smith, Caroline Merithew, Aaron Sachs, Jason Sokol, Michael Trotti, and Rob Vanderlan, this essay would never have been written.Not far from the campus of Cornell University sits a slightly shabby watering hole redolent of popcorn, old wood, and, on winter nights when it's all closed up, stale beer. The walls of the Chapter House are adorned with the visual flotsam of a college town: photos of bygone athletic events, old composite photos of fraternities, scarves of European soccer teams, and graffiti carved into the tables and scrawled on the walls.Occasionally the Chapter House plays host to a group of historian friends—a beloved little community whose advice about writing and life has sustained its members for more than a decade. With our sheaves of papers and pens sharing the table with pint glasses and popcorn bowls, this group is both an oddity and perfectly in keeping with the eclectic atmosphere of the place.After all these years, it might seem that any stated reason for our get-togethers is a pretext for drinking beer and unburdening ourselves of accumulated psychic detritus. In fact the gathering began as, and remains, a writing group....

Mary Miller: The Maya Collapsed -- Could We?

Mary Miller is the Sterling Professor of history of art at Yale University and dean of Yale College. She is a public voices fellow with the Op-Ed Project....During the height of their civilization in the 8th century, the Maya recorded dates and deeds at dozens of city-states, from births and battles to the triumphant wrenching of trophies from enemies. Artists inscribed their signatures on painted pots and stone sculptures. Stucco inscriptions adorned monumental pyramids that crested over the rainforest canopy.But to continue building ever grander structures, the Maya needed resources. Most of all, they needed timber to burn limestone in order to make cement. By the late 8th century, the rainforest was in retreat, fuel was scarce and recurrent drought led to desperation. Eventually, there was chronic warfare as well.

Julian Zelizer: Congress' Fiscal Moment of Truth

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and of the new book "Governing America."(CNN) -- Avoiding the fiscal cliff can be a moment of truth for Congress as an institution. The ability of Congress to reach a deal on its own, rather than relying on tax hikes and spending cuts by default, would be a powerful push back against the loud chorus of critics who for almost a decade have been decrying dysfunction on Capitol Hill.According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans consider legislators to be some of the least trusted professionals in the nation. Car salespeople ranked only slightly lower.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Curse of the Traffic Courts

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.'Americans have made the worst botch of government in the recorded history of the world." So declared Harvard president Charles W. Eliot in 1910, citing "the daily report of automobile accidents" in the country. He concluded, "In no other civilized land could you find such a record of official incompetence or indifference."The solution was a new institution, the traffic court - which in turn brought new forms of incompetence and indifference. Witness the recent report on Philadelphia's Traffic Court, which found "two tracks of justice": one for the connected and the other for everyone else.In the dance of dishonesty, though, it takes two to tango: You can't have crooked officials without citizens who sway them from the straight and narrow. For almost a century, Americans have bribed, begged, and wheedled their way out of traffic tickets. People who never think of evading other kinds of justice will eagerly do so when their automobiles are involved....

Andrew W. Kahrl: The People’s Beach

Andrew W. Kahrl, an assistant professor of history at Marquette, is the author of “The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches From Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South.”“IN recent years, fences and barricades have blocked the public right to have access to our seas. We are becoming a landlocked people, fenced away from our own beautiful shores, unable to exercise the ancient right to enjoy our precious beaches.” This is how Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas characterized the relationship between the American public and its coasts in 1969. Nearly a half-century later, those same words could have described much of the New Jersey and Long Island shorelines on the eve of Hurricane Sandy.In the years between, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, beachfront property owners, wealthy municipalities and private homeowners’ associations threw up a variety of physical and legal barriers designed to ensure the exclusivity — and marketability — of the beach. These measures were not only antisocial but also environmentally destructive.

Barbara Krauthamer: Slavery’s Grotesque and Relentless Violence

Barbara Krauthamer, an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the author, with Deborah Willis, of Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery, just out from Temple University Press.As viewers flock to see Lincoln, and reviewers rave about Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance, historians are raising different issues: How accurate is the film’s portrayal of emancipation? What does it leave out? The Chronicle Review asked several scholars to weigh in.Lincoln tells the story of slavery’s demise in the United States by charting the president’s battle to secure passage of the 13th Amendment. Steven Spielberg and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, give us a history of emancipation set primarily in the White House and Congress during the final four months of Lincoln’s life.Gruesome scenes of war and its aftermath illustrate the larger context. Lincoln’s commitment to the constitutional abolition of slavery risks prolonging an already lengthy and bloody war. As he verbally spars with both allies and critics, he explains the legal and moral imperatives of abolition. Slavery is thus central to the film’s story of emancipation.

Mark N. Katz: Is Moscow Shifting on Syria?

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University, and is the author of Leaving without Losing: The War on Terror after Iraq and Afghanistan (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).While still firmly opposed to any form of Western military intervention in Syria, there have recently been signs that Moscow is trying to dissociate itself from the regime of Bashar al-Assad.Although Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated on November 6 in Amman, Jordan that, “we have no plans to change” Russian foreign policy toward Syria, three days later an unnamed “high-level” Russian diplomatic source told the Russian daily newspaper Izvestia that “Assad’s departure” was one possible outcome of the ongoing conflict.During Lavrov’s visit to Saudi Arabia on November 15, he insisted that, “Russia does not defend Assad.”  He also stated that the Syrian internal opposition should be involved in the settlement process in Syria.  In his press conference in Riyadh, he noted that, “We…advocate the unification of the Syrian opposition and we are meeting with all its representatives—of the internal and external opposition.”Lavrov further stated on November 28 in Moscow that, “Russia’s involvement in the armed conflict is just out of the question.”

Kate Masur: A Filmmaker’s Imagination, and a Historian’s

Kate Masur, an associate professor of history at Northwestern, is the author of An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in Washington, D.C. (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).As viewers flock to see Lincoln, and reviewers rave about Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance, historians are raising different issues: How accurate is the film’s portrayal of emancipation? What does it leave out? The Chronicle Review asked several scholars to weigh in.“You gave us the history from which we made our historical fiction,” Steven Spielberg recently told the historians in a crowd gathered to commemorate the 149th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Then the filmmaker drew a distinction. Historians “gather evidence” and produce “diligently reconstructed narratives.” By contrast, he said, “one of the jobs of art is to go to the impossible places,” to “enlist the imagination to bring what’s lost back to us.” The “resurrection” of the past by filmmakers, he continued, “is of course just an illusion. It’s a fantasy and it’s a dream.”

Paul Kengor: Romney Beats McCain!

Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is author of the new book The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. His other books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.Shortly after the November election, I wrote a piece here titled, "McCain Beats Romney!" The article focused on initial reports showing that Mitt Romney received fewer votes in 2012 than John McCain received in 2008. That utterly depressing observation shocked conservatives.

Susan Dunn: When Partisans Became Partners

Susan Dunn is a professor of arts and humanities at Williams College and the author of the forthcoming book “1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler — The Election Amid the Storm.”“YOU know, he is a very good fellow,” the president said to his labor secretary after meeting in the White House with the election rival he had just trounced. “He has lots of talent. I want to use him somehow. I want to offer him an important post in the government. Can you think of one?”No, those weren’t President Obama’s words after meeting Mitt Romney for lunch at the White House on Thursday. They were Franklin D. Roosevelt’s about Wendell Willkie, whom Roosevelt defeated in the 1940 election. And the sentiment led to a legendary partnership.Mr. Obama has extended conciliatory words to Mr. Romney, but where will it lead? Will this president welcome the counsel and assistance of a man who, for months, pounded his philosophy and policies? Can the defeated candidate see past his pain and withstand predictable criticism from divisive figures in his own party to cooperate with Mr. Obama?