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: Inside Higher Ed
12-13-10
In my two years working in the president's office at Harvard University, before I was laid off in spring, I gave myself the job of steward of her books. Gift books would arrive in the mail, or from campus visitors, or from her hosts when she traveled; books by Harvard professors were kept on display in reception or in storage at our Massachusetts Hall office; books flowed in from publishers, or authors seeking blurbs, or self-published authors of no reputation or achievement, who sometimes sent
Source: Inside Higher Ed
12-8-10
The German critic Walter Benjamin once gave a set of satirical pointers about how to write fat books -- for example, by making the same point repeatedly, giving numerous examples of the same thing, and writing a long introduction to outline the project, then reminding the reader of the plan as often as possible. Whether or not they are aware of doing so, many academic authors seem to follow his advice closely. Samuel Moyn's The Last Utopia: Human Rights in Histor
Source: New Statesman
11-30-10
In this week's London Review of Books, the first four letters are devoted to discussing Richard J Evans's damning review of the American historian Timothy Snyde
Source: WaPo
12-8-10
IN LONDON The first sign that something is awry inside the venerable halls of University College London is a fresh red scrawl on the side of the regal entrance that simply reads, "Join the fight."
Inside, Ellen Evans, a 20-year-old English major, was doing just that, standing among sleeping bags and clothes strewn on the floor of an "occupied" auditorium. Along with tens of thousands of other British students who have undergone a political awakening in recent mo
Source: Washington Examiner
12-8-10
As angry Democrats beat a path to television cameras Wednesday to denounce a White House tax compromise with Republicans, President Obama was making a show of being presidential....
"He is certainly straining to prove that he is tough," said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. "But there is a real threat to the White House now in that it is officially open season on the administration from the left and the right....
"The key risk in all of this
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-7-10
...Chinese students tend to spend less time on sport and other activities which are not core components of the "gaokao", a set of exams that determines their place at university, and indeed in life.
The pressure of the gaokao has been blamed for a lack of creativity in China by some critics. Xu Jilin, a professor of history at East China Normal University, whose son is at a Shanghai middle school, wrote in October that "this rigid examination system has created an exa
Source: CNN.com
12-7-10
OFF-SET: In this Parker Spitzer blog exclusive, we talk with the noted historian Eric Foner, author of the new book,"The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery."
Foner is a history professor at Columbia University and has written many acclaimed books on the Civil War period, including"Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men."...How different is today's GOP party from the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln?
It could not be more different. Lincoln
Source: Palm Beach Post
12-6-10
Donald Walter Curl, an original faculty member at Florida Atlantic University and a Florida historian considered the expert on Addison Mizner architecture, died Saturday after battling lymphoma for three years. He was 75.
He is survived by his partner of 30 years, Fred L. Eckel, a niece and two nephews.
Born in East Liberty, Ohio, Curl received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Ohio State University, where he studied American history.
He mo
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
12-6-10
David Kiehn has spent most of his life working in film-related jobs. But it wasn't until he made a remarkable discovery - and was featured on "60 Minutes" - that anyone outside the film community took notice.
For years, Kiehn knew about "A Trip Down Market Street," a 12-minute silent film, shot in San Francisco from a cable car. The Library of Congress dated the film to 1905, but Kiehn suspected otherwise. Studying weather reports, vehicle registration records an
Source: Focus Taiwan
12-3-10
Taipei, Dec. 3 (CNA) China may jump ahead of Taiwan to publish late President Chiang Kai-shek's diaries as his descendants have yet to reach aconsensus over who has the right to authorize the use of the historical documents, scholars said Friday.
Chinese scholars are known to have been copying Chiang's diaries at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and, according to a professor of history at National Chengchi University, Liu Wei-kai, if China has organized a "group ef
Source: WaPo
12-4-10
In Washington, shame isn't what it used to be.
That was the lesson of the showdown Thursday between Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and the rest of the House of Representatives. Rangel's colleagues voted overwhelmingly to censure him for ethics violations - a punishment that included a public scolding in the House chamber.
But Rangel didn't cooperate. The rebuke would only work if he felt ashamed.
And he didn't....
"If you show shame, or
Source: Inside Higher Ed
12-6-10
Jonathan D. Katz's career as an art historian can be framed by controversies over federal support for art that offends some people -- and specifically about art dealing with gay people.
He was working on his dissertation, "Opposition, Incorporated: On the Homosexualization of Post-War American Art," when in 1989 the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, called off an exhibit of sexually explicit work by Robert Mapplethorpe, amid calls from many conservative lawmakers to
Source: NYT
12-4-10
Victorians were enamored of the new science of statistics, so it seems fitting that these pioneering data hounds are now the subject of an unusual experiment in statistical analysis. The titles of every British book published in English in and around the 19th century — 1,681,161, to be exact — are being electronically scoured for key words and phrases that might offer fresh insight into the minds of the Victorians.
This research, which has only recently become possible, thanks to a
Source: Citizen Times
12-1-10
Citizen Times: Mr. Pipes, you head various organizations concerning the Middle East and Islam, and are one of the best known American writers on these subjects. How did this all begin for you?Daniel Pipes: I am a historian of Islam with a special interest in the role of Islam in public life. I received my Ph.D. in 1978, just as Ayatollah Khomeini appeared. For the first time in modern history, Islam had a large and obvious role in Wester
Source: Inside Higher Ed
12-1-10
The University of Minnesota was sued in federal court Tuesday over allegations that a website maintained by its Holocaust studies center defamed a Turkish-American organization in a way that raised First Amendment and due process issues. The suit came just days after the Holocaust center removed the material that is the focus of the suit -- although the university maintains that it acted as part of a routine review and not because of the threat of litigation.
Underlying the legal di
Source: PR Newswire
12-1-10
MONTGOMERY, Ala., Sept. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the summer 2008 issue of its Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, was part of a network of persons, financed by the Government of Turkey, who dispute that the tragic events of World War I constituted an Armenian genocide. We now realize that we misunderstood Professor Lewy's scholarship, were wrong to assert that he was part of a network fi
Source: Press Release
12-1-10
In 1990, members of the Colonial Society established a prize of two thousand five hundred dollars, in memory of Walter Muir Whitehill, for many years Editor of Publications for the Colonial Society and the moving force behind the organization. It is be awarded for an outstanding essay on colonial history, not previously published, with preference being given to New England subjects. A distinguished committee of members of the Colonial Society act as judges: Bernard Bailyn, Adams University Profe
Source: NYT
12-1-10
Although Irving Greenblum, an 81-year-old investor and retired furniture store owner, has four grown sons, he says he is “the last Greenblum who lives in Laredo,” a city on Texas’ border with Mexico.
That is because his sons — three trained as lawyers, one as an architect — have moved away and built their careers in larger Texas cities, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio....
Faced with an economic and social decline, shrinking synagogue membership and the eventual end of ce
Source: Adirondack Almanack
12-1-10
The Board of Directors of the Adirondack Historical Association announced today that Caroline M. Welsh, the Director of the Adirondack Museum since 2007, has been replaced by Michael Lombardi, the current Director of Finance and Operations. Lombardi is being named Interim Director, and Welsh, who has been with the museum since 1987, will become Senior Art Historian and Director Emerita.
Welsh served the Adirondack Museum for over two decades, first as a Curator and then as Director.
Source: Boston Herald
11-26-10
The dean of Cape shipwreck historians thinks the wooden timbers found on Nauset Beach recently belong to the schooner Montclair, a three-masted cargo vessel that broke apart on the outer bars in March 1927.
William Quinn of Orleans, said the method of construction of the timbers he has observed at the Nauset Beach wreck site jibes with what he knows about the Montclair, which was bound for New York from Halifax, Nova Scotia, when fate intervened and five men died in icy, storm-churn
