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: Campus Watch
1-4-09
[Jonathan Schanzer, an adjunct scholar at Campus Watch, is director of policy for the Jewish Policy Center and author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave 2008).]
In recent years, Campus Watch (CW) analysts have leveled a barrage of criticism against the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) as a bastion of groupthink for scholar-activists peddling a politicized agenda. CW's current director,
Source: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN.
1-4-08
Your portfolio doing badly? So's the AHA's.
At the Business Meeting Sunday executive director Arnita Jones announced that the association's stock portfolio has declined some twenty-five percent in value. "Instead of almost four million a year ago," she said, "we have about three million."
Jones said the current budget is slightly in surplus, though advertising revenues are down "somewhat." The AHA benefits from ads for jobs. In a down ma
Source: AHA Blog
2-3-09
[HNN Editor: In his remarks Hochshild noted that he has been telling friends he won the Roosevelt-Wilson award, in the vain hope that they will think the Roosevelt in question was Franklin not Theodore.]
AHA President Gabrielle Spiegel presided over last night’s “Opening of the 123rd Annual Meeting,” starting off with a quick welcome to participants and audience members, then moving on to the night’s events. First off was the presentation of the sixth Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wil
Source: NYT
1-2-09
Sir Michael Levey, a prolific and wide-ranging art historian who presided over the expansion of the National Gallery in London as its director from 1973 through 1986, and who acquired important paintings by Caravaggio, David and Monet for its collection, died on Sunday. He was 81 and lived in Louth, Lincolnshire, England.
The cause was a stroke, said his daughter, Kate.
Mr. Levey, who spent his entire career at the National Gallery, was a writer whose beautifully shaped
Source: FoxNews.com
1-2-09
Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
"The Wild
Source: Guardian (UK)
1-3-09
The journey from prime ministerial bookshelf to the honours list is an uncertain one. Tony Blair carried the Bible everywhere but never managed to honour the authors. Gordon Brown has his own chosen texts, including studies of Britishness. Two of their authors were rewarded this week, Linda Colley, now a CBE, and David Cannadine, now a Knight Batchelor - a title overlooking the fact the two are married. Although the new Sir David got a greater reward than his wife, Ms Colley's brilliant book Bri
Source: Robert Townsend in a draft of a preliminary report at the AHA annual convention 2009
1-2-09
By most indicators, new and recent
history PhDs enjoyed an exceptional
hiring season in the 2007–08
academic year, but there is ample evidence
that troubles in the economy are now hitting
the history job market hard.
In the good news department, the number
of jobs advertised through the AHA grew
faster than the number of new history
PhDs conferred. This marked the third year
in which the number of job ads exceeded
the number of new PhDs entering the
market—a rare event over the p
Source: AHA
1-1-09
The AHA annual conference is the first in the world where you can watch Historians TV – the new online television channel dedicated to historians’ news and views.
We’ll be screening a new special episode each and every day of the conference. You can watch around the conference, in your hotel room and online here.
Whether it’s a workshop, debate or speech, Historians TV will be there to cover all the important issues that emerge. You’ll also be able to watch exclusive r
Source: http://www.fakenhamtimes.co.uk
12-31-08
Professor David Cannadine from Reepham has been made a Knight Bachelor for services to scholarship in the New Year honours list, announced today.
Prof Cannadine is a historian of modern British history from 1800 to 2000 in the Centre for Contemporary British History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
He was formerly Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Professor of British History.
Prof Cannadine's work especially focuses on the Brit
Source: AHA Blog
12-29-08
While your holidays may just be winding down, many AHA staff members are already on their way to New York to prepare for the 123rd Annual Meeting. It begins this Friday, January 2 and concludes on Monday, January 5, with events scheduled in the Hilton New York (headquarters) and Sheraton New York (co-headquarters).During the Annual Meeting, posts on
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-28-08
Rap music originated in the medieval taverns of Scotland rather than the
mean streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn, an American academic has claimed.
Professor Ferenc Szasz argued that so-called rap battles, where two or
more performers trade elaborate insults, derive from the ancient
Caledonian art of"flyting".
According to the theory, Scottish slave owners took the tradition with
them to the United States, where it was adopted and developed by slaves,
emerging many years later
Source: Harvard Crimson
12-26-08
Samuel P. Huntington - a longtime Harvard University professor, an influential political scientist, and mentor to a generation of scholars in widely divergent fields - died Dec. 24 on Martha's Vineyard. He was 81.
Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007, following 58 years of scholarly service at Harvard. In a retirement letter to the President of Harvard, he wrote, in part,"It is difficult for me to imagine a more rewarding or enjoyable career than teaching here, particularly
Source: WSJ
12-29-08
Barry Eichengreen, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley whose scholarly work showed how the international affection for the gold standard deepened the Great Depression, wondered: Why, given this is a global crisis and recession, have policy makers in other countries failed to move as aggressively as the U.S. to fight it?
Among his answers, in an essay “The Global Credit Crisis as History” on his Web site to be published in the January issue of Current Hi
Source: LAT
12-29-08
Martha S. Putney, a retired historian at Bowie State and Howard universities and the author of a book about African American women who served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) during World War II, died Dec. 11 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at a hospice in Washington, D.C. She was 92.
Putney's book "When the Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women's Army Corps During World War II" (1992) was a reflection of her own experience.
Putney, one of eight chil
Source: Independent (UK)
12-30-08
At the ripe old age of 73, it appears that Sir Roy Strong has lost none of his fighting spirit. The flamboyant art historian – who famously became the youngest National Portrait Gallery Director at age 32 – has launched an impassioned attack on the nation's teaching of history, claiming the Government holds responsibility for fostering ignorance among children.
"This Government in particular has wiped out virtually the teaching of history in schools," he argues. "Chil
Source: Austin-Statesman
11-1-08
H. W. "Bill" Brands and Douglas Brinkley are, perhaps, Austin's two best-known historians. Though both teach at prestigious universities — Brands at the University of Texas, Brinkley at Rice — they spend much of their time writing engaging, best-selling American history books for a general audience. Brands, 55, who has lived in Austin for 20 years, has written about figures as disparate as Benjamin Franklin, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Brinkley, 47, who moved to Austin last
Source: Feminist Historians for a New New Deal
12-25-08
[Professor Eileen Boris, University of California Santa Barbara boris@femst.ucsb.edu. Professor Linda Gordon, New York University Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu. Professor Jennifer Klein, Yale University jennifer.klein@yale.edu. Professor Alice O’Connor, University of California Santa Barbara aoconnor@history.ucsb.edu.]
An
Source: US State Department
12-23-08
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met yesterday, December 22, with members of the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC) to discuss the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series and concerns expressed by some current and former members of the HAC about the series. Secretary Rice stated her strong support for the FRUS series and underscored its importance to academic and general audiences. Secretary Rice also told the group that she had asked an outside Review Team to provide recommenda
Source: Michael Hirsh in the NYT
12-25-08
Niall Ferguson, it is fair to say, is a one-man book factory. In fact, if the American economy cranked out goods as prolifically as Ferguson does histories, we might not be in half the fix we are in right now. But then Ferguson wouldn’t have nearly as much to write about. The onetime enfant terrible of the Oxbridge historical establishment, Ferguson specializes in finding fault with great powers, especially the way they mismanage their empires. Ferguson first came to notice a decade ago with “Th
Source: AP
12-27-08
In most American text books, Samuel de Champlain serves as a sort of historical speed bump between Christopher Columbus and Lewis and Clark.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer believes Champlain deserves better treatment for his key role as leader of one of the earliest settlements in North America.
"He's been vanishing from the 7th grade in the past 20 years," said Fischer, author of "Champlain's Dream," a recent biography of the
