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: Sean Wilentz in the New Republic (subscribers only)
2-13-08
Few historians write personal journals that deserve publication, which is not surprising. How much interest can there be in the academic controversies and petty jealousies that dominate the lives of working historians, much less in the archives, the private libraries, and the lecture halls where they spend so much of their time? Novelists, poets, and literary critics--Alfred Kazin is a recent example--have the gifts, and the sensibilities, required to dramatize their inner lives and the world ar
Source: AHA Blog
2-4-08
The proposed revisions to the AHA Constitution were overwhelmingly approved by the membership, by a vote of 605 to 58. The revisions have been through a long process of consultation and review; after preliminary approval by the AHA Council last June, they were placed before the membership in Perspectives and two interactive discussion forums, which led to some small modifications. The revisions were then submitted to the AHA business meeting in January and received unanimous approval, and then d
Source: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com
2-5-08
The University of Southern Mississippi will recognize the contributions of African-Americans to the state, region and nation with a series of programs in celebration of Black History Month, beginning Feb. 7.
The theme for this year’s programming is “Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism,” which is also the national theme for Black History Month. Woodson was a historian and founder of Black History Month who worked to promote the value of the contributions of African-
Source: Reuters
2-3-08
The future of Pakistan, and how it balances the need for Muslim symbols with the secularism needed to run a modern state, will be important for the future of the world, according to historian and theologian Karen Armstrong.
Nuclear-armed and reaping the grim harvest of "extremism" resulting from the West's support for a religious war to drive the Soviet Union out of neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistan has a big question to answer, says Armstrong.
"How do yo
Source: politics.co.uk
2-1-08
Historian Tristram Hunt has dismissed a report attacking political backing of patriotism in UK schools.
A report published today by the Institute of Education at the University of London attacks politicians' enthusiasm for patriotism, suggesting the country's history is not something to be proud of.
Dr Hunt, also of the University of London, says this approach is "very immature".
"The point is not whether history was right or wrong from a 2
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-8-08
"The present is a void," the literary critic and historian Van Wyck Brooks wrote in 1918, "and the American writer floats in that void because the past that survives in the common mind of the present is a past without living value." Coining the phrase he is best remembered for, Brooks called on his fellow citizens to join in the search for "a usable past." If they could not discover one, he argued, they could invent one.
Brooks's pitch was not aimed at
Source: Press Release--New York Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama!
2-4-08
[HNN Editor: Signers include these historians: Columbia University's Martha Howell and Alice Kessler Harris, NYU's Linda Gordon, Maria Montoya, Barbara Weinstein, and Marilyn Young, Hofstra's Carolyn Eisenberg and Susan Yohn, SUNY/Old Westbury's Laura Anker and Rosalyn Baxandall, Amherst's Martha Saxton, Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva, and Maggie Williams of William Patterson University.]
Over 150 New York feminists and peace activists—among them actors Kathleen Chalfant, Kerry Washing
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
2-4-08
Oral history should not be subject to approval by institutional review boards, according to dozens of comments submitted by historians and others to the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which announced last October that it would amend the rules governing what kinds of research qualify for expedited review by the boards.
Some researchers and some boards, commonly known as IRB’s, have interpreted the existing rules to mean that oral history is exempt from such oversight
Source: AP
2-3-08
The Sept. 11 commission's executive director had closer ties with the White House than publicly disclosed and tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration's responsibility, a new book says.
Philip Zelikow, a friend of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke with her several times during the 20-month investigation that closely examined her role in assessing the al-Qaida threat. He also exchanged frequent
Source: Telegraph (UK)
2-4-08
The Crucifixion of Christ "wasn't as bad as it's been painted", an outspoken Marxist academic will claim on the BBC this month.
Terry Eagleton, Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester, will say on Radio 4's Lent Talks that Jesus "got off pretty lightly" because it only took him three hours to die, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
He adds that Jesus's scourging was a "blessing in disguise" because it hastened his death.
Source: NYT
2-3-08
[Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität Berlin, and taught philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University.]
... Germany is not alone in its quest for the right sort of memory, and it has done a better job than most. But the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power should be an occasion to reflect on how historical crimes are remembered. I propose we restrain our attention to the suffering
Source: Randy Cohen, The Ethicist, in the NYT Magazine
2-3-08
I’m a history professor — my period is 1500-1800 — with an M.A. student who wants to pursue a doctorate. While she is smart and capable, she is very religious, subscribing to the “young earth” theory that the world is only 6,000 years old. I am to work with her for a year and then recommend her to Ph.D. programs. Must I do so if I find her views incongruent with those of historians? — NAME WITHHELD, CALIFORNIA
Unless your student’s religious beliefs impair her work — and you don’t s
Source: Press Release--David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
2-3-08
The government of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1944 secretly proposed creating a “Greater Syria” that would have shut Holocaust escapees out of Palestine and thwarted creation of a Jewish state, according to an Israeli scholar, citing newly-released French government documents.
“This raises important questions about Winston Churchill’s attitudes toward Jewish refugees and Zionism,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studie
Source: HNN Staff
2-1-08
In his long-awaited history of the 9-11 Commission due out February 5, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon calls into question the independence of the executive director who ran the investigation,
Source: Hartford Courant
1-30-08
Jim Zwick, 51, an American Studies scholar whose specialties included Mark Twain, political history, and the educational usages of the internet died Thursday (January 24, 2008) at his home outside of Syracuse, New York. Zwick was the author of numerous noted books and articles on Twain, anti-imperialism and other topics. Major publications included the books Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire, Inuit Entertainers in the United States, and Confronting Imperialism: Essays on Mark Twain and the Anti-Imp
Source: Mary Beard at Times Online (UK)
1-28-08
In this month’s (that is February’s) Vogue, that wonderful polymath Simon Schama shares his views on, and recipes for, stews. In the course of this article, “Simmer of love”, he has some harsh words for the culinary knowledge of Virginia Woolf.
His particular target is the meal cooked by Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, a tremendous pot of boeuf en daube. Just one ladleful of the stuff is enough to turn awkward company into human beings, joined in “tender communion’. Mrs Ramsay is d
Source: St. Petersburg Times
1-23-08
Associate history professor Matt Childs needs to spend another four to six months in Cuba to finish his second book on the country's slave history, but Florida's 2-year-old ban on research travel to the communist country prevents him from going.
He has received just one merit raise in his six years at Florida State University. He's married with one toddler, and another baby and endless bills on the way.
So when the University of South Carolina recently came calling, Chi
Source: Commentary (subscription only)
2-1-08
Others have offered a kinder, gentler view of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. than the one provided by Edmund Wilson in his diaries. “He was a great historian and an incomparable witness,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, in announcing the library’s acquisition of Schlesinger’s voluminous personal papers this past November. LeClerc went on to compare Schle-singer, who died a year ago at the age of eighty-nine, with Voltaire—to the latter’s detriment. Voltaire, after all, m
Source: http://www.infozine.com
1-30-08
Americans have a more negative attitude toward Islam now than they did immediately after Sept. 11, a history professor who studies the Middle East and religion told an audience here last week.
***
Juan R.I. Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, said that immediately after Sept. 11, 30 percent of Americans had a negative view of Islam. But reports published in the Washington Post and USA Today in December 2006 found that 45 percent of Americans held
Source: http://media.www.thetraveleronline.com
1-30-08
The troop surge in Iraq is not nearly as successful as the media portrays it to be, a Middle East historian said in a lecture Monday in Giffels Auditorium.
In "The Iraq Surge One Year On," Chris Toensing, editor of the Middle East Report, disputed assertions by neoconservatives in the media concerning the "apparent success of the surge." He said the war in Iraq is far from over.
The claims of success are correctly based on two figures - the decrease
