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: Diverse Issues in Higher Education
5-24-10
On Friday, the members of the Texas State Board of Education voted 9-5 on social studies curriculum standards for Texas Public Schools. Proposed revisions to textbooks will largely eliminate the civil rights movement from the curriculum.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous were among those who spoke before the board earlier in the week. Paige, who served as Education Secretary during President George W. Bush’s first term, implored the
Source: The Australian
5-26-10
WHEN the house of Orange-Nassau finally became monarchs in The Netherlands in 1815, it was the result of hundreds of years of manoeuvring: battles physical and political and, Susan Broomhall contends, a solid effort by generations of the family's women.
"The male line was really weak, they died in battle or were minors for many years," says Broomhall, a professor of history at the University of Western Australia. "It was the women who kept reminding people of the fami
Source: American Thinker
5-23-10
The population of Jews in the US is three percent ... but [their 'genius'] leads to their controlling so much power that even presidents are scared [of them]. Whether [President Barack] Obama will be able to escape the notion that three percent of the country is so powerful that the top gentile in the land cannot criticize Israel is not clear. The above statement was made not by a Hamas or KKK leader, but by Ali al-Amin Mazrui, director of
Source: Carlin Romano at CHE
5-23-10
[Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.]
Like attacking the Catholic Church during its heyday of killing heretics and infidels, criticizing Islamism today is not for those who jump at the sound of bubble wrap cracking.
Ibn Warraq, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim and Defending the West, operates under a pseudonym, a wise move considering that goons called for his murder on a British
Source: Boston Herald
5-24-10
A renowned Harvard professor is teaming with a local software company to change the way students learn history.
Niall Ferguson, a revisionist economic historian best known as the author of “The Ascent of Money” book and TV series, has helped create a World War II strategy game and is also developing a Web-enabled history textbook that integrates his lectures on Western civilization with data, images and minigames for students to play at critical moments.
“Today’s studen
Source: Slate.com
5-21-10
Toting big guns and an itchy trigger-finger is American University professor W. Joseph Campbell, whose new book Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism flattens established myths that you were brought up to believe were true: that Orson Welles sparked a national panic with his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast; that the New York Times suppressed news of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba at the request of the White House; that Edward R. Murrow destroyed Sen.
Source: FOX News
5-20-10
Acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates, who teaches at Princeton University, has derided the notion that there is a distinctly American idea, one that is distinguishable from the core concepts that have animated Europeans, Scandinavians, and other cultures.
"[T]ravel to any foreign country," Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, "and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up
Source: Inside Higher Ed
5-21-10
Jonathan Spence came here to deliver a speech, but don't let that fool you: his address -- the 39th Annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, which took place Thursday -- in no way resembled the sort typically associated with D.C.
The Jefferson Lecture is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which describes the lecture as "the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." Those chos
Source: Interfax (RU)
5-19-10
Stalin instructed to design the Museum of Earth Sciences that occupies eight highest floors of Moscow State University as church.
"On Stalin's idea, this hall was built as a kind of chapel, a kind of church, where only elite is allowed," historian Olga Zinovyeva told TV Center....
Source: Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed
5-19-10
[Scott McLemee writes for Inside Higher Ed.]
The new titles that arrive from publishers each week usually come with promotional material that, apart from remembering to recycle, I carefully ignore. But over the past week -- thanks to an eagle-eyed colleague -- I have been making up for this practiced neglect by lingering over one publicist's letter in particular.
It is remarkable. It may be the most striking and provocative bit of prose concerning a scholarly book to hav
Source: Austin American-Statesman
5-19-10
A majority of the panel that wrote the high school U.S. history curriculum standards issued a statement on Wednesday expressing “collective disgust … at the distorted culmination of our work” by the State Board of Education.
“We feel that the SBOE’s biased and unfounded amendments undercut our attempt to build a strong, balanced and diverse set of standards,” according to the statement, which is signed by six of the nine appointed members of the writing panel. “Texans should be outr
Source: Special to HNN
5-19-10
The American Revolution Round Table of New York has announced that Thomas Fleming’s The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers has won its 2009 award for best book on the American Revolution. A plaque will be presented to Mr. Fleming at the June 1 meeting of the Round Table at New York City’s Princeton Club. His editor, Elisabeth Kallick Dy
Source: Special to HNN
5-11-10
by David Austin Walsh
Source: AHA Press Release
5-18-10
To the Members, Current and Elected, of the Texas State Board of Education:
The State of Texas has a proud record in recognizing the importance and value of
historical knowledge and in acting on that recognition. The State Board of Education, the
Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the State Legislature have concurred on the
designation of U.S. History and Government as crucial components, not only in primary
and secondary education, but also as part of the core req
Source: Slate.com
5-17-10
Writing a college thesis is a four-step process: Brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing. But college students considering a career in government should probably add a fifth: Politics-proofing....
Poring over a politician's college thesis has become routine—a quick way for opponents and the media to define a candidate they don't know much about. Hillary Clinton's thesis on Saul Alinsky riled conservatives during her presidential bid. Michelle Obama's essay on being a black s
Source: Macau Daily Times
5-18-10
Contemporary China should never just stick to its traditions but has to be open-minded and also learn from the West in order to contribute to the creation of a new civilisation in the world, a mainland professor said in Macau yesterday.
Shen Xiaoyuen, a professor of history at the Nanjing University made the remark in a public lecture, “Critical Thoughts About New Conservatism in Contemporary Mainland China”, at the University of Macau.
New Conservatism, also known as n
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
5-18-10
THERE have been several controversies over the years with the anonymous reviews placed on Amazon, but the latest is perhaps the most astonishing. The upshot is a broadside worthy of the Battleship Potemkin blasting through the hull of the reputation of Orlando Figes, whose books of Russian history such as The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia have been widely acclaimed, not least by himself on amazon.co.uk. And it turns out he was also the nameless trasher of fellow historians Robert
Source: The Hill (Blog)
5-14-10
The political social network Vote iQ received a shot in the arm this week when Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican pollster Frank Luntz announced they would be joining the company's board of advisers. Set to launch June 3rd at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, the nonpartisan startup has already attracted the support of prominent individuals including actor Richard Dreyfuss, historian Rick Perlstein and James Fallows of The Atlantic.
The site aims to become a
Source: Toronto Sun
5-17-10
An iconic photo taken by historian Mike Filey shows three canoeists paddling out of a partly submerged, abandoned Toronto ferry.
Reproduced in an expanded edition of his 1976 book, Trillium and Toronto Island, the picture taken three years earlier captured the fate of many Lake Ontario steamships.
But in this case instead of being scrapped, the century-old paddlewheeler was raised and refitted after Filey and his wife, Yarmila, launched a bid to save the vessel after se
Source: Linfield News
5-14-10
An expert in colonial Latin-American history presented a lecture May 12, exploring how the indigenous cultures of Mexico reacted negatively to the major onslaught of disease during the Spanish conquest.
Dr. Kevin Terraciano, professor of history and chair of the Latin American Studies Program at University of California, Los Angeles, gave the 2010 Jonas A. “Steine” Jonasson Endowed Lecture to a crowd of more than 60 people.
“Most studies on the spread of disease beginn
