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: Boston Globe
5-29-08
It's like appointing a non-Jewish German to teach Holocaust studies, but Clark University has already done that.
The Worcester school recently named a Turkish historian to be chairman of Armenian genocide studies.
Taner Akçam, who was imprisoned in Turkey in the 1970s for his work on the slaughter of Armenians at the end of the Ottoman period in Turkey, was selected over several candidates of Armenian descent to hold the Armenian genocide studies post and to become an a
Source: Independent (UK)
5-29-08
Art history took Peter Tomory all over the world, just as earlier Scots expatriates travelled as engineers and medical men in the service of Empire. Indeed, because his father was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Tomory was born in Hong Kong and partly brought up in India. He was at school near London, and regular visits to the Tate and British Museum, as well as one to the Alte Pinakothek gallery in Munich while on a skiing trip in 1938, kindled his interest in art history.
The Sec
Source: Bill Steigerwald at Frontpagemag.com
5-29-08
Victor Davis Hanson, a former classics professor, is a renowned conservative scholar of ancient history and military affairs who's recently become a nationally syndicated columnist and blogger. The author of 17 books with titles like "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War," "An Autumn of War" and "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming," he is the senior fellow in residence in classics and military history at the Hoover Institutio
Source: Inside Higher Ed
5-29-08
For the third time in four years, Britain’s main faculty union has passed a resolution questioning the appropriateness of ties between scholars in the United Kingdom and those in Israel. While the measure adopted on a voice vote Wednesday does not formally call for a boycott of Israeli universities — as earlier measures have — it singles out for consideration the idea of isolating Israeli universities, and the measure was pushed by British academics who have previously called for a boycott.
Source: Meet the Press transcript
5-25-08
MR. RUSSERT: Doris, in Boca Raton on Thursday, Barack Obama was asked about vice president, specifically about Hillary Clinton, and here's his answer, which talks about you.
(Videotape)
Unidentified Man: When the time comes, will you be willing to consider everybody who is a possible help to you as a running mate, even if his or her spouse is an occasional pain in the butt?
SEN. OBAMA: I, I--well, look. Well, look, look, look. The--we've got a little m
Source: Press Release--Unite Here
5-27-08
The Sidney Hillman Foundation Journalism Awards honor journalism that explores the issues of social and economic justice. The award categories for 2008 include: Books (non-fiction), Newspaper Reporting, Magazine Reporting, Broadcast Reporting (television and radio), Photojournalism, and Blogs. The 2008 awards are given for work produced, published or exhibited in 2007.
Each winner is provided travel to the awards presentation, a statuette, and a $5,000 prize.
Submission
Source: http://www.projo.com
5-29-08
A brain disorder drove historian Edward Renehan Jr. to record an album with folk legend Pete Seeger, work with New York publishers and write six books, including one on the Kennedys, the author says.
But that same illness ---- diagnosed last year as bipolar disorder ---- may have pushed Renehan to steal and sell rare letters written by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, a federal crime that could send him to jail or force him to pay up to $250,000 in fines.
In federal cou
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-28-08
In the latest sign of scholars’ anxiety about Pentagon-financed social-science research, the president of the American Anthropological Association has sent a letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget expressing concern about the “Minerva consortium,” a program announced last month by Robert M. Gates, the secretary of defense.
The Minerva program, which will offer grants to universities to study topics of interest to the Pentagon, has been condemned by some scholars
Source: Editor's note in Historically Speaking (March/April 2008)
4-1-08
One year ago, we published Maureen Ogle’s winsome account of leaving academic history to “go popular.” Two issues later, the Historical Society’s president, Eric Arnesen, himself a frequent writer of reviews for the Chicago Tribune, wrote an essay expressing concern that so-called popular historians do not make sufficient effort to incorporate the fruits of academic historical scholarship in their books. Arnesen selected two books to illustrate his concern. One of them was Adam Hochschild’s Bury
Source: Donald Keene in Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan, his memoir published by Oxford University Press (2008)
5-28-08
The most memorable celebrity I met was undoubtedly Greta Garbo. She was a close friend of Jane Gunther, the wife of the famous journalist John Gunther….
Garbo had been in retirement for many years, but she was still remembered as the greatest of the film actresses. One day I had a telephone call from Jane asking if I would take Garbo to the theatre. Of course I eagerly accepted. The play was “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Before the play Garbo hardly spoke and during the in
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
5-23-08
On May 22, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced the establishment of the “Controlled Unclassified Information Office” (CUIO) within the National Archives and Records Administration. Weinstein also announced that William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, will head up this newly formed office. The Office is being created in response to the Memorandum for the Heads of Departments and Agencies on the Designation and Sharing of Controlled Unclassif
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-30-08
When the Gospel of Judas was unveiled at a news conference in April 2006, it made headlines around the world — with nearly all of those articles touting the new and improved Judas. "In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal," read the headline in The New York Times. The British paper The Guardian called it "a radical makeover for one of the worst reputations in history." A documentary that aired a few days later on National Geographic's cable channel also pushed the Juda
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-27-08
The news appeared in the blogosphere late last fall: Columbia University had reportedly denied the tenure bid of Joseph A. Massad, a Palestinian-American scholar at the university.
"Raise your cup," Paula Stern, a Jewish American who blogs from Israel, wrote last November. "Joseph Massad will not remain at Columbia University."
But six months later, Mr. Massad—an associate professor of Arab politics in Columbia's embattled department of Middle East a
Source: Family obituary
5-24-08
Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a freelance editor.
Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an ear
Source: Newsday
5-26-08
The federal investigation into thefts of Theodore Roosevelt Association artifacts that led to a guilty plea this week by former director Edward Renehan Jr. turned up three more missing items.
Besides four letters previously publicized, the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch recovered two books and a letter by Roosevelt that had been consigned to auction houses by Renehan and sold.
Renehan's attorney concedes the letter belonged to the association but i
Source: Gary Nash email to HNN
5-26-08
[Gary B. Nash, Director, National Center for History in the Schools.]
It is puzzling that in her description of the National History Standards controversy in 1994-96, Susan Jacoby relies on the deliberate disinformation campaign mounted at the time by right-wing cultural warriors (Historians and the Dumbing Down of Public Discourse, HNN, 12 May 2008). Having appreciated Jacoby’s book-length contribution to our understanding of American se
Source: U. of Mich. Press website
5-26-08
The issue of reparations in America provokes a lot of interest, but the public debate usually occurs at the level of historical accounting: "Who owes what for slavery?" This book attempts to get past that question to address racial restitution within the framework of larger societal interests. For example, the answer to the "why reparations?" question is more than the moral of payment for an injustice done in the past. Ronald Walters suggests that, insofar as the impact of sl
Source: Deseret News
5-24-08
There is insufficient evidence to say former LDS Church President Brigham Young ordered the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and ample evidence that says he did not, according to the church's assistant historian.
Richard Turley is one of three authors employed by the LDS Church who has spent the past six years writing a book about the 1857 massacre of 120 Arkansas wagon train emigrants in southern Utah. He told participants at the annual conference of the Mormon History Association on Saturday
Source: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com
5-19-08
Spencer Downing has a tale to tell, and he lands some big laughs along the way. Using very minimal costuming –- "layering" might be a better word -- an overhead projector and a series of hilarious hand-drawn transparencies, he tells the story of being one of the first college grads chosen for Teach for America, a Peace Corp-style program that asks participants to commit two years to teaching disadvantaged students across the U.S. Downing’s stint was in the early 1990s in a very rural,
Source: Andrew Preston in the Globe and Mail (Canada)
5-24-08
If you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, can you judge it by its author? It would seem to be a safe bet in most cases, but Robert Kagan delights in defying conventional wisdom. Though his views are always contentious and often questionable, Kagan is one of the most interesting, intelligent and perceptive foreign-policy intellectuals of the past quarter century. He has written several bestselling books on international politics and the U.S. role in the world. He is also one of John Mc
