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: Network of Concerned Historians
3-28-09
Dear colleagues,
Good news. Amnesty International reports that on 21 February 2009 history teacher Ma Khin Khin Leh was released, together with 23 other prisoners. In July 1999, she was arrested instead of her husband. Later, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. In December 2000, the Network of Concerned Historians launched a campaign on her behalf. Thank you for your efforts.
With best wishes,
Antoon De Baets
(Network of Concerned Historians)
Source: Telegraph (UK)
3-30-09
British history has become "feminised" by female authors who concentrate on subjects like the six wives of Henry VIII rather than the king himself, Dr David Starkey has said.
Speaking shortly before the launch of a new Channel 4 series to mark the 500th anniversary of the Tudor monarch's accession to the throne, Dr Starkey said he found it "bizarre" that so much historical effort was now focused on the monarch's wives.
But he warned that the "s
Source: Rick Shenkman reporting for HNN
3-30-09
Money was on peoples' minds at this year's OAH in addition to history. Eating cheap was on the menu for many. One sign of the times. C-SPAN, nearing the end of its fiscal year, wanted to cover the convention but couldn't afford to send a crew.*
Some 1800 people registered for this year's OAH annual meeting in Seattle, a lower number than would normally be expected for a convention on the West coast. (In 2007 1900 showed up for the out-of-the way Minneapolis convention.) There wasn't
12-31-69
On Saturday March 28, 2009 the History News network videotaped a standing ovation given Lee Formwalt, the retiring executive director of the OAH. Formwalt is leaving after a decade in the job.
Source: OAH Press Release
3-26-09
Joyce Appleby, professor emerita, University of California, Los Angeles, has been selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to receive the 2009 Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award, which is given annually to an individual whose contributions have significantly enriched our understanding and appreciation of American history. On Saturday, March 28, OAH President Pete Daniel and President-Elect Elaine Tyler May will present the award in Seattle, Washington, during the 102nd
Source: HNN Staff
3-30-09
On Saturday March 28, 2009 OAH President Elaine Tyler May announced that the 2009 winner of the Friend of History award is C-SPAN's Brian Lamb. Mr. Lamb accepted the award in person.
She also announced the winners of the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award: Joyce Appleby, Susan Armeny, and Stan Katz.
Source: NYT Week in Review, front page
3-30-09
When he was a boy in segregated Oklahoma, where he was born in 1915, John Hope Franklin used to indulge in a subversive bit of wordplay like a small act of public and private theater.
“My mother and I used to have a game we’d play on our public,” Dr. Franklin said not long ago, his voice full of artful pauses, words pulled out like taffy. “She would say if anyone asks you what you want to be when you grow up, tell them you want to be the first Negro president of the United States. A
Source: MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL in the Nation
3-26-09
Yesterday the great Historian John Hope Franklin passed away at the age of 94.
I did my doctoral work at Duke University and had the the opportunity to encounter Professor Franklin many times during my graduate training. Each time it was a privilege because John Hope Franklin was a superstar intellectual who managed to be utterly open and personally humble with students. He made us feel like partners, rather than subordinates, in academic inquiry.
In an age when black p
Source: AFL-CIO blog
3-24-09
Some of the nation’s top historians have signed a petition asking Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and protect the freedom to form unions and bargain.
Organized by University of Washington historian Michael Honey, who is president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), the petition includes the signatures of 100 historians from around the country. They’ve looked at our nation’s historical record and say that it’s clear we need to pass the Employee
Source: NPR
3-24-09
A new book backs former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic's claim that was promised immunity by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke if he stepped down from politics. Purdue University professor Charles Ingrao, co-editor of the book Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars' Initiative, says the offer was made because Western officials knew that Karadzic would not be be arrested.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
3-25-09
The Co-Chairs of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, Rep. David Price (D-NC) and Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI), have prepared a Dear Colleague letter in support of $230 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities in fiscal year 2010. Please call your member of Congress and ask him/her to show their support for the humanities by signing the letter before it is submitted on April 1, 2009, to Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) and Ranking Member Michael Simpson (R-ID) of the Interior, Environment, &a
Source: http://www.tcpalm.com
3-21-09
History is not some dull collection of stories from the past but rather “endlessly fascinating because it’s about life, human nature and the cause and effect of individual talent and ability,” according to award-winning author and historian David McCullough, who spoke to capacity crowds Saturday at the Emerson Center’s Celebrated Speaker Series.
McCullough, who earned Pulitzer Prizes for his non-fictional accounts of former U.S. presidents John Adams and Harry Truman, as well as the
Source: http://news.columbia.edu
3-19-09
The authors of three acclaimed books—a study of the 1914 massacre of striking coal miners in Colorado, an analysis of the impact of death and dying in the Civil War, and a reinterpretation of the Comanches in the southwestern borderland in the 18th and 19th centuries—will be awarded the Bancroft Prize for 2009, Columbia University announced.
The winners are Thomas G. Andrews for Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press); Drew Gilpin Faust
Source: Binghamton.edu news
3-19-09
Alexander Hamilton’s handling of the panic of 1792 provides lessons for today’s economic turmoil, a financial historian said at the March 13 Romano Lecture.
“If you have a really good leader in a crisis, the leader acts boldly,” Richard Sylla told an audience at the Anderson Center Chamber Hall. “You don’t waver and you don’t change your mind. You want to keep the banks lending.”
Sylla, the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets and
Source: John Ellis at Frontpagemag.com
3-24-09
[John Ellis is Professor Emeritus of German Literature at UC Santa Cruz, and President of the California Association of Scholars.]
On February 25, 2009, an article by Patricia Cohen appeared in the New York Times: “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth.” Its thesis was a familiar one: an economic downturn will lead to a decline in the number of college majors in the humanities because in hard times enrollments shift toward majors with direct vocational utility. Th
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (Blog run by Juan Cole)
3-24-09
Listen to my interview with Steven Inskeep of National Public Radio's"Morning Edition" on myths about Saudi Arabia's puritanical and hyper-Protestant Wahhabi branch of Islam. I argue that there is no statistical or social scientific evidence that Wahhabis are more prone to violence or terrorism than other branches of Islam. Note that it is a narrow argument about the myth of Wahhabism as a font of terrorism in a
Source: Raymond Arsenault in the NYT Book Review
3-19-09
Historians who write about close friends or relatives do so at their peril. Personal engagement, so essential to the memoir, can confound historical judgment and scholarly detachment, especially when family honor hangs in the balance. Beryl Satter, the chairwoman of the history department at Rutgers University in Newark and the proud daughter of one of the central characters in “Family Properties,” has taken the hard road to glory in her study of race and housing discrimination in Chicago during
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com
3-23-09
Related Links
HNN Hot Topics: Armenian Holocaust
Prominent German historian Hilmar Kaiser is presently in Ankara carrying out research in the Turkish archives. In an interview with Sunday's Zaman this week, Kaiser says the field of history "is flooded with political advocates who are less historians than opinion-formers," drawing a picture full of gray areas, showing there is still ample
12-31-69
Martin Peretz at his blog at the New Republic
Nicholas
Kristof has finally revealed his secret. In his Thursday ramble entitled "The Daily Me," he explains, almost as if he knows the topic
desperately requires an explanation, why his Middle East commentary is
really a rehash of Juan Cole. That'
Source: Adeed Dawisha at Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
3-20-09
The idea for this book took shape in the post-2003 period as I searched for answers and tried to make sense of the quagmire into which Iraq seemed to be sinking. Successive governments, first appointed by the Americans, later elected by the Iraqis, would fail in the most rudimentary functions of governance. More than six years into the new era, the state was still less than capable in extending essential services and providing security for its citizens, with the result that in the perceptions of
