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: Press Release
4-6-10
Ernest Freeberg will receive the 2010 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award, presented by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT) of the American Library Association (ALA). Freeberg was selected for his book,“Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent” (Harvard University Press, 2008).
The award is named for the late Idaho University librarian Eli M. Oboler—famed as a “champion of intellectual freedom who demanded the dismantling of all barrier
Source: Cutting Edge News
4-26-10
[Cutting Edge senior correspondent Martin Barillas edits Speroforum.com.]Wikipedia posters continued to struggle with the campaign to delete information about IBM’s involvement in the Holocaust as contributors posted and reposted conflicting theories of what should and should not be allowed to appear in the Internet encyclopedia. Wikipedia is the massive online project anyone can edit at any time, generally using fictitious names. Key among the issues in contention was whet
Source: Independent (UK)
4-25-10
...The professor of Russian history at Birkbeck, University of London, who has previously been engaged in at least two legal disputes with other historians, has been accused and cleared of plagiarism, and received hate mail while an academic at Cambridge. One colleague who did not want to be named described the most recent episode as "the tip of the iceberg"....
In 1997, the American historian Richard Pipes claimed that Figes had "quoted copiously but not always gener
Source: Times Online (UK)
4-25-10
[Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist at The Times. He was previously an investment banker and co-founder of an asset management firm.]This is, to coin a phrase,
Source: The Daily Mail (UK)
4-23-10
For a week now, an extraordinary row has had Britain’s academe in turmoil with threats of libel writs and the bloodying of distinguished reputations.
But now, in an astonishing twist to the saga, I can reveal that the offending reviews on Amazon were not, after all, written by Figes’s wife, Stephanie, herself a Cambridge University law lecturer....
In a startling admission, which will put to rest the minds of those attacked — who all feared libel writs were on their way
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
4-23-10
The April 26 issue of The New Yorker seems to have added one more nail to the reputation of the late Stephen E. Ambrose, university historian turned hugely popular -—and prolific—author of nonfiction historical narrative. Originally known for his scholarly biographies on Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon, Ambrose broke into the popular market with Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, which was turned into a well-known, and mu
Source: Guardian (UK)
4-23-10
After threatening colleagues, literary journals and newspapers with legal action last week, Orlando Figes has revealed this morning that it was not his wife who anonymously rubbished fellow historians in comments on Amazon: it was him.
In a statement released to the Daily Mail the professor of history at London's Birkbeck College said that he takes "full responsibility" for what he called "foolish errors".
The story began when historians began to not
Source: Crikey (AU)
4-19-10
A furore has erupted over Australia’s Anzac Day legacy, with the authors of a new book which questions the day’s origins accused by a rival historian of failing to acknowledge the preeminent scholar in the field.
As Australians prepare to pay tribute to the country’s fallen soldiers, La Trobe University Emeritus Scholar Inga Clendinnen has declared war on a controversial new book What’s Wrong With Anzac? The militarisation of Australian history.
Clendinnen told Crikey t
Source: Forbes
4-21-10
In China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, just published by Oxford University Press, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom provides answers to a wide range of commonly asked questions about the world's most populous country. The excerpt below describes two of the topics the book addresses: nationalism and the web.What is the role of the Internet in politic
Source: Telegraph (UK)
4-21-10
"Your only hope for rescue is the destruction of the Jews before they destroy you!" Hitler said in a 1942 message, one of thousands broadcast across the Middle East in an attempt to woo the Arab world.
In a broadcast aimed at provoking an anti-Semitic uprising in Egypt, he said: "A large number of Jews who live in Egypt, along with Poles, Greeks, Armenians and Frenchmen, have guns and ammunition.
"Some Jews in Cairo have even asked the British author
Source: CBC News
4-22-10
It was part protest, part celebration, and an estimated 20 million Americans took part.
On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, millions of people across the U.S. went to large public rallies, listened to political speeches, took part in teach-ins, went to concerts and educational fairs, and helped to clean up their communities. Air and water pollution, nuclear testing and loss of wilderness were major concerns.
Some university students in New York City donned gas masks
Source: Independent (UK)
4-20-10
The use of libel law by academics to threaten the press has been condemned by a leading literary figure. Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, spoke out against Orlando Figes, the historian and author, after Figes's wife confessed to writing several reviews for Amazon.com, praising her husband's work and trashing that of his rivals. After Figes's legal advisers had accused the TLS of defamation for first raising the issue, Stothard said: "When academics start using th
Source: Tenured Radical (Blog)
4-19-10
It is with great sadness that I report the death of Sharon Sievers on April 5, 2010 after a long illness in Long Beach, California. Sharon was the chair of the History Department (for over twelve years!) and sometime director of Women's Studies for forty years at California State University Long Beach. In the early 1980s, together with the ACLU she helped save the newly-nascent Women's Studies program by suing the university which was bowing to public pressure from neo-conservatives in the area.
Source: The New Yorker
4-26-10
[Richard Rayner writes for The New Yorker.]
Nonfiction writers who succumb to the temptations of phantom scholarship are a burgeoning breed these days, although most stop short of fabricating interviews with Presidents. But Stephen Ambrose, who, at the time of his death, in 2002, was America’s most famous and popular historian, appears to have done just that. Before publishing a string of No. 1 best-sellers, including “Band of Brothers” and “D-Day,” Ambrose had made his name chronicling the l
Source: The Nation
4-20-10
[Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. He's also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host.]
Stephen Ambrose, the best-selling historian who wrote or edited more than a dozen books about Eisenhower as general and president, based his fame in large part on what he said were his interviews with Ike – but now, eight years after Ambrose's death, an official at the Eisenhower Library in Abeline says the interviews never took p
Source: NYT
4-20-10
Thaksin Shinawatra is angry. “This is the worst political accusation I ever had,” Mr. Thaksin, a former prime minister, said Tuesday in a message delivered by a spokesman — sent, as always, from an undisclosed location abroad.
Behind the coils of barbed wire and battle-ready troops in the city’s financial district, someone has been poking fun at him, putting up signs that say, “Thaksin Shinawatra, president of a New Thai State.” It is a sensitive point for Mr. Thaksin and his red sh
Source: Telegraph (UK)
4-18-10
Orlando Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck College, London, and author of a book on Stalin, has named his wife as the author of comments criticising books written by other renowned scholars as being "dark and pretentious" and "critically dull".
Mr Figes had initially denied any knowledge of the reviewer who used the pseudonym "Historian" and wrote glowing comments about his own books.
But following an angry exchange of emails and lawye
Source: Medieval News
4-16-10
Professor Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh has been named as the first ever established Chair of Gaelic in Scotland by the University of Glasgow. The Chair has been created to recognise the University as a centre of excellence for the study of Celtic and Gaelic.
Professor Ó Maolalaigh, who is also head of Celtic and Gaelic, said: “It is a huge honour to be named as the first ever established Chair of Gaelic in Scotland by the University of Glasgow. This underlines the university’s commitment t
Source: The Nation
4-19-10
[Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. He's also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host.]
A prominent British historian has found a new way to get in trouble: Orlando Figes, a historian of Stalin's Russia at Birkbeck College, London, and a contributor to the New York Review, has admitted that his wife has been publishing hostile comments about rival historians at Amazon.co.uk under a pseudonym.
The practic
Source: NYT
4-16-10
It makes sense that people would take to the streets to protest government spending and enormous deficits during the Great Recession, when they are feeling economic pain most acutely.
What accounts for this gap between how they are faring and how they feel the country is faring? History offers some lessons. The poll reveals a deep conviction among Tea Party supporters that the country is being run by people who do not share their values, for the benefit of people who are not like th
