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: Oklahoma Daily
2-28-12
Instructors need to teach the U.S. Constitution to all students in a stimulating way to create well-educated citizens who are aware of their responsibilities, according to seven panelists in a discussion Tuesday [at the University of Oklahoma]....National Public Radio host Diane Rehm moderated the panel, which was part of OU’s inaugural “Teach-In: A Day with Some of the Greatest Teachers in America.”The U.S. needs leaders and teachers who can make the Constitution relevant to students of all ages and backgrounds, Pulitzer-prize winning historian David McCullough said.“There is nothing wrong with the younger generation,” he said. “The younger generation is terrific, and any problems they have, any failings they have, and what they know and don’t know is not their fault — it’s our fault.”Teachers are the most important people in the society, and they should not be blamed for these failings either, McCullough said.“I think that history, the love of history and the understanding of history begins truly, literally at home,” McCullough said....
Source: NYT
2-26-12
As the conservative polemicist Pat Buchanan prepared last fall for the release of his book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?,” some friends who worked with him at MSNBC were worried. The book, they told him, would provoke controversy and threaten his professional well-being.Undeterred, Mr. Buchanan began his book tour, but his friends were right. He stopped being asked to appear on shows on MSNBC, the cable news channel where he had been employed for nearly 10 years. On Feb. 16, the channel said in a brief statement: “We’ve parted ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well.”...Timothy Stanley, a British historian whose biography of Mr. Buchanan, “The Crusader,” was released two weeks ago, said he thought the departure was a “marketing decision” by MSNBC, a unit of Comcast. “They took an opportunity to get rid of someone who was doing damage to their liberal brand.”...Mr. Stanley said that “Buchanan is very clever and careful at not saying whether the end of white America is a good or bad thing.”...
Source: Courtney E. Martin in the CS Monitor
2-24-12
Courtney E. Martin is leading The Op-Ed Project’s Public Voices Fellowship Program at Princeton, which aims to get more women and people of color to enter public debate. You can read more about her work at courtneyemartin.com.While watching Melissa Harris-Perry debut her own show on MSNBC last weekend, I found myself reacting with a sort of battered awe: A woman of color, hosting a serious show on a serious cable-news channel? Another glass ceiling, shattered.
Source: N-Y Historical Society
2-16-12
New York, NY, February 16, 2012 —Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, announced today that historian John Lewis Gaddis, recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2005, will receive New-York Historical’s seventh annual American History Book Prize for George F. Kennan: An American Life(Penguin Press, 2011). He will be presented with a $50,000 cash award, an engraved medal and the title of American Historian Laureate on April 13, 2012, during the Weekend with History event of the New-York Historical's Chairman's Council.Roger Hertog, Chairman of the New-York Historical Society's Board of Trustees, stated: “A master historian vividly tells the story of the grand strategist who shaped foreign policy over the last sixty years.”
Source: Joe Nocera in the NYT
2-25-12
Joe Nocera is a columnist for the NYT.“Rick Santorum is John Winthrop,” the historian and author John M. Barry was saying the other day.Barry is in a unique position to make such a judgment. His most recent book, published last month, is entitled “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul.” To call it a biography sells it short. What it is, really, is the history of an idea — an idea that Williams articulated before anyone else — about the critical importance of separating church from state. So revolutionary was this idea that it caused Williams to be banished from Massachusetts and to seek refuge in nearby Rhode Island, which he founded. In doing so, Williams created the first place in the Western world where people could believe in any God they wished — or no God at all — without fear of retribution.
Source: AP
2-24-12
ALBANY, N.Y. — Feb. 27 is an important date in Harold Holzer's life for a couple of reasons, not the least of which it's his wedding anniversary.The other is linked to Abraham Lincoln, the subject of numerous Holzer books, essays, lectures and television appearances over the years. It was on that date in 1860 when the tall, gaunt lawyer from Illinois gave a political speech at Manhattan's Cooper Union, an address Holzer and other historians credit with setting Lincoln on the path to the White House in that year's presidential election.Feb. 27 serves as another milestone for Holzer when his 42nd book — "Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory," is published Monday by Harvard University Press.The book's release is timed to the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which the nation's 16th president spent months contemplating, discussing and rewriting in 1862 before issuing it in September of that year, just days after Union forces turned back Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army at the bloody Battle of Antietam in Maryland....
Source: The Blaze
2-22-12
With President Barack Obama recently signing into law the Federal Aviation Administration’s bill that would modernize flight to include GPS technology and in turn open up the sky to commercial and private unmanned aerial vehicles, there are not only concerns over stronger oversight by law enforcement but also in hobbyist drone operation.For example, drones have been used by the media to capture aerial footage of Russian protests and riots in Poland. A civilian drone operated in Texas recently spotted a meat packing plant violating laws by dumping animal products into a local stream.
Source: Press Release
2-11-12
Edwin Black has announced that after 1.2 million copies of IBM and the Holocaust have sold worldwide, the book is completely out of print. However, on the anniversary of the book's original publication in 2001, a new “Expanded Edition” will be released which will include some 32 pages of never-before-published internal IBM correspondence, State and Justice Department memos and concentration camp documents that will graphically chronicle exactly what IBM did and what they knew during the twelve-year Hitler regime. IBM has never denied any of the information in the book and for years has claimed that it has no information about its Hitler-era activities involving the Third Reich.
Source: AHA Today
2-22-12
Last week we announced that the AHA is initiating a History Tuning Project, supported by a grant from Lumina Foundation, to define what a student should understand and be able to do at the completion of a history degree program. The announcement received a great response and was featured in articles at Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle.Many history professionals contacted us to express their desire to be involved, and today we have information on how to do so.Apply The AHA seeks an enthusiastic group of 60 history faculty who represent institutions of diverse types in terms of size, source of funding (public/private), populations served, curricular emphases, location, and degrees offered to be a part of the History Tuning Project. Interested parties should fill out this application by March 16, 2012.
Source: PennLive
2-19-12
Like most professions, presidents vary in quality. There are the good, the bad and the forgettable. But who is the best? The worst? And just how does Pennsylvania’s James Buchanan stack up?Professors at colleges around the midstate shared their opinions. While the majority of history professors named Lincoln as the best overall, when it came to judging for economic, homeland security or international issues, his name is absent from the “best” or “worst” slot.Here are the verdicts of the professors interviewed.The best Abraham Lincoln “Most scholars would say he faced the most awesome challenges and handled them in a way that was as good as it can possibly get. Lincoln’s ability to manage a war to a successful conclusion, a very complex and bloody war, and to redefine the meaning of America — that’s pretty good stuff.” — Michael J. Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College.“Lincoln was both the greatest communicator and also the best decision-maker. He was responsible for saving the union more than any other individual. He created a series of speeches and letters that explain American civic life more than anyone else has ever done.” — Matthew Pinsker, professor of history at Dickinson College.
Source: WaPo
2-18-12
Robert K. Webb, 89, a longtime history professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County who was one of the country’s foremost scholars of British history, died Feb. 15 at his home in Washington. He had lymphoma, his daughter Margaret Webb Pressler said.Dr. Webb, who usually published under the name R.K. Webb, was perhaps best known as the author of “Modern England: From the 18th Century to the Present,” which was first published in 1968 and remained a standard college textbook for more than 30 years. He wrote several other books and was also the co-author, with Yale historian Peter Gay, of another college textbook, “Modern Europe,” first published in 1973....
Source: Minnesota Public Radio
2-21-12
A New York Times op-ed, "The M.R.S. and the Ph.D" sparked a conversation among The Daily Circuit team last week about educated women today and their prospects for marriage. For more than a century, women were often forced to choose between an education and a husband. We were wondering: Is this still the case? Does marriage suit educated women?Kerri Miller will be speaking with Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. She is the author of the op-ed that spurred this in-depth segment....
Source: Democrat and Chronicle
2-20-12
Lynn D. Gordon showed a passion for promoting the role of women in history, both in scholarly writings and in inspirational teaching at the University of Rochester.Ms. Gordon, who died on Feb. 9 from cancer at the age of 65, played a key role in the early years of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Studies at UR. After her book, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era was published more than two decades ago, Ms. Gordon was named president of the History of Education Society. Acting on her interest in women trailblazers in history, Ms. Gordon started on a biography about Dorothy Thompson, who was a foreign correspondent and columnist from the 1920s to the 1950s. When Ms. Gordon died, she had nearly completed the biography. Her family and colleagues hope that they can finish and publish this work....
Source: UPenn Almanac
2-21-12
Dr. Lee Benson, professor emeritus of history and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, died on February 10 from complications after a fall. He was 90 years of age.He was co-founder of the Netter Center’s university-assisted community school program that has, since its inception in 1985, been seen as a national model of university civic engagement. Dr. Benson continued to be fully engaged with the Netter Center, serving on its Faculty Advisory Board, writing and co-teaching with the Center’s director an undergraduate seminar on “Urban University-Community Relations” until his death. He was co-executive editor of the Netter Center’s Universities and Community Schools journal, co-author of Dewey’s Dream (2007), and was the author or co-author of dozens of articles and chapters on university civic engagement and the role of higher education in educating students for democratic citizenship.Dr. Ira Harkavy, director of the Netter Center called his colleague, “a distinguished scholar, inspiring and beloved teacher, and active citizen, who devoted his life to working to change the world for the better. Lee’s pioneering work, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, introduced the application of social science theory and methodology to the discipline of history.”
Source: WaPo
2-19-12
The Republican presidential campaign is breathing new life into the Founding Fathers.In recent months, Republican candidates have invoked these original American statesmen to provide powerful political precedents on issues as diverse as the “Me Generation,” inequality, the legalization of marijuana, the policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, foreign military intervention, same-sex marriage and religion in public life. And although in real life they often bitterly disagreed with one another, the newly imagined Founding Fathers have reached a surprising degree of harmony in the minds of the GOP presidential candidates on these contemporary matters — many of which were unimaginable in an era of horse-drawn carriages, kerosene lamps and powdered wigs....Many historians say, however, that the GOP candidates’ portrait of the past misrepresents it.“You can’t ask what the framers would do without giving them the same information we have,” says Stanford University history professor Jack Rakove. “You can’t pluck them out of the past and put them down in the present. They were deeply empirical in their political thinking.”...
Source: NYT
2-20-12
Ronald Fraser, an English oral historian known for his deftness at collecting and presenting ordinary people’s experiences during momentous events like the Spanish Civil War, died on Feb. 10 in Valencia, Spain. He was 81.Tariq Ali, a friend and colleague, announced the death. He gave no cause.Mr. Fraser used transcriptions of interviews, the oral historian’s principal tool, to write books chronicling working-class life, the ways of a Spanish village, the 1968 student uprisings in the United States and Europe, and even his own life.His most influential book was “Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War,” a 628-page work published in 1979 that Paul Preston, a historian of the Spanish Civil War, said in The New York Times Book Review would “take its place among the dozen or so truly important books about the Spanish conflict.”...
Source: Gettysburg News
2-13-12
The 2012 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, which includes an award of $50,000, will go to co-winners William C. Harris of North Carolina State University, for “Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union,” (Kansas) and Elizabeth D. Leonard of Colby College, for “Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky” (UNC Press).The Prize is awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The winners were chosen from 116 nominations. Each will receive $25,000 and a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens's life-size bust, "Lincoln the Man" in a ceremony April 11 in New York City.The Prize was co-founded in 1990 by businessmen and philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, co-chairmen of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and co-creators of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the largest private archives of documents and artifacts in the nation. The Institute is devoted to history education, supporting history theme schools, teacher training, digital archives, curriculum development, exhibitions and publications, and the national History Teacher of the Year Award program....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-12-12
A real historian, who knows a few facts about what really happened during the Haymarket riots, has crossed swords with Wikipedia editors who are insisting on pushing a fantasy history on the great unwashed.Writing in the Chronicle, Timothy Messer-Kruse is a professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University and has been studying the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. He has also written two books on the subject.When a bomb was thrown during an anarchist rally in Chicago, America had its first Red Scare. There was a high-profile show trial and a worldwide clemency movement for the seven men executed.Messer-Kruse decided to experiment with editing one particularly misleading assertion on Wikipedia that the prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing.His quest to find out what really happened began after he read an identically worded statement in a history text book and one of his students pointed out that if the trial went on for six weeks and no evidence was presented, the question was what they talked about.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
2-15-12
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson has called it a "clash of titans," a battle over Princeton land linking two giants of American history: George Washington, father of the country, and Albert Einstein, father of modern physics.On one side are scholars and preservationists who see the 21-acre tract owned by the Institute for Advanced Study as hallowed ground where Washington led American troops to victory over the British in 1777.On the other side is the institute, where Einstein was a faculty member and where scientists see the land, next to Princeton Battlefield State Park, as the site of much-needed faculty housing.McPherson and fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer have proposed a compromise that would permanently preserve about 14 acres and allow 15 housing units, screened by trees, to be built on seven acres....
Source: NYT
2-13-12
One thing Barack Obama and Mitt Romney seem to have in common these days is an appreciation for the neoconservative historian Robert Kagan.The Romney campaign has retained Mr. Kagan as a foreign-policy adviser, and according to news reports, President Obama has read and been influenced by a recent Kagan essay in The New Republic, which addresses “the myth of American decline” and underscores the importance of the United States’ maintaining its “global responsibilities.”
