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: The Daily Californian
3-11-10
UC Berkeley history and law professor emeritus Thomas Garden Barnes, who was known as an erudite academe of English, French, American and Canadian law and history, died Tuesday. He was 80.
Born April 29, 1930, Barnes graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in 1952, and went on to receive his doctorate in history at Oxford University three years later.
Barnes began teaching history and law at UC Berkeley in 1960 and retired in 2005 after 45 years of service. He
Source: EurekAlert
3-16-10
Natalie Zemon Davis, professor emerita from Princeton University and now a University of Toronto history scholar whose books have reached a wide audience, has won one of the world's top academic prizes.
The Holberg Prize - established by the Norwegian parliament in 2003 and worth $700,500 US - is awarded for outstanding scholarly work in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. Philosopher Ian Hacking, also of the University of Toronto, won the prize last year.
Source: Welland Tribune (Canada)
3-15-10
Sarah Maloney has a passion for history.
You can hear it in hear voice and see it in her eyes as she talks about the project she's been working on for the past several months.
The Port Colborne resident, who has a master's degree in history from the University of Western Ontario, was one of two people hired to by Brock University to carry out its 1812 Online Digitization Project.
"It's exciting because I got to see, handle and examine all of Niagara's
Source: Daily Telegraph (AU)
3-16-10
BOER War soldier Harry "Breaker" Morant was the victim of a cruel and calculated conspiracy by his British commanders, a Parliamentary committee has heard.
More than 100 years after Morant and his co-accused Peter Handcock were executed, the descendants of the men yesterday sought the help of Parliament to pardon the men.
But historians said they were guilty of murdering Boer prisoners, civilians and a German missionary - and their crimes should not be forgive
Source: The Register (UK)
3-15-10
Copyright-dependent industries risk alienating the public and undermining intellectual property laws with their unregulated and aggressive tactics, according to an historian who has studied nearly 400 years of piracy and intellectual property law.
Adrian Johns, a professor of history at [the University of Chicago], told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that the behaviour of large multinational companies whose business is based on copyright, such as record labels, publishers and
Source: NYT
3-13-10
Kenneth Dover, an eminent scholar of ancient Greek life, language and literature who became known for his willingness to break longstanding taboos in print, from his frank descriptions of sexual behavior (both the Greeks’ and his own) to his baldly stated desire to bring about the death of a vexing Oxford colleague, died on Sunday in Cupar, Scotland. He was 89.
His death was announced by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Mr. Dover retired as the university’s chancellor in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
3-13-10
Professor Jack Pole, the historian who died on January 30 aged 87, was a pioneering figure in the study of American political culture whose challenge to the notion of American "exceptionalism" ignited a debate that has yet to burn out.
Pole, who was Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford from 1979 to 1989, published some of his most important work in the 1960s, when he was Reader in American History at Cambridge University. Most notable was Political Representatio
Source: NYT
3-13-10
Richard Stites, who opened up new territory for historians with a landmark work on the Russian women’s movement and in numerous articles and books on Russian and Soviet mass culture, died on Sunday in Helsinki, where he was doing research. He was 78 and lived in Washington.
The cause was complications from cancer, his son Andrei said.
Mr. Stites made a practice of seeking out unexplored historical byways. After publishing “The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Femi
Source: FOX News
3-11-10
While the Texas textbook battle continues to simmer – what’s in, what’s out – parents may be inspired to start digging into their own children’s books to see what’s inside. Experts say that's a great idea. Gilbert T. Sewall, Director of the American Textbook Council, says, “The facts are often used to create an interpretation or reality that simply is at the very least controversial and may be dead wrong.”
As for controversy, Professor Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton,
Source: International Herald Tribune
3-10-10
The name Richard Hofstadter has been summoned up a lot lately in liberal opinion columns and the blogosphere as an eloquent and intellectually impeccable explanation for political developments like the Tea Party movement, the stardom of Sarah Palin, and the claim on right-wing talk radio that Barack Obama is a “socialist,” maybe even a “bolshevik” leading America to ruin.
Mr. Hofstadter was the highly respected, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Columbia University among whose mos
Source: The Nation
3-9-10
J. MATTHEW GALLMANI read this article with interest because I have been on the periphery of some of the events Jon Wiener describes. I would like to take this opportunity to correct the record on a few points.
In April 2008 Dr. Gregg Michel, an historian from Texas, contacted me in my capacity as graduate coordinator in the history department at the University of Florida. He was working for a law firm representing one of the tobacco companies, and he was look
Source: AOL News
3-3-10
eviving a controversy about which American historical figures deserve to be honored on the nation's currency, a North Carolina congressman is proposing replacing a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill with one of conservative icon Ronald Reagan.
"President Reagan is indisputably one of the most transformative presidents of the 20th century," Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican, said in a letter to his fellow members of Congress. "Like President Roosevelt on the
Source: AP
3-9-10
Sir Kenneth Dover, a distinguished historian of Greek culture who gained wider fame by admitting his wish to kill a troublesome colleague, has died at 89....
Dover shockingly admitted his loathing for Trevor Aston, a fellow historian at Corpus Christi College in Oxford University, in his 1994 autobiography, "Marginal Comment." Aston, according to Dover, had become an embarrassment because of his drunken and irrational behavior.
"It was clear to me that Tr
Source: Radio Free Europe
3-8-10
Prominent Russian historian and journalist Sergo Mikoyan has died in a Moscow clinic of leukemia, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.
Mikoyan, 80, was an ethnic Armenian born in Moscow. His father was Soviet Communist Party leader Anastas Mikoyan, a long-time associate of Josef Stalin....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
3-8-10
Jonathan D. Spence, an expert on Chinese history and culture and a professor emeritus at Yale University, will deliver the 2010 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Monday.
The humanities endowment calls the annual lecture, which carries a $10,000 honorarium, "the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." Lecturers in recent years have included
Source: Press Release from the National Council on Public History
3-3-10
History at work in the world. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the National Council on Public History will be meeting in Portland next week. Adam Hochschild, nominated for the National Book Award, will be the conference’s keynote speaker in a free, public event, “Adventures in Public History,” at the Hilton Portland, Friday, March 12, at 8:00 p.m. Public history is a booming profession in which historical research and interpretation are made with and useful to the public, typically outside of
Source: NYT
3-7-10
At home here on Long Island, he is Gary L. Krupp, medical equipment dealer, now retired after a career of ups and downs. He shares one car and a small house in a no-frills neighborhood with his wife, Meredith, and wryly describes himself as “an average schlemiel, just a Jewish kid from Queens.”
At the Vatican, he is known as Commendatore Gary Krupp, Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great. For short, the Swiss Guard and cardinals address him as “
Source: NYT
3-7-10
“Don’t know much about history,” goes the song first recorded by Sam Cooke, and, no, we don’t. But it can get complicated very fast when we have to learn.
Just ask local officials, aggrieved residents of a neighboring town and the folks on Petain Avenue, a tiny, two-house side street in this placid central New Jersey borough. All have suddenly had to confront the legacy of the French World War I war hero and World War II Nazi collaborator, for whom the street is named, and the balan
Source: NYT
3-3-10
Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.
Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis
Source: Washington Times
3-3-10
The leader of a global Muslim movement Tuesday issued a rare religious edict condemning terrorism and denouncing suicide bombers as "heroes of hellfire" in an effort to help prevent the radicalization of young British Muslims....
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a former Pakistani lawmaker and a leading scholar of Islam, has issued similar, shorter decrees in the past. But the new fatwa makes the most detailed and comprehensive case against Islamic extremism by a Muslim, diplomats
