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: NYT
2-10-08
Dan H. Laurence, a noted scholar, editor and bibliographer who devoted nearly every waking moment of his professional life to compiling the voluminous works of George Bernard Shaw, died on Tuesday at his home in San Antonio. He was 87.
Mr. Laurence died of natural causes, his niece, Jo Fielder, said.
For many years the official literary adviser to Shaw’s estate, Mr. Laurence was considered one of this country’s leading authorities on Shaw (1856-1950), the distinguished
Source: NZPA
2-1-08
HNN Editor: On February 9, 2008 Mr. Hayward, the subject of this entry, raised objections to this story. This is his statement:
In 1993 I received a two-year Master of Arts degree from the University of Canterbury, comprising a supervised one-year research thesis (written in 1991) and four classroom-taught papers (1992). I received a grade of “A+” for the thesis and four grades of “A” for the papers.
I have regretted for the last seventeen years that my 1991 thesi
Source: NYT
2-8-08
... The American military’s difficulty in securing Iraq has led to much soul-searching within the armed forces on how to prepare for future conflicts. Col. H. R. McMaster of the Army, who commanded the successful effort in 2005 to secure the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, asserts in a new article that an exaggerated faith in military technology and a corresponding undervaluation of political and military measures to secure the peace undermined American efforts in Iraq.
“Self-delus
Source: Mercury News
2-8-08
As Black History Month began, a gaggle of schoolchildren traipsing through the fifth floor of San Jose's main library surrounded Iris Jerke and her history exhibit on Santa Clara Valley's African-Americans. None of the kids was black, and neither is Jerke.
The kids looked at early, black-and-white photos of "Negroes" and "colored" folk wearing courtly, wrist-to-neck shirts or blouses and illustrious hats. The children wondered if they were slaves, servants or fre
Source: NYT
2-8-08
To posterity the balding man in the courtroom was the greatest writer in the English language. To the maidservant formerly employed at his lodgings, he was “one Mr Shakespeare that laye in the house.” To the Court of Requests, taking depositions in a lawsuit in 1612, he was simply a witness who gave his statement, signed a hurried “Wm Shakspe” and then took his leave.
This fleeting glimpse of Shakespeare as he appeared to others, grounded in a specific London setting, seized the ima
Source: AFP
2-8-08
Historian Zeev Sternhell, an expert on
extreme right-wing ideologies in France, has been awarded the 2008 Israel Prize in political science, public television said.
Born in Poland in 1935, Sternhell fled the Holocaust and lived briefly in France before going to Israel in 1951.
He teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialising in the emergence of fascism.
Sternhell is also a frequent contributor to the liberal Haaretz newspap
Source: Interview at Inside Higher Ed
2-8-08
In campus health centers, Heather Munro Prescott sees much more than places to promote student health. Their history reflects important societal values on the evolution of higher education in the United States, about the education of women, and about some of the most controversial social issues of the day. Prescott’s new book, Student Bodies: The Influence of Health Services in American Society and Medicine, is just out from the University of Michigan Press. Prescott, professor of history at Cen
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
2-10-08
Historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States? is being adapted into a feature documentary. Called "The People Speak" the documentary will feature dramatic readings and live musical performances from the likes of Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, David Strathairn, Marisa Tomei Jasmine Guy, John Legend, Q'Orianka Kilcher, Michael Ealy and Kerry Washington.Four performances in Boston at Emerson's Cutler Majestic Theater have already been shot and
Source: Stan Katz in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-8-08
How did you spend Thursday, Stan?
Well, it is a complicated story. I took Amtrak from Princeton Junction at 6:16 a.m. in order to make a 10 a.m. hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Aha, you say, the chairman, Senator Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, wanted your views on waterboarding, or perhaps on whether or not to confirm the latest bunch of President Bush’s judicial nominees?
Nope. Senator Leahy wanted my opinion, and that of several others, on “The Founding Fathers
Source: Times (UK)
2-3-08
Charles Freeman’s 2003 book The Closing of the Western Mind upset Christian theologians. So will this one. As before, he argues that the coming of Christianity terminated the tradition of free, tolerant debate that had prevailed in the classical world, replacing it with irrational dogma, enforced by savage persecution, that obstructed the advance of western thought for centuries. But his new book has a sharper focus, selecting as a defining moment the year AD381 when Theodosius, emperor of the e
Source: Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
2-8-08
Amnesty International reports once again about death threats against members of a Guatemalan forensic anthropology team. These teams can be perceived as "protohistorians": they excavate mass graves to find evidence for the genocide and other crimes against humanity committed during the civil war (1960–96) and they are therefore of great concern to the historical profession. The new threats are apparently connected with, inter alia, an article in the newspaper Siglo XXI that reported th
Source: Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
2-8-08
The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN protests the four-year prison sentence handed down to writer and human rights activist Lü Gengsong on 5 February 2008 for ‘inciting subversion of state power’ for his critical writings published online. Lü has been detained since 24 August 2007. International PEN considers Lü Gengsong to be detained in violation of Article 19 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory, and calls for his immedia
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-7-08
Tariq Ramadan, a prominent European Muslim scholar, is calling on “all people of conscience” to boycott the forthcoming Turin Book Fair in Italy. Ramadan's outrage stems from the fact that the Turin festival organizers have decided to honor Israeli literature because it is the Jewish state's 60th anniversary. Luminaries from the world of Israeli letters like David Grossman, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and Etgar Keret are scheduled to attend.
According to a post by Rachel Donadio on The
Source: WaPo
2-7-08
There are a number of things that make Drew Gilpin Faust different from those who've come before her as head honcho of America's flagship university.
Faust is, for example, the only president of Harvard known to have produced an academic paper titled "Equine Relics of the Civil War," the research for which included attending a solemn burial ceremony for the cremated bones of Stonewall Jackson's horse.
She is, it seems almost certain, the only one among the ano
Source: Press Release--Historians Against the War (Click here for details.)
2-7-08
Historians Against the War and the Peace History Society invite you to our upcoming national conference at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, 11-13 April 2008.
We want to attract historically minded scholars, activists from a variety of social movements, graduate students, educators, artists, and independent researchers and writers.
The conference will begin on Friday evening, April 11 with two keynote addresses. The speakers are Bill Fletcher, Jr., a longtime
Source: Newsweek
2-2-08
More than half the presidents have served under a commander before taking office. That service, says historian Michael Beschloss, had a particular impact on these six:
Washington, Jackson, TR, Ike, JFK, Bush I.
Source: http://media-newswire.com
2-5-08
A native New Yorker and nationally recognized historian, who has held various leadership positions on the state and national level for the past 28 years, has been appointed the new chief historian. Robert Weible, the current director of public history at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, a unit of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), will take on his new role as New York State's chief curator of history in late March.
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com
1-31-08
Nizar Hassan, [an Arab] lecturer at Sapir College who refused to teach a reservist who showed up to his class in an IDF uniform, was asked by the college's administration to apologize to the student in order to avoid the termination of employment at the institution, according to a summary of the council hearing on the case on Thursday....
[History] Professor Zeev Zachor, President of Sapir College, sent a letter to Hassan saying: "As a condition of your continued employment, yo
Source: http://www.afriquenligne.fr
2-5-08
Senegalese historian Prof. Mamadou Diouf on Tuesday denounced the "autocratic trend" that is increasingly characterising governments formed after democratic elections in Africa.
"Democratic elections are giving birth to autocratic regimes in some African countries," Prof. Diouf, Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) of the University of Colombia, said in Dakar at the four-day African Forum of the Open Society Initiative (OSI) Foundation of the US bil
Source: Drew Faust in a letter to the editor of Business Week (followed by editor's clarification)
1-24-08
Drew Gilpin Faust
President, Harvard University
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
I have communicated directly with the group of public-university provosts who wrote to BusinessWeek ("Educational Excellence, Without Ivy," Outside Shot, Jan. 14) about views inaccurately attributed to me in "The Dangerous Wealth of the Ivy League" (In Depth, Dec. 10, 2007). But I would like to express to BusinessWeek's broader readership that the mischaracterization of my beliefs thro
