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: John Judis at the website of the New Republic
2-28-08
[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His book William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (Simon & Schuster) is available in paperback.]
... When I was writing his biography, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (1988), I had trouble understanding his Catholicism, but I finally figured it out when I was watching him host Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisi
Source: http://www.jta.org
2-26-08
An Israeli historian expunged suggestions in his book that medieval Jews used Christian blood for Passover rituals.
The new edition of Ariel Toaff's "Passover of Blood" includes a passage in which the Bar-Ilan University professor makes clear that the murder of a Christian child in 15th-century Italy in no way was factually linked to Jewish religious custom.
Toaff in the original book, published last year in Italy, caused an international outcry by writing tha
Source: The Hindu
2-26-08
NEW DELHI: Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists ransacked the office of Delhi University’s History Department head S.Z.H. Jafri on Monday protesting against certain portions of the B.A. History (Honours) syllabus.
The activists allegedly manhandled Prof. Jafri and hurled abuses at him before vandalising the office. They also allegedly threw stones into classrooms and broke doors, windows and furniture of the Department on the North Campus.
Some groups have raise
Source: Robert Cherny, OAH Treasurer, in the OAH Newsletter
2-1-08
... Revenue has matched expenses for the first six months of the fiscal year, and we have a slightly positive balance of $10,269. This is a significant improvement over last year. You’ll recall that, last year, we started the fiscal year with a debt of $179,000 to IU (who handles many of our expenses, and whom we periodically reimburse). Halfway through the last fiscal year, our debt to IU had actually increased. This year we have a significant positive balance with IU rather than a debt. (And
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
2-25-08
Congratulations to Josh Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo is one of the most widely read history blogs. He's won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for TPM's coverage of the Bush administration's firing of eight United States attorneys and forced the Justice Department to put him back on its mailing list for credentialed reporters after it removed him last year. All this and more in Noam Cohen's"
Source: Eric Rauchway at The Edge of the American West (Blog)
2-26-08
The picture I would like to show you of George Fredrickson is a picture I don’t have but remember well, a picture I hope some suitably-situated obituarist will retrieve from the original dust-jacket of The Inner Civil War, a picture of a square-jawed George in 1965 with the Kennedy haircut and a straight-stem pipe, looking as if he had just stepped out of
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-26-08
Without much fanfare, Columbia University Press has radically restructured Gutenberg-e, its high-profile experiment with digital history monographs, from a subscription-only series to an open-access model. The 36 titles will also be available—in somewhat different form, and enhanced with related scholarship—through Humanities E-Book, a subscription-only collection of digital versions of humanities monographs administered by the American Council of Learned Societies, or ACLS.
The Col
Source: http://www.american.com (Jan-Feb issue)
1-1-08
In his nondescript office on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, nestled in a far-off corner of Harvard Square, Ben Olken ruminates on the economic consequences of tyrannicide, the damaging effects of television on social cohesion, and the byzantine system of bribery in Indonesia. Olken, a 32-year-old with an undergraduate degree from Yale (in mathe matics and “ethics, politics, and economics”) and an economics doctorate from Harvard, is a ris ing star in the field of developmental economics. Olk
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-26-08
... The final agreement released on Monday sketches rules for the relationship, and it appears to have satisfied some but not all of the Faculty Senate's requests. The university and the institute will form an academic advisory committee, with an equal number of personnel from both parties, to oversee concurrent appointments and to develop joint projects.
In an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Monday, Edward S. Countryman, a professor of history and a member of the Faculty Senate,
Source: AP
2-23-08
PHILADELPHIA - As a child growing up in the 1940s, Charles Blockson was once told by a white teacher that black people had made no contributions to history.
Even as a fourth-grader, Blockson, who is black, knew better. So he began collecting proof.
Today, the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University contains more than 30,000 historical items, some dating to the 16th century. It includes Paul Robeson's sheet music, African Bibles, rare letters an
Source: http://www.news.wisc.edu/14805
2-25-08
History professor Alfred McCoy plays a role in "Taxi to the Dark Side," a harrowing film about U.S. interrogation techniques that won the Academy Award Sunday for best documentary feature.
McCoy, author of "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror," appears in part of the film to explain how the history of CIA torture research shaped the policy of President Bush's administration.
McCoy got involved in the film
Source: Letter to the Editor of the NYT
2-26-08
To the Editor:
Your article about the possible foreclosure of the Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in Lenox, Mass. (Arts pages, Feb. 23), has alerted readers that the fascinating abode of one of our best American writers may be closed and therefore crossed off the itinerary of literary and cultural pilgrims. It must be saved.
As an Edith Wharton biographer, I know that intimacy with the house is a way not only into Edith Wharton’s fascinating life but also the Gilded Age m
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
2-25-08
A Google alert just popped up on my computer. It brought me to "Fiery
Source: NYT
2-23-08
Hoping to elevate the art and scholarship of biography, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is setting up a center where its practitioners can meet, trade ideas and work.
Financed by a $3.7 million gift from the Leon Levy Foundation, the new center will offer four fellowships for this fall to academics and others who are working on biographies, as well as two fellowships to graduate students at CUNY who are writing biographical dissertations. Next year the center
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog
2-20-08
In letters sent to federal authorities, the American Historical Association objected to recent disclosures that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed records from interrogations of individuals suspected of terrorism, and requested action to prevent further loss.
The letters, signed by AHA Executive Director Arnita Jones with the unanimous support of the AHA Council, notes that these records were “historically significant and legally important, and their destruction impoverishes
Source: Douglas Murray in the spectator.co.uk
2-20-08
Michael Burleigh is riding a career high. The author of the 2000 bestseller The Third Reich: A New History has just published the last of a gargantuan trilogy of books on religion and politics in Europe since the French revolution. Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes took us up to the war on terror. Now, with Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, Burleigh comes right up to date. Not that Blood and Rage is only about Islamic fundamentalism. As the 52-year-old former academic tells me when
Source: http://inside.binghamton.edu
2-21-08
Charles Budd Forcey, 83, of Fort Myers, Fla., professor emeritus of American history at Binghamton University, died on Feb. 8, as a result of an allergic reaction to a bee sting while on vacation in Mexico.
Forcey joined the Binghamton faculty in 1967 and retired in 1991. Active in professional and political organizations, he authored The Crossroads of Liberalism: Croly, Weyl, Lippmann and the Progressive Era, 1900-1925 and A Strong and Free Nation. He was also a Fulbright lecturer
Source: NJ Jewish News
2-21-08
Israeli historian David Tal sees parallels between the current rain of rockets on Sderot and previous crises in Israeli history.
“Between 1948 and 1966, there were infiltrators everywhere, robbing and stealing,” he said. “After the 1967 war, there was constant bombing from Jordan and then from Lebanon.”
In the past, however, the government had more control over the flow of information, and the incidents of violence were seen as more remote.
“Now, everything
Source: http://www.sonomanews.com
2-22-08
The Sonoma City Council adopted an idea proposed by Mayor Joanne Sanders and Wednesday night established the position of city historian.
The position would be voluntary and unpaid, with a renewable two-year term. The selected person would be responsible for coordinating, identifying and maintaining historical records and artifacts owned by the city; provide historical updates to the city council; assist with public research; make recommendations regarding preservation of historic re
Source: http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk
2-22-08
AN AMATEUR historian has discovered that he has the biggest item in his collection of memorabilia hidden under his dining room floor - a Second World War bomb shelter.
Craig Brisbane has been collecting items of local historical interest for years - including postcards of Prestwich in days gone by and letters written by soldiers during the two world wars - but without knowing it he has been sitting on the most exciting item of all.
He made the discovery after rolling up
