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: Shaul Ben Joseph at the website of israelcampus.org
11-1-08
He barricaded himself with Arafat during the siege of Ramallah, he has his articles posted on Holocaust denial websites, he thinks Israel is a pariah state, he distorted historical facts, he turned the classroom into a propaganda battlefield, he advocated a one-state solution, and yet, he was recently appointed as the head of Ben Gurion University's department of Politics and Government. Will you send your child to study there?
Consider this madness: One of the most anti-Israeli aca
Source: Jewish Chronicle
10-30-08
TV production company Endemol, which makes the reality show Celebrity Big Brother, was condemned this week for inviting Holocaust-denier David Irving to take part in the next series.
Mr Irving states on his website that he received a "top secret provisional invitation" in September asking him to take part in series planned to start on January 2. He was told last Friday that he had not made the final selection.
He met producers for 90 minutes at a Kensington ho
Source: Max Boot at his blog in Commentary
10-27-08
It’s bad enough that various finger-to-the-wind Republicans–like Colin
Powell, Bill Weld, Chris Buckley, Ken Adelman, and Scott McCellan–are
rushing to get on the Obama bandwagon now that it has gale-force momentum.
(Where were they, one wonders, back in early September, when Obama was
behind in the polls and could really have used their help?) To add insult
to injury, the Republican president most admired by John McCain is more or
less endorsing his opponent, too. At least he is if you be
Source: MSNBC
10-29-08
Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday of protecting Barack Obama by withholding a videotape of the Democrat attending a 2003 party for a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel.
The paper said it had written about the event in April and would not release the tape because of a promise made to the source who provided it.
McCain and Palin called Rashid Khalidi a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, a char
Source: Juan Cole at his blog Informed Comment
10-30-08
The increasingly sleazy John McCain, who once promised to run a clean campaign, has now attacked my friend Rashid Khalidi and attempted to use him against Barack Obama. Khalidi is an American scholar of Palestinian heritage, born in New York and educated at Yale and Oxford, who now teaches at Columbia University. He directed the Middle East Center at the University of Chicago for some time, and he and his family came to know t
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
10-28-08
Enid Hart Douglass, who was largely responsible for developing the oral history program at Claremont Graduate University and led it for more than three decades, has died. She was 81.
Ms. Douglass, a former mayor of Claremont (Los Angeles County died Oct. 17 at a care facility in Sunnyvale from complications of Alzheimer's disease, her family said.
As a graduate student at the school in the 1950s, she became interested in how history is preserved as she studied the lette
Source: Tim Rutten in the LAT
10-29-08
James M. McPherson is the most important historian of the most important event to occur in these United States since the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution -- the Civil War.
Any new book of his is -- by definition, therefore -- an event, but "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" is one that speaks directly to a nation on the cusp of a momentous decision regarding its next president. Given the author's vocal disapproval of the war in Iraq, it's p
Source: WTVD
10-27-08
The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom made history in the Triangle Monday when he made a stop at the polls.
Doctor John Hope Franklin, 93, joined more than 1 million early voters in N.C. The civil rights activist said he's taking advantage of a right he once fought to have.
Franklin, a historian, an author, a prestigious professor and a civil rights activist, arrived at a Durham polling site to place his vote.
Franklin, said he was honored to v
Source: Independent (UK)
10-28-08
Frank Walbank, Emeritus Rathbone Professor of Ancient History at Liverpool University, was one of the great ancient historians of the 20th century. For around half a century he defined and dominated the field of Hellenistic history. Above all he was the unchallenged expert on the Greek politician and historian Polybius, who composed his history of Rome around the middle of the second century BC. Walbank's magnum opus is the monumental three-volume Historical Commentary on Polybius – a project la
Source: Inside Higher Ed
10-27-08
History has long been among the most popular undergraduate majors — and has long been seen as playing a crucial role in how colleges provide liberal education. But is the discipline doing everything it can to promote liberal education, especially since most history majors will not become lifelong historians and since many history students are not majors?
A new report, prepa
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
10-23-08
Washington — At a conference here today, “Picturing the Nation,” the National Endowment for the Humanities and its British counterpart described useful ways of using art to teach national history.
The conference focused on elementary- and secondary-school students and teachers. But one presentation, by Wilfred M. McClay, a history professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was on a topic relevant to all levels of education: the advantages and obstacles of using art as
Source: http://timesunion.com
10-26-08
Historians sometimes like to engage in a game of "what if?" about the close calls and random twists of fate embedded in the drama of history.
A tantalizing opportunity for such speculation comes in what historian and author David Hackett Fischer calls "that high summer of 1609."
As the French explorer Samuel de Champlain paddled a canoe on July 31 to the southern edge of the lake that now bears his name, the English seaman Henry Hudson was sailing no
Source: Atlanta-Journal Constitution
10-26-08
As a reporter and editor for the Atlanta Daily World for many years, beginning in the 1950s, George Coleman had a great deal of firsthand knowledge of Atlanta’s African-American community and the civil rights movement.
He also collected books about Atlanta history and the history of black Americans, said his daughter, Bernadette Lambert of Powder Springs.
“He used to tell me, ‘I’m more of a historian than a journalist,’” said Mrs. Lambert. “He loved to talk about Atlant
Source: http://www.atlanticfreepress.com
10-26-08
No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo.
Dr Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago.
An expert on European history at Tel Aviv Universit
Source: AP
10-24-08
Noted Nebraska historian Robert Manley, who told stories of pioneers and hard times of the Great Plains, has died.
He died on Wednesday of stomach cancer in Lincoln. He was 80.
Manley played guitar and sang folk songs. He also wrote books and essays, and lectured about historical events, places and, most importantly, people.
Manley, who had a 50-year-plus career as a teacher and historian, wrote at least 26 books.
He was born in Wisconsin, grew
Source: http://news.brynmawr.edu
10-23-08
Professor of History Sharon Ullman recently appeared on 98.5 Ben FM’s “Woman of the Week” show to talk about GLBT History Month (streaming audio is available on Ben FM’s Web site; Ullman is the second person interviewed in this clip).
Ullman had been asked by Equality Forum, an international nonprofit that works toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil rights through educational outreach efforts, to co-chair its celebration of GLBT History Month. She and her co-chair, NY
Source: Telegraph (UK)
10-25-08
The French are using the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt to accuse England's men of acting like 'war criminals'.
Exactly 593 years after King Henry V's legendary victory, a revisionist conference will be held at the scene of the triumph.
Academics will suggest that the extent of the feat of arms was massively exaggerated, with claims that the English were hugely outnumbered a lie.
More controversially still, they will say that the foreign invaders used numerous underhand tact
Source: Caleb McDaniel at H-SHEAR
10-23-08
I am very pleased to announce that on Monday, H-SHEAR will begin publishing an eight-week serial forum on Daniel Walker Howe's recent Pulitzer-prize winning book, _What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848_.
H-SHEAR has commissioned seven distinguished scholars to write review essays on Howe's book that focus on their respective areas of expertise. Each Monday over the next seven weeks, one of these review essays will be posted to the list according to the sche
Source: LAT
10-23-08
Albert Boime, an art historian, educator and author who evaluated art in its social and political context for new insights into French Neo-Classicism, Impressionism and other prominent art movements of the last 250 years, has died. He was 75.
Boime, a faculty member at UCLA for more than 30 years, died Saturday of complications from a blood disorder at Kaiser Permanente hospital in Los Angeles, said his wife, Myra. He had been a longtime resident of Mar Vista.
In close
Source: Independent (UK)
10-23-08
Although Richard Evans was the favourite for the Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, he maintains that the process of winning the job was tough. For a start, there was an application procedure. Not so long ago, you didn't do anything so vulgar as apply for this distinguished position. You sat about, hoping that you would be looked upon with favour. It is a royal appointment, after all, which means that it used to be in the gift of the prime minister of the day.
The syst
