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: Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-12-11
The Egyptians who poured into the streets of their cities early this year were well aware that they were making history. "In 10 years, when I see my children studying Egyptian history, I want to say: 'I was there,'" Ahmad, a young demonstrator on his way into Tahrir Square, told me on February 4, a week before President Hosni Mubarak was driven from office.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
6-12-11
It was 5:30 a.m. when Edward L. Ayers received the e-mail. No hello. No signature. Just a forwarded copy of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell's Confederate History Month proclamation.
Source: NJ Courier News Editorial Board
6-13-11
We hope that when former Rutgers University president and future $335,000-a-year history professor Richard L. McCormick sits down to write his “What I did this summer” essay, it includes some soul-searching, and a sense that he should turn down the gig or do it for a whole lot less money.It's absurd that the retiring university president will earn so much to be a history professor. After stepping down as president next year, McCormick will take a year off — while being paid handsomely — before returning to the school as a history teacher.
Source: NYT
6-9-11
Boston College filed a motion this week to quash a federal subpoena seeking access to confidential interviews of paramilitary fighters for the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Source: Salon
6-9-11
Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large.On the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Americans are engaged in new debates over what it was about. Southern revisionists have long tried to claim it wasn't about slavery, but rather "Northern aggression" – which is a tough sell since they seceded from the Union despite Lincoln's attempts at compromise on slavery, and then attacked the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina. That would be Southern aggression, by any standard.
Source: University of Texas News
6-7-11
AUSTIN, Texas — Jeremi Suri, an acclaimed scholar of international history, has been named the first holder of the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law and has received a joint appointment at the Lyndon B.
Source: WaPo
6-7-11
“It’s not only our local politicians,” said Bernard Demczuk, a professor of African American and D.C. history at George Washington University, and for many years a political aide to Barry when he was mayor. “It’s John Edwards and Anthony Weiner, too. It’s a much more attuned and demanding citizenry powered by new media and social media.”Although the alleged improprieties took place before Gray assumed office, some say his failure to fully address the accusations has paralyzed his administration.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
6-7-11
Luciano Buso claims to have found Giotto di Bondone's signature hidden in the 14ft-long, sepia-coloured burial cloth, as well as the number 15.The historian believes that the number is a reference to 1315, and that the artist was commissioned in that year to come up with an exact copy of the relic because the original was badly damaged after centuries of being hawked around the Holy Land and Europe.
Source: Politico
6-7-11
POLITICO historian-in-residence James Hohmann spots something of a precedent for Tim Pawlenty's economic address today in Chicago — a speech heavy on big policy promises that could easily have unforeseen political consequences. Hohmann emails:Ronald Reagan also chose Chicago to deliver a economic policy speech in September 1975 as part of his primary challenge against President Gerald Ford.
Source: Guardian (UK)
6-7-11
Oxford University has formally declared it has "no confidence" in the policies of the universities minister, David Willetts, in the first sign of a concerted academic backlash against the government's higher education reforms.
Source: Providence Business News
6-6-11
PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Historical Society announced Friday that C. Morgan Grefe will be its new executive director as of June 13, the first woman to fill the role.Grefe will take over for Michael Gerhardt, who has filled the position on an interim basis since March, when Bernard Fishman resigned.Grefe was the director of the Newell D. Goff Center for Education and Public Programs at the society since 2005. She is also an adjunct assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island.
Source: The First Post (UK)
6-7-11
AC Grayling's new 'private university', announced on Sunday amid great fanfare as a rival to Oxbridge, finds itself mired just two days later in allegations of plagiarism and elitism - with one of its star professors, Richard Dawkins, taking time to distance himself from it, and a student protest planned for later today.
Source: Middle East Forum
6-7-11
PHILADELPHIA – Efraim Karsh today becomes director of the Middle East Forum. Daniel Pipes, who founded the Middle East Forum in 1994 and has served as its director since, assumes the presidency of the Forum, a new, full-time position.
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA Blog
6-6-11
A new report, from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, on median salaries for undergraduate majors finds that history majors go on to earn fairly respectable salaries. Looking at the median salary for everyone aged 18 to 64 years old with an undergraduate degree in any one of 171 different fields, the report finds that history majors do the best in the humanities, and better than students in a majority of the other fields.
Source: Boston Herald
6-6-11
Sarah Palin yesterday insisted her claim at the Old North Church last week that Paul Revere “warned the British” during his famed 1775 ride — remarks that Democrats and the media roundly ridiculed — is actually historically accurate. And local historians are backing her up....
Source: AHA Blog
http://blog.historians.org/news/1345/good-night-sw
The death, on the last day of May, of David Darlington, associate editor of Perspectives on History, coeditor of the AHA’s Directory of History Departments, Historical Organizations, and Historians, co-manager of the annual meeting Job Center, and an invaluable colleague, came as a shock to all of us here at 400 A Street.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
6-5-11
A new study shows as many as 65 per cent of marriages end in divorce - because couples found wedded life just mediocre.But according to historian Pamela Haag, that doesn't mean you can't make your stomach flip for your spouse once again - with an open mind.Haag's new book Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, & Rebel Couples, examines controversial New Age ways couples are coping with lulls.
Source: Springfield State Journal-Register
6-4-11
The advent of the Internet has revolutionized genealogy. Records by the millions are available with the twitch of a finger. But, often, when African-Americans research their genealogy, they run into a huge obstacle. It’s called slavery.The state of Illinois has compiled a little-known database that can help.
Source: Guardian (UK)
6-5-11
University lecturers and students reacted with dismay on Sunday after a group of leading British academics took a step towards the establishment of an elite US-style university system in the UK by launching a new private college offering £18,000-a-year courses.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
6-2-11
The president made the ominous prediction following the Cuban Missile Crisis, after he had successfully negotiated the peaceful withdrawal of Russian missiles from the island with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, in November 1962."(JFK) said to Mrs Kennedy after his success in the Cuban Missile Crisis: 'If anyone's going to kill me, it should happen now,"' said Professor Robert Dallek, who has examined unreleased audio interviews with Jackie Kennedy, the former first lady.