I SPENT the summer of 1965 arguing about the Vietnam War. I was 13, and my interlocutor was my 18-year-old camp counsellor in Vermont. She was headed for UC Berkeley in the fall, where she would, as she later described it, 鈥榤ajor in history and minor in rioting.鈥� Meanwhile, I was headed back to junior high school. I was already convinced that our government was...
COUNTERFACTUALS 鈥� what if so and so had happened? 鈥� are always dicey. For example; would there have been a full-scale Vietnam war if President John F Kennedy had not been assassinated? There is no way to prove that hypothesis right or wrong. In the case of today鈥檚 Middle East, one could pose the counterfactual question about a forgotten 1919 report about...
ON APRIL 30, when Columbia University student protesters took over Hamilton Hall, they renamed it 鈥楬ind鈥檚 Hall鈥�, dropping a large banner out the windows above the building鈥檚 entrance. This was a hall famously occupied by students in the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and against Jim Crow racism in the United States...
