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: Jerusalem Post
3-31-08
Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were "drenched" in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.
The problem of anti-Semitism in Britain is exacerbated by a growing and increasingly radical Muslim population, the weak approach taken by a timid British Jewish leadership, and t
Source: http://msutoday.msu.edu
4-1-08
In its day, the East German secret police, now known as the “Stasi,” was one of the most feared spy agencies in the world. But despite its reputation and seemingly unlimited access to James Bond-like technology, the best national security system couldn’t help an ailing communist regime, according to an MSU historian.
In her new book, “Seduced by Secrets,” MSU’s internationally recognized historian and Lyman Briggs associate professor Kristie Macrakis debunks the myths surrounding th
Source: Inside Higher Ed
3-31-08
Claire B. Potter has a level of academic success many young Ph.D.’s these days can only dream about. A professor of history and chair of American studies at Wesleyan University, she has tenure at an elite college. Tenure provides her not only with job security, but with part of her identity as the blogger Tenured Radical, where she shares views on a range of topics, writing with the freedom that tenure is supposed to protect.
So why would Potter recently have approached her provost
Source: Times (UK)
3-26-08
Mary Beard, a professor in classics at Cambridge, says in her blog that it is time to ditch the Olympic torch:
I don’t quite understand how we have forgotten that the “Olympic Torch” ceremony was invented by Hitler and his chums.
If ever there was an “invented tradition” well worth stamping out, it is this ridiculous, Fascist-inspired waste of money – which sends a Bunsen Burner around the world at tremendous cost for several months before the Games, manned (and womanned)
Source: Washington Times
3-31-08
Changes in teaching methods have been under way for a decade or more, says Kelly Schrum, director of educational projects at George Mason University's Center for History and New Media.
"It's similar to the emphasis on science education that came after the Cold War when doing experiments was important in a classroom. It's show, don't tell," she says.
It's also about what she calls "democratizing history" — using technology to give voice to people in h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
3-30-08
A range of school subjects could be swept away under new teaching proposals.
The attack on the National Curriculum, which has dictated school timetables for 20 years, could spell the end of separate classes in history, geography, literature, languages, art and music.
Instead, schools would be allowed to decide how they teach big themes such as global warming, conflict and healthy living.
The present list of subjects would be reduced to little more than English, m
Source: NYT
3-30-08
Paul Arthur, a film historian, scholar and critic well known for writing about American avant-garde cinema and documentaries, died on Tuesday at his home in White Plains. He was 60.
The cause was melanoma, for which he had just started treatment, said Karen Arthur, his former wife.
A professor of English and film studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where he had been named a distinguished scholar for 2007-8, Mr. Arthur had a decades-long passionate invol
Source: AP
3-27-08
A one-time director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association stole and tried to auction off one of its prized artifacts _ a 1918 letter the former president wrote about his son Quentin's death in World War I, prosecutors said.
Edward Renehan Jr., a historian who has written six books, was charged Wednesday with charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and criminal possession of a forged instrument. The last charge referred to what authorities said was a phony
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
3-27-08
To its credit, the Defense Intelligence Agency promptly withdrew an
official DIA history that mistakenly described the 1981 Israeli attack
on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in the 1980s as an attack on Iran (Secrecy
News, March 26). As soon as the error became public, DIA replaced the
entire document with an updated account.
In an email message yesterday to Israeli author Gideon Remez, who
discovered the error, DIA webmaster David Baird wrote:"You are correct
that the historical fact is w
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-27-08
In July 1933, six months after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, his government established the Hitler salute — right arm extended with palm open, together with the declaration "Heil Hitler!" — as the "properly German form of greeting." As Tilman Allert shows in his slim book, The Hitler Salute: On the Meaning of a Moral Gesture (Metropolitan Books), the greeting swiftly entrenched itself as a social convention and a gauge of loyalty to the regime. According to one N
Source: Inside Higher Ed
3-27-08
One of the key arguments made by David Horowitz and his supporters in recent years is that a left-wing orientation among faculty members results in a lack of curricular balance, which in turn leads to students being indoctrinated rather than educated. The argument is probably made most directly in a film much plugged by Horowitz: “Indoctrinate U.”
A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science & Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and s
Source: Vancouver Sun
3-26-08
Without a radical shift in thinking about first nations archaeology, B.C. is in danger of losing what is left of its ancient heritage and sparking heated conflict with natives, according to PhD candidate Michael Klassen.
Virtually all of the first nations' 9,000-year-old footprint in southwestern B.C. has been eradicated by development, Klassen said.
Most of it has been destroyed lot by lot, because each property taken alone may not register as scientifically significant.
Source: AP
3-26-08
A prestigious South Korean university under fire for hiring a professor who lied about her credentials contends in a federal lawsuit that Yale caused a national uproar by wrongly confirming she had earned a degree there, then falsely denying it had done so.
Dongguk University is seeking more than $50 million in damages, saying Yale's actions "severely tarnished" its stellar reputation, sparked a criminal probe, cost employees their jobs and led to a decline in donations, g
Source: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
3-26-08
From the inception of this public website, we imagined that it would have a companion forum for the exchange of ideas among persons with a professional interest in U.S. strategy and foreign policy. We call that companion MESHNet. MESHNet is a members-only message board, ideal for hosting open and structured discussions. We plan to develop MESHNet as a place where established and budding experts can express views among their peers, and where we can quickly congregate to enlighten and update one a
Source: Peter Dimock, at the Columbia University Press Blog
3-26-08
First published in English in 2006, Jörg Friedrich’s The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 is now available in paperback.
Upon publication of the hardcover edition of the book, Peter Dimock, the editor of The Fire, wrote the following essay discussing the book’s importance, its relevance to contemporary events, and how we think about the conduct of modern warfare:
Sometimes an editor can feel in his bones when the prose on the page of a manuscript he is hol
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-26-08
Researchers who use the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress are up in arms over rumors that it is about to be shut down to make way for exhibition space. They have begun a grass-roots campaign to urge concerned scholars to write protest letters to their representatives in Congress and to James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress.
Some have even set up a Web site, Save the European Reading Room at the LC!, to encourage people to take action.
The conster
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-28-08
Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry....
Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were p
Source: Slate
3-21-08
When Hillary Clinton recently floated the idea of choosing Barack Obama as her running mate, she won political points without being taken seriously (especially by Obama). The primary season has turned into the kind of slog and slugfest that makes opponents more opposed to each other, not less. But humor me, for a moment, and imagine that the kind of reconciliation that would allow them to be running mates is possible. Not to mention the best outcome for the party.
But which should i
Source: Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
3-24-08
Historian Wilson Jeremiah Moses called Mary Lefkowitz "an obscure drudge in the academic backwaters of a classics department." Africana-studies professor Anthony Martin, her colleague and chief combatant at Wellesley College, dubbed her a "national leader of the Jewish onslaught against Afrocentrism in general, and me in particular." Khalid Muhammad, formerly of the Nation of Islam, railed against her in 1997 as "Left-o-witch," a "hook-nosed, lox-eating, bagel-
Source: Deseret News
3-23-08
Gordon Wood, a professor of history at Brown University in Providence, R.I., is a legendary figure in his field of early American history. He has written many books about the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers.
His newest book is "The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History."
In 21 varied and provocative essays, Wood considers how history has changed over the years in the hands of both popular and academic historians. As a professor w
