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: Spiegel
10-15-07
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being 'out of control.'
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Kolko, editorials in US papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review are pushing for military action against Iran. How does the leadership in the US military view such a conflict?
Gabriel Kolko: The A
Source: http://www.democratandchronicle.com (Rochester, NY)
10-15-07
A German historian spoke to about 100 people yesterday at the Memorial Art Gallery on the risks that German rescuers took to help Jews during the Holocaust.
During her lecture, Barbara Schieb focused on the story of Rochester residents Erich and Ellen Arndt, who went into hiding for 837 days during Berlin's Nazi era. Schieb showed a video interview of Ellen Arnst, when she was still alive a few years ago, telling her story of survival.
"Our helpers didn't know what
Source: AP
10-15-07
CLEVELAND — A teacher wounded in a shooting rampage at a downtown high school said Monday that the student gunman was disruptive and was failing the teacher's world history class.
Michael Grassie, 42, spoke at MetroHealth Medical Center before his discharge. He was wounded in the abdomen last week by Asa Coon, 14, who killed himself after wounding a second teacher and two students.
Grassie, sitting in a wheelchair, said Coon was doing poorly in his class at SuccessTech
12-31-69
In response to the recent request for comments on the proposed constitutional amendments, AHA members have made several useful suggestions and some members have also helpfully pointed out some minor textual errors in the proposed revisions. We apologize for any inconvenience these errors have caused. Staff and council are working to further refine and clarify the proposed changes. The changes—with the typographical errors corrected—will be posted to the web site on or about October 19, 2007. Alt
Source: Press Release--DePaul Academic Freedom Committee
10-11-07
In light of the controversial tenure denials of eminent Middle East scholar Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein and Dr. Mehrene Larudee earlier this year at DePaul University, the most prominent scholars from across the world will come together this Friday, October 12, 2007, at a conference at the University of Chicago to speak lecturing about the threats to academic freedom at universities.
Professors Finkelstein and Larudee were both denied tenure at DePaul last June for political purposes
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed
10-16-07
...Turkey’s government ... has been quick to point [to] American scholars (there are only a handful, but Turkey knows them all) who back its view that what’s needed with regard to 1915 is not to call it genocide, but to figure out what to call it, and what actually took place.
Normally, you might expect historians to welcome the interest of governments in convening scholars to explore questions of scholarship. But in this case, scholars who study the period say that the leaders of T
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
10-14-07
In November 1861, President Lincoln went to the Library of Congress and checked out a few books, including the Book of Mormon. During the next few weeks, Lincoln, preparing to name Utah's new territorial governor, borrowed three more books on Mormons.
Fifty years later, when Utah Sen. Reed Smoot, a Mormon, cancelled his honeymoon to return to Washington and help pass a needed treaty, President Hoover invited the newlyweds to spend their first two weeks as a married couple at the W
Source: John Q. Barrett in an email to his list.
10-15-07
[Mr. Jackson, a professor at St. John’s University School of Law, is writing a biography of Justice Jackson.]
In his long, engaged and very consequential life, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) covered a lot of ground and knew, it seemed, everyone. In his youth, one of his many acquaintances was Justice Robert H. Jackson.
Their paths almost crossed for the first time in London in August 1945. Jackson was there as President Truman’s appointee, negotiating with Br
Source: Journal News (Westchester)
10-14-07
A long time before Lady Liberty appeared, New York was welcoming immigrants like no other American city.
And the reason dates back centuries, historian Kenneth Jackson said in a lecture Friday night. While other cities were established by groups looking to protect their religious beliefs, New Amsterdam began as a center of trade. Founded by the Dutch in 1624, the city quickly attracted diverse nationalities. The driving force, then as now, is a pursuit of prosperity, Jackson said. T
Source: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr
10-12-07
Turkey seems to be stuck on the issues of headscarf and secularity, while the world is discussing nano-technology, gene science, and the revolution in modes of communication. But exactly where do these discussions stem from? A leading historian in Turkey, Kemal Karpat believes Turkey cannot be run by Islamic canon law and that if the pressure on it is released, the headscarf will be void of political messages.
“There was no point in time that there was not a concern about secula
Source: Guardian
10-12-07
Saul Friedlander's feelings on being awarded the prestigious [25,000 Euros] Peace Prize of the German Book Trade are "complex" he admitted today in Frankfurt. Friedlander, the author of a magisterial two-volume work on Nazi Germany and the Jews, and a world authority on the Holocaust, said that while he accepted the honour with "the utmost pleasure", he had to acknowledge that he had been awarded it because of his work, which reflects the experience of his life and is linked
Source: Suzan Mazur at her blog (Click here for embedded links)
10-8-07
Much has been written about the CIA cocaine operation at Mena, Arkansas during Bill and Hillary Clinton’s watch as governor and first lady of that state in the 1980s. So I wondered why Carl Bernstein left it out of his book on Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge, when the argument put forth by Clinton biographer Roger Morris in his book, Partners in Power, was a particularly compelling one about the CIA operation taking place.
I decided to ask Bernstein formally for an explanation ab
Source: Harvard Crimosn
10-12-07
"I stand honored by your trust, inspired by your charge," Drew G. Faust told thousands of spectators as she took the podium for her installation as Harvard’s 28th president on Friday afternoon.
In a rainy and blustery Tercentenary Theatre, Faust drew from the past to discuss the evolving role of universities and Harvard's responsibilities as a leader in higher education.
As expected, Faust explicitly avoided laying out a road map for her tenure in her 30-min
Source: Inside Higher Ed
10-15-07
Nicholas Bromell started off his presentation at the American Studies Association meeting on Friday by asking a packed room of participants if they knew the names of any conservative think tanks that are powerful in Washington. Groups like the Heritage Foundation were quickly named by the professors. Bromell, a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, then asked if they could name any liberal groups, and the audience was stumped.
Of course there are such o
Source: WaPo
10-13-07
Roy A. Rosenzweig, 57, a social and cultural historian at George Mason University who became a prominent advocate for "digital history," a field combining historical scholarship with digital media's broad reach and interactive possibilities, died Oct. 11 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington County. He had lung cancer.
Dr. Rosenzweig, who taught history at GMU for the past 26 years, founded the university's Center for History and New Media in 1994. As its director, he o
Source: Mason Gazette
10-12-07
Roy Rosenzweig, a historian and pioneer of digital technology and new media, died from cancer on Oct. 11. He joined the Mason faculty in 1981.
Rosenzweig was the Mark and Barbara Fried Chair and director of the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), which he founded in 1994. CHNM has been at the forefront of efforts to
Source: NYT Book Review
10-14-07
There are two Israels: one inside the Green Line, the 1967 border, the other an occupying power extending beyond it. The first is a vibrant democracy, with Arab members of Parliament, university professors and lawyers, beauty queens and soldiers, and even a Muslim cabinet minister. There are no separate roads for Arabs and Jews in the name of that all-purpose explanation “security,” no villages made inaccessible because their roads have been dug up by army bulldozers, no checkpoints and no secur
Source: NYT Book Review
10-14-07
In “The Far Traveler,” Nancy Marie Brown tries to solve the mystery of a beautiful woman named Gudrid who appears in two Icelandic sagas and crossed the North Atlantic, from Iceland and Greenland to Newfoundland and Norway, eight times. Who was this intrepid woman, and why did she roam off the edge of the known world? Thousand-year-old clues lie scattered about, but few are conclusive.
Brown’s springboard and inspiration are the sagas, filled with revenge killings, out-of-wedlock bi
Source: Guardian
10-12-07
The Oxford Union debating society came under fire last night after its president said he had approached Holocaust denier David Irving, British National party chairman Nick Griffin and the Belarussian dictator, Alexander Lukoshenko, to speak at forthcoming events.
Luke Tryl said he had asked Mr Irving and Mr Griffin to speak at the union's Free Speech Forum, due to take place at the end of November, adding that Mr Lukoshenko, the Belarussian president, accused of a string of human rights a
Source: Vanity Fair
11-1-07
July 19, 1959. Hyannis Port. Jackie Kennedy was the only other person present; and we all drank and talked from about 8 to 12:30.… [Jackie] was lovely but seemed excessively flighty on politics, asking with wide-eyed naïveté questions like: "Jack, why don't you just tell them that you won't go into any of those old primaries?" Jack was in a benign frame of mind and did not blink; but clearly such remarks could, in another context, be irritating. This is all the more so since Jackie, on
