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: IndianExpress.com
1-12-10
It was only appropriate that he breathed his last just 500 metres away from the graves of Amir Khusrau and Nizamuddin Auliya, for Prof Simon Digby was no less a Sufi.
A noted scholar of medieval Indian history, Prof Digby lost his brief battle with pancreatic cancer on Sunday. He passed away on Sunday at his rented flat in Nizamuddin West — he was 79.
Even in his last days, Digby did not let go of his scholarly pursuits. Despite having nothing to do with a young 30-some
Source: Inside Higher Ed
1-21-10
[Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University.]
Even old news can be dismal, and that is the case at hand. For about 40 years, by my calculation, American universities have been admitting too many candidates for doctorates in the liberal arts and the social sciences and, startling attrition along the way notwithstanding, have produced too great a supply of Ph.D.'s for a dwindling demand. There are pr
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-21/obama-grade-from-historians-will-drop-without-health-care-bill.html
1-21-10
Five of the U.S. historians whose insights President Barack Obama sought at a dinner last summer give him grades averaging a B-plus for his first year in office if his push for health-care legislation succeeds.
Obama’s handling of the economy won praise; what was seen as a lack of leadership on health care and a missed opportunity to seize on populist outrage about bank bonuses earned criticism. Making the judgments were Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Dallek, H. W. Brands, Douglas Bri
Source: Newsreal Blog
1-21-10
The Associated Press is reporting that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has signed orders enabling radical Muslim professor of philosophy Tariq Ramadan, of Oxford University in England, and professor Adam Habib, from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, to re-enter the United States, after having been banned from doing so for over 5 years....Habib, a frequent critic of the war in Iraq, was initially denied a visa when the U.S. Government accused him of engaging in “
Source: Inside Higher Ed
1-21-10
Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan should soon be able to enter the United States once again, ending years in which the Bush administration kept out the two prominent scholars, infuriating many academic groups.
Several academic groups have been in a protracted legal battle with the government over the visa denials to Habib, the deputy vice chancellor of research, innovation and advancement at the University of Johannesburg, and Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the U
Source: Common-place
1-1-10
[Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, was Theodore R. Sizer's son-in-law.]
In late November, an estimated thousand mourners, including Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, gathered at Memorial Church at Harvard University to honor the life and work of Theodore R. Sizer, the internationally recognized education reformer who died this past October. (Sizer, a friend to this publication, co-authored a piece with his wife, Nancy, on the misguided
Source: Reuters
12-31-09
Religion has become the hottest topic of study for U. S. historians, overtaking the previous favourite — cultural studies — and pulling ahead of women's studies in the latest annual survey by the American Historical Association. Younger historians are more likely than older ones to turn their sights on faith issues.
The proportion of U.S. historians working on religious issues now stands at 7.7 percent. If that seems low, compare it with the more traditional fields in the study of t
Source: Bowdoin Campus News
1-20-10
In spite of the devastating earthquake that left Port-au-Prince in ruins, noted Caribbean historian Allen Wells believes the resiliency of the Haitian people will make all the difference in how the country recovers.
"We need only look to the past to find hope for the future," says Wells.
Wells' book, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR and the Jews of Sosúa (Duke University Press, 2009), tells the story of 750 Jewish refugees from central Europe who were offe
Source: Peruvian Times
1-15-10
After nine years directing a history series for national television, historian Antonio Zapata has decided it is time to go back to university to teach and do research full time.
Sucedió en el Perú has been broadcast on the national television channel, Canal 7, since 2001 and has dealt with a wide range of historical topics (are there any left to cover?).
During what is effectively the last decade Zapata has gained a reputation for extremely clear, simple and yet erudite
Source: UB Reporter
1-20-10
Despina Stratigakos, assistant professor of architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, and assistant professor of visual studies, College of Arts and Sciences, has received the prestigious 2009 Book Prize from the DAAD (Deutcher Akadamischer Austausch Dienst/German Academic Exchange Service), a publicly funded independent organization of higher education institutions in Germany.
Stratigakos was honored for her 2008 book, "A Woman’s Berlin: Building the Modern City"
Source: UNM Today
1-21-10
Distinguished Professor of History Paul Hutton will appear on the PBS program American Experience “Wyatt Earp,” on Monday, Jan. 25 from 9-10 p.m. on PBS. “Wyatt Earp” features interviews with Hutton and other biographers and historians of the American West to present a fresh take on an old legend.
Hutton, who is teaching an upper division course on the Western Hero, has written extensively about Earp, especially about his portrayal in movies. His article, “Showdown at the Hollywood
Source: Chicago Tribune
1-19-10
The imposingly versatile Garry Wills, Northwestern University historian, political polemicist, sometime philosopher, theologian and church historian, has a new book inspired by liberal disappointment with President Barack Obama, blaming his faults as well as other American presidential disorders on the atom bomb.
He argues in "Bomb Power" that possession of the bomb, product of an enormous and secret scientific undertaking, the Manhattan Project, launched by Franklin D. Ro
Source: NYT
1-17-10
The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.
A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences
Source: Charleston Gazette
1-14-10
The founder of one of West Virginia's most comprehensive archives on the state's coal history, Charles Stuart McGehee, died earlier this week.
McGehee, 55, was the founder of Bluefield's Eastern Regional Coal Archives, a professor of history at West Virginia State University, and the author of five books on West Virginia. He died Tuesday.
"Stuart was an absolute treat for the state of West Virginia and the coal industry," said Bill Raney, president of the West
Source: Washington & Lee University
1-19-10
Gordon S. Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, delivered the 2010 Founders' Day/ODK Convocation address, "Why the Founders Matter," at Washington and Lee University on Jan. 19, 2010.
Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. In addition to winning the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, he received the 1970 Bancroft Prize for The Creation of the American Rep
Source: Irish Times
1-16-10
...The Victorian historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay has been lucky so far with his biographers. His life was memorialised in a vast, two-volume biography by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan. His reputation and legacy were then kept alive by the latter’s son, GM Trevelyan, among the most influential historians of the 20th century, who also tightly controlled access to Macaulay’s papers. These included personal diaries, publication of which, Trevelyan noted, would be “unfair” to M
Source: NPR.org
1-16-10
The atomic bombs that ended World War II killed — by some estimates — more than 200,000 people. In the decades since 1945, there has been a revisionist debate over the decision to drop the bombs.
Did the U.S. decide to bomb in order to avoid a land invasion that might have killed millions of Americans and Japanese? Or did it drop the bomb to avoid the Soviet army coming in and sharing the spoils of conquering Japan? Were the prospects of a land invasion even more destructive than th
Source: Salon.com
1-13-10
One of the most callous reactions to the Haiti disaster thus far has come from televangelist Pat Robertson, who told viewers of his Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday morning that he knew the real reason for the quake: The country's long-standing pact with Satan....
But is it a true story? We spoke with Andrew Apter, professor of history and anthopology at UCLA, about Haiti's voodoo traditions, the ignorance behind the evangelical community's distortions and the real cause of suff
Source: AP
1-13-10
Former Soviet prisoners of war were trained by the Nazis as guards and used regularly in the Germans' machinery of mass murder, a historian testified Wednesday at the trial of John Demjanjuk....
Dieter Pohl, an expert at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University, described the history of the so-called "Trawniki men," many of them Soviet POWs recruited by the Nazis, to the Munich state court on Wednesday....
Source: LA Times
1-12-10
During the second day of a high-profile trial on same-sex marriage, a historian told a federal court that laws and police practices throughout U.S. history show gays and lesbians have been a "despised category," a minority that have been arrested, fired, harassed and censored because of sexual orientation.
"Gay life really was pushed underground," New York University history professor George Chauncey testified this afternoon....
Chauncey cited early
