Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

Source: Telegraph (UK)
5-10-12

Why telly-dons like David Starkey, Lucy Worsley and Bettany Hughes get top marks

...[S]niffiness about what they ["serious academics"] refer to as “popular historians” (rather as elderly judges talk of “popular musicians”) has moved on to a new target in “telly-dons” – those who present high-profile series on the small screen about aspects of our past – yet the prejudice remains unchanged, as demonstrated by remarks made this week by Professor Sir Keith Thomas. At the presentation of the Wolfson History Prize, Sir Keith referred to the damage done to “diligent” scholarship by “eye-catching academics”....The senior common rooms of universities are famously bitchy, jealous places. A  J P Taylor in the 1950s was the granddaddy of TV historians, but his success was said to have led to a whispering campaign among colleagues that stopped him securing the Regius Professorship in History at Oxford. And to this day otherwise hard-working, blameless academics begin to drip with acid at the mere mention of David Starkey or Niall Ferguson, using words like “sold out” or “no longer taken seriously”....

Source: Novinite (Bulgaria)
5-10-12

Bulgarian History Museum Director Bozhidar Dimitrov: I Got Many Nice Things Done in Politics

Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) and Novinite.bg are publishing an interview with Bozhidar Dimitrov, a prominent historian, Director of Bulgaria's National History Museum in Sofia, and a former Minister of Bulgarians Abroad (Diaspora Minister) in the Borisov Cabinet in 2009-2011. Interview by Evelina Ivanova, a freelance journalist.Bozhidar Dimitrov has an impressive resume, a harsh language and a knack for stirring up the national spirit. Just recently the head of the Bulgarian National Museum of History (NIM) announced his plans to build a chapel within the confines of the museum to house the relics of the seven Bulgarian saints known as Sveti Sedmochislenitsi, i.e. the authors of the two Slavic alphabets, St. Cyril and St. Methodius (authors of the Glagolitic Alphabet), and their five disciples, including St. Kliment Ohridski (i.e. of Ohrid) and St. Naum Preslavski (i.e. of Preslav) (authors of the Cyrillic Alphabet), as well as St. Angelarius, St. Sava, and St. Gorazd. And even though the digging has not begun yet, the first step has already been made. The relics of Saint Kliment Ohridski (of Ohrid) are already on exhibit in the museum and have attracted great public interest.

Source: AHA Blog
5-7-12

AHA Council Statement on Michigan Legislation

The AHA Council has passed the following statement on recently proposed legislation in Michigan:Academic freedom is indispensable to the educational enterprise. The AHA deplores efforts of legislators and other public officials to override the professional judgment of college and university faculty in curricular matters broadly defined. Faculty must remain in control of decisions such as establishing curriculum, creating syllabi, choosing reading material and making other kinds of assignments, and providing research opportunities for their students. Partisan political meddling is bad both for the educational development of students and for the pursuit of knowledge.

Source: CNN.com
5-7-12

Robert Caro: What LBJ could teach Washington today

Historian Robert Caro has spent almost 40 years studying and writing about President Lyndon B. Johnson. The result of that toil, in addition to two Pulitzer prizes, is about 3,388 pages so far on Johnson's life.The fourth volume, "Passage of Power," has just published.In the web exclusive video above, Caro talks about why Johnson could get things done in Washington and gives an example of what he calls Johnson's legislative genius in action....

Source: AHA Perspectives
5-7-12

Bernard Bellush, 1917–2011, Historian of Labor and the New Deal, Committed Teacher, Political Activist

Bernard Bellush, Professor Emeritus of History at the City College of New York (CCNY), died of natural causes at age 94 on December 30, 2011 in White Plains, New York.Born in the Bronx, New York, on November 15, 1917, Bellush attended New York City public schools, graduated from CCNY in 1941, and then entered the history graduate program at Columbia University. He was raised in a politically active leftist household and was active himself politically during his years at CCNY, and indeed throughout his life. Part of the famous Shepherd Hall "Alcove Number One" group of student radicals at CCNY during the 1930s (as discussed in the book and movie Arguing with the World), he identified with Norman Thomas's Socialist Party and wrote his MA thesis on Eugene V. Debs.

Source: AHA Perspectives
5-7-12

Paul Boyer, 1935–2012, Historian of the United States, Recipient of the Dunning Prize

Paul Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History, emeritus, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, passed away on March 17, 2012. A scholar of tremendous range and curiosity, he traversed virtually the entire chronology of American history, writing about subjects as diverse as colonial political rhetoric and the Branch Davidians. His books dealt most centrally with intellectual, cultural and religious reactions to social dislocation and perceived moral decay: the Salem witch panic of 1692 (Salem Possessed, co-authored with Stephen Nissenbaum, 1974); 19th- and 20th-century movements to fight vice, whether by conforming city dwellers' mores and behavior to reformers' moral visions (Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920, 1978) or by bowdlerizing texts (Purity in Print, 1968, 2nd ed., 2002); and post-1945 confrontations with the possibility of mass extinction, whether from nuclear annihilation (By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1985) or the Apocalypse (When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture, 1992).

Source: AHA Perspectives
5-7-12

Domenico Sella, Economic Historian and Scholar of 17th-Century Europe, 1926–2012

Domenico Sella, professor emeritus of economic history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, died on Thursday, March 8, 2012. He was born 16 November 1926 in Milan and took his Laurea at the University of Milan in 1949. He grew up speaking French, German, and Italian, so he studied English. Although Italian remained his most beloved language—the language he spoke with his family to the very end of his life—English set early steps in his career. English would first take him on a fellowship to De Pauw University, then to the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where he was invited to take a master's degree in history (1951). His facility in English led his doctoral adviser to suggest the oeuvre of the American historian of Christianity, Kenneth Latourette, as the focus of his dissertation, for which he received his doctorate from the University of Milan in 1954. Before moving to the United States in 1960, he was a Rockefeller Fellow (1957–59) and a British Council Fellow (1959–60) at the London School of Economics.

Source: NYT
5-6-12

Robert A. Caro: Rising Early, With a New Sentence in Mind

Robert A. Caro, 76, has spent half his life exploring the vicissitudes of power, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 biography of Robert Moses, “The Power Broker,” and in his monumental biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, now up to its fourth volume, “The Passage of Power,” which was published this month. Mr. Caro lives on Central Park West with his wife, Ina, whose most recent book is “Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train.” He typically spends Sunday working.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-6-12

Social Scientists Try to Break the Climate-Change Impasse

...Among those who doubt global warming, a Stanford University poll last year found that their skepticism had grown even stronger: Those who are extremely or very certain that global warming is not happening rose from 35 percent in 2010 to 53 percent in 2011. But those skeptics are a minority among Americans over all. The same poll found that 83 percent of adult Americans believe that the world's temperature has been going up. An even larger proportion of scientists actively working in climate change have similar views: 97 percent of them believe human-caused global warming is under way, although there is plenty of disagreement about the details (see related article, Page A15).Academic pollsters, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists have been sorting through public attitudes about global warming for some time, but even though human behavior is central to the debate, the voices of social scientists are often lost in the din."In the end, all of the changes come down to what makes us behave the way we do and think the way we do," says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. "We need to understand us, not just the natural world."...

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-6-12

'Now That I'm Relevant, I Can't Get a Job'

Tony Yang, a history lecturer at two California universities, has received unemployment benefits and been on food stamps since earning his Ph.D. He describes the psychological toll of having a doctorate but no steady source of income. [CLICK ON LINK FOR VIDEO]

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-6-12

The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps

"I am not a welfare queen," says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.That's how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship."I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare," she says....A record number of people are depending on federally financed food assistance. Food-stamp use increased from an average monthly caseload of 17 million in 2000 to 44 million people in 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Web site. Last year, one in six people—almost 50 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population—received food stamps.Ms. Bruninga-Matteau is part of an often overlooked, and growing, subgroup of Ph.D. recipients, adjunct professors, and other Americans with advanced degrees who have had to apply for food stamps or some other form of government aid since late 2007.

Source: Mary Ann Mason in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-3-12

Whither the PhD?

Mary Ann Mason is a professor and co-director of the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic & Family Security and former dean of the Graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley. Her most recent book, with Eve Mason Ekman, is "Mothers on the Fast Track." She is one of the authors of "Staying Competitive: Patching America's Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences.""I will be nearly middle-aged by the time I get my Ph.D., I won't have a family, and probably won't have a job." That comment, from a female Ph.D. candidate in history at a University of California campus, is a familiar refrain.The pursuit of a doctorate—a sometimes decade-long, low-wage quest that may or may not end with a faculty job—has been under more critical scrutiny than ever this year. Why does it take so long to earn a Ph.D.? (Recipients are age 34, on average.) Why do we produce so many Ph.D.'s when fewer than half of them will ever hold tenure-track jobs? Is this 19th-century German model of apprenticeship suited to the 21st century?And finally, does this venerable male model of graduate training match the needs of its new disciples, half of whom are women?

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
4-29-12

Social Networks for Academics Proliferate, Despite Some Doubts

As a medieval historian with some decidedly old-school habits, Guy Geltner wanted to expand his online presence, but he shuddered at the thought of "friending" or "Tweeting" to get other scholars' attention.Then a colleague introduced him to Academia.edu, one of a growing number of networking sites designed specifically for scholars."Friends told me that it's basically Facebook for nerds, which I'm very happy with," says Mr. Geltner, a professor of medieval history at the University of Amsterdam.The profile he set up includes far more information than his university's Web page could accommodate, including links to research papers, books, blogs, and forthcoming talks. It lets people know what he's working on and helps him connect with others in his field. "I like the fact that I can read someone's paper without having to be their friend or follower," he says....Zotero offers similar technical tools for researchers in other disciplines, including many in the humanities. The free system helps researchers collect, organize, share, and cite research sources.It hosts group discussions, but social networking isn't a major focus of the site.

Source: Society for Military History
5-3-12

2012 Society for Military History award winners announced

2012 SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON PRIZE The Samuel Eliot Morison Prize recognizes not any one specific achievement, but a body of contributions in the field of military history, extending over time and reflecting a spectrum of scholarly activity contributing significantly to the field. RONALD H. SPECTOR The George Washington University 2012 EDWIN H. SIMMONS MEMORIAL SERVICE AWARD The Edwin H. Simmons Award (formerly the Victor Gondos Award) is presented for long, distinguished or particularly outstanding service to the Society for Military History. BRIAN M. LINN Texas A&M University 2012 BOOK AWARDS The Distinguished Book Awards recognize the best book-length publications in English on military history, whether monograph, bibliography, guide, or other project copyrighted in the previous three calendar years. Awards (an engraved plaque and $500) will be presented at the Society's annual meeting awards luncheon May 11, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel, Arlington, VA United States: John Sloan Brown, Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1989-2005 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2011). The author is a retired United States Army Brigadier General and former Chief of Military History for the U.S. Army.

Source: USA Today
4-18-12

Historians race clock to collect Holocaust survivor stories

JERUSALEM – Zvi Shefel recalled the day the German army arrived at his Polish town of Slonim in the summer of 1942. The soldiers immediately began mass exterminations and eventually killed more than 25,000 Jews, including his mother, father and sister.There is nothing in that town that Shefel, 86, can find about his family, he said while attending the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial Thursday for the "Day of Remembrance" commemoration of the 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide of World War II."I've visited all the archives in Belarus to find the names of people, but they weren't there because the archives of Slonim were burned by the Germans when they retreated — but we have to keep the memory of what happened in order to never forget," he said....

Source: NYT
5-2-12

Bill Clinton reviews Robert Caro’s new LBJ book for the NYT

“The Passage of Power,” the fourth installment of Robert Caro’s brilliant series on Lyndon Johnson, spans roughly five years, beginning shortly before the 1960 presidential contest, including the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis and other seminal events of the Kennedy years, and ending a few months after the awful afternoon in Dallas that elevated L.B.J. to the presidency.Among the most interesting and important episodes Caro chronicles are those involving the new president’s ability to maneuver bills out of legislative committees and onto the floor of the House and Senate for a vote. One of those bills would later become the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
4-30-12

OAH Report Issued on State of History Within the National Park Service

The National Park Service (NPS) has “imperiled” its own work in history with insufficient support to its history workforce, isolation of this workforce from the rest of the agency, underfunding, “narrow and static conceptions of history’s scope,” and “timid interpretation,” according to a report undertaken at the invitation of the National Park Service and published by the Organization of American Historians. The report urged the NPS, among other things, to “recommit to history.”This article, written by Allen Mikaelian, appears here courtesy of AHA Perspectives.Written by four historians—Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla R. Miller, Gary B. Nash, and David Thelen—Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, which is based on a study started in 2008, also reports finding about 150 “effective, inspiring models” of how history is being done well in the National Park Service, and offers 14 case studies of “lamps lighting the path ahead.” The authors of the study gathered information from NPS employees conducting historical work, retired NPS employees at all levels, and professional historians outside the NPS who became stakeholders by virtue of their contributions to NPS programs and sites.

Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
4-30-12

AHA Executive Director Grossman Testifies on FY ’13 NEH Budget

American Historical Association Executive Director James Grossman recently testified before the House Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. Speaking on behalf of the AHA and the National Humanities Alliance, Grossman urged the subcommittee to provide no less than $154.3 million to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for fiscal year 2013. This represents a small increase over the 2012 appropriation, and was the same amount requested by the Obama administration.Grossman told the subcommittee that the current level of support going to NEH was “akin to plowing under our seed corn,” as young scholars find themselves unable to complete the research that goes into the books that launch academic careers. This has wide implications, Grossman argued. Without an understanding of our own heritage, those of other nations, and of foreign languages, he stated, “We can neither formulate informed foreign policy or even military strategy, nor compete in a global marketplace.”

Source: NYT
5-1-12

Benzion Netanyahu, Hawkish Scholar, Dies at 102

Benzion Netanyahu, a scholar of Judaic history who lobbied in the United States for the creation of the Jewish state, wrote a revisionist account of the Spanish Inquisition and became a behind-the-scenes adviser to his son Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, died on Monday at his home in Jerusalem. He was 102.The prime minister’s office announced the death.The elder Mr. Netanyahu’s views were relentlessly hawkish. He argued that Jews inevitably faced discrimination that was racial, not religious, and that compromising with Arabs was futile.

Source: NYT
5-1-12

Academia Occupied by Occupy

If surveys of Occupy Wall Street supporters conducted last fall still hold true, the crowds of protesters expected to turn out Tuesday for May Day events across the country will most likely skew male, young, white, college educated, underpaid, and thoroughly disgusted with the American political system.But the crowds may also be notably heavy on another demographic cohort: notebook-wielding social scientists hoping to get a more precise understanding of the nebulously organized individuals marching under the banner “We are the 99 percent.”...“This thing just erupted so quickly,” said Alex S. Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College who studies the policing of demonstrations. “It’s almost overwhelming to deal with all the information that’s out there.”