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: NPR
10-19-10
"Most of the good things that have happened in my life happened because of books," says Pulitzer Prize-winning author, journalist and historian Garry Wills — and that includes meeting his wife. They met on a plane — he was a passenger, she was a flight attendant. She took one look at his book and told him that he was too young to be reading French philosopher Henri Bergson.
"I was a bookworm from the very beginning and to this day," Wills tells NPR's Robert Siege
Source: Justin Snider at the Huffington Post
10-19-10
[Justin Snider, a contributing editor at The Hechinger Report, teaches undergraduate writing at Columbia University]
In a segment called "Waiting for Superman: Fact or Fiction?" on the BAM! Radio Network, education historian Diane Ravitch and four members of the media (including yours truly) discussed Davis Guggenheim's latest documentary, Waiting for 'Superman'.
Our host, Errol St. Clair Smith, wanted to know whether we thought the film would lead to producti
Source: Black Book Mag
10-19-10
Fashion stuntwoman Lady Gaga is no stranger to controversial red carpet attire designed for the gossip mill, but even the provocateur pop queen’s meat gown at the recent MTV Awards couldn’t compete with the Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am’s wardrobe decision. For a futuristic performance at the pre-show, Will.i.am opted to take Jay-Z’s ‘All black everything’ mantra literally, donning head-to-toe leather and painting his face black, thereby performing a kind of inverse, 21st-Century minstrelsy, and r
Source: NY Post
10-17-10
A Brooklyn College history professor who panned members of an influential faculty committee as "lily white" has resigned after being elected to the panel, The Post has learned.
Associate professor Jocelyn Wills sent an e-mail to colleagues voting for members of four faculty-search committees to recruit new deans to the college. She criticized the administrative appointees on the panel as racially wrong.
"Please spread the word among your colleagues and fr
Source: Ron Radosh at Pajamas Media
8-5-10
[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York's Queensborough Community College.]The announcement last week by the FBI that it was releasing the FBI files of the late radical historian, Howard Zinn, was not met with universal acclaim. In fact, many leftists were enraged. Typical was the reaction of Noam Chomsky, who was
Source: National Review
10-19-10
[Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.]
Who says Islam is a totalitarian doctrine? Well, Geert Wilders does, of course. As the editors point out in Monday’s superb National Review Online editorial, the Dutch parliamentarian has even had the temerity to compare Islam with Nazism. Strong stuff indeed, and for speaking it, Wilders has earned the disdain not just of the us
Source: Louisville Courier-Journal
10-18-10
The guest speakers and attendees of the upcoming Filson Institute Academic Conference had better be on their best historically accurate behavior, because James Loewen will be in the house....
He recently responded to e-mailed questions.
It's been 15 years since “Lies My Teacher Told Me” was published. You concluded that there wasn't one textbook that did a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Have things changed since then?
Source: NYT
10-18-10
WASHINGTON — A rift has emerged within the Democratic Party between liberal economists, who generally view the 2009 stimulus package as a success and say that Keynesian economics should remain the heart of the party’s economic policy, and elected officials, who in growing numbers have shunned affiliation with the $787 billion effort and are expressing doubts about the effectiveness of fiscal intervention....
Ambivalence about using government borrowing and spending to spur the econo
Source: Medievalists.net
10-13-10
A historian who changed the face of modern Welsh history is to be commemorated with a biennial Public Lecture in his name at Bangor University. The inaugural J. E. Lloyd Lecture will discuss J.E. Lloyd’s own reinterpretation of Welsh history. The Lecture takes place at 6.15 on Friday 22 October at Bangor University’s Main Arts Lecture Theatre and is open to all.
John Edward Lloyd (1861–1947) played a major part in the early history of the University College of North Wales, Bangor, b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-14-10
History in schools is being put under threat as thousands of children are allowed to drop the subject at the age of 14 for “trivial reasons”, according to a leading academic.
Dr Sean Lang, senior lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University, criticised the “absolutely ludicrous” system in Britain that requires pupils to choose subject options half-way through secondary education.
He said many children were pushed into abandoning vital components of the curriculum fo
Source: Rolling Stone
10-28-10
For many progressives, the presidency of Barack Obama has been deeply disappointing. To hear some prominent lefties tell it, the New Jesus of the campaign trail has morphed into the New Judas of the Oval Office. "He loves to buckle," MSNBC host Cenk Uygur declared in a July segment called "Losing the Left." "Obama's not going to give us real change — he's going to give us pocket change and hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner."...
From the outset, it w
Source: Jerusalem Post
10-14-10
The Jerusalem Report: How did the events of October 2000 impact on Israeli society?Prof. Elie Rekhess: We must evaluate these events and their aftermath on three levels: Arab society, Jewish society and the government.
In terms of Arab society: Although the tensions had been building and the riots should not have come as a surprise to anyone, the events of October 2000 were the “Big Bang” for the Arab community in Israel. The riots and t
Source: Tulsa World
10-11-10
CLAREMORE - The class had already reached the Punic Wars by late September, but the students in Rogers State University's introduction to military history course have a lot of ground left to cover if they are going to get to the Vietnam War by the end of the semester.
It's only the second time the course has been offered at RSU, and yet it has 20 students.
"That's a large enrollment for a class that's only been offered once," said Paul Hatley, the associ
Source: East London Advertiser
10-10-10
A LEADING authority on contemporary British history who has taught generations of students at Queen Mary’s Mile End campus has been elevated to the House of Lords.
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary where he helped set up the influential Mile End Group which hosts public lectures on contemporary British history, focusing on Whitehall and politics.He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. He has written a number of books including Never
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-8-10
A historian has launched a one-man campaign to protect 1930s fascist graffiti, claiming it is of historical significance.
The black-painted slogan, now barely visible, reads "STAND BY THE KING", with the crooked-flash logo of the British Union of Fascists encircled below.
The work is thought to date from the abdication crisis when Edward VIII had to choose between keeping his throne or marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1936....
Alan Qu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-8-10
The appointment of historian and presenter Simon Schama as the Coalition Government's new history tsar has been condemned as insincere and insulting by a leading academic.
Prof Mary Beard, classics professor at Cambridge University, described the announcement as an example of Michael Gove, the education secretary, "playing to the populist gallery".
She described the idea that a celebrity could be "parachuted" in to solve problems as insulting to Brit
Source: CHE
10-7-10
What did Richard M. Nixon tell members of a federal grand jury when he testified before them in June 1975? Hoping to find out, a leading Watergate historian and four historical associations have filed a petition in federal court to make that testimony public. Grand-jury testimony almost always remains sealed. In this instance, the petitioners said, the historical interest justifies opening it.
"There's important historical information in this testimony, and there's really no re
Source: National Post
10-8-10
The finalists for McGill University’s Cundill Prize in History, the largest award for historical non-fiction in the world, were announced on Thursday.
The nominees are:
• Giancarlo Casale for The Ottoman Age of Exploration, published by Oxford University Press. Casale is an assistant professor of the history of the Islamic world and the 2009-2011 McKnight Land Grant Professor at the University of Minnesota.
• Diarmaid Macculloch for A History of Christiani
Source: William & Mary News
10-7-10
Rhys Isaac, former Distinguished Visiting Professor of Early American History at the College, has died of cancer. He was 72.
Isaac, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for his book “The Transformation of Virginia, 1740 -1790,” enjoyed an exemplary career in teaching and research, most especially in his scholarship on Colonial North America. He remains the only Australian historian ever to win a Pulitzer.
Isaac served several stints at William & Mary. He came in August
Source: IUPUI News Center
10-11-10
Despite this country’s tradition of separating church and state, Americans have historically believed that our country was created for a divine purpose.
“The debate has been over just what that divine purpose has been – and that’s where politics has played a role,” says Philip Goff, executive director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, part of the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.
Goff is one of several religious historians interviewed for “God
