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
10-11-07
Walter Kempowski, a German writer and archivist who compiled thousands of pages of recollections from eyewitnesses of World War II into a monumental firsthand record of the German wartime experience, died at a hospital in northwestern Germany on Oct. 5. He was 78.
The cause was intestinal cancer, said his publisher, Albrecht Knaus Verlag.
Even in his final days, Mr. Kempowski kept a diary. His passion, for his own memories and those of others, led to the creation of the
Source: Connecticut Daily Campus
10-10-07
"Hello? Can you hear me?" said Samuel Kassow, as he took the podium in the softly-lit auditorium.
Kassow, a professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, gave his lecture, "A Historian in the Ghetto: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archives," Tuesday in the Konover Auditorium at the Dodd Center. The lecture, which was part of the Ivry lecture series, focused on the collection and recording efforts of the Oyneg Shabes resistance group in the Warsaw
Source: Helsingin Sanomat
10-7-07
This is not a man who is afraid of being right - or of being alone.
Last Tuesday, Heikki Ylikangas published the book Romahtaako rintama? ("Is the Front Collapsing?") whose basic thesis is that the Finns executed more of their own soldiers for desertion during the final phases of the continuation War than had been previously disclosed.
His book is not even the first time that Professor Ylikangas has caused a stir. Usually it follows the same patter
Source: Detroit Free Press
10-9-07
Amid a backdrop of tensions at Wayne State University over the Middle East, historian Daniel Pipes said Islam needs to reform and called for Israel to get tough with Palestinian extremists.
Pipes, who was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, spoke Monday in measured tones at the university in front of a crowd of about 120. Sponsored by pro-Israeli groups, his trip to Michigan included a scheduled talk Monday night at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
"So lo
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
10-10-07
To give a sense of the history of trees in America, Harvey Green points to a picture of his property as it was in the mid-19th century, in an old copy of Frederic Kidder's History of New Ipswich, 1736-1852. The land belonged to Benjamin Hoar, and the Hoar house, as Mr. Green gleefully calls it, sits across a road from two tall maples, the only big trees in the picture. The hills around the house roll into the horizon. Early settlers shaved them down to the rocky soil to make way for grazing shee
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
10-8-07
Smithsonian's"37 under 36: America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences," October, features four young American historians: UC, Santa Barbara's Reza Aslan, who interprets Islam in a modern and western world; USC's Daniela Bleichmar, who studies old botanical d
Source: Times (UK)
10-6-07
The nation state is a crumbling institution, according to Britain’s most illustrious historian, and he believes that football shows why.
Professor Eric Hobsbawm told an audience at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival yesterday that football was a “textbook illustration of the internal contradictions of globalisation in the period of the nation state”.
A section of his latest book Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism is devoted to the argument but “this has not
Source: Matthew Yglesias at his blog in the Atlantic Monthly
10-8-07
A little glance back at the 2002-vintage thoughts of Bernard Lewis, every conservative's favorite Middle East expert. Speaking before the invasion of Iraq, he notes that"Parallels to the Iraq quandary can be found by looking at post-World War II Germany and Japan" which were turned into successful liberal democracies. And then:
I am particularly optimistic that the same can be done in Iraq, which has many positive features upon which it can build. For example, of all the oil-
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
10-9-07
June Torbati,"Law prof. borrows text for book," Yale Daily News, 4 October, exposes plagiarism in Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres' ninth book, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. Columbia Law School Professor Michael Dorf suggests that it isn't a plagiarism scandal so much as a ghost-writing scandal, an
Source: Spiegel
10-8-07
Israeli historian Saul Friedländer -- winner of the 2007 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to be presented this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair -- spoke to SPIEGEL about the importance of victims' accounts in researching the Holocaust and the failure of efforts in Germany to draw a line under the issue.
SPIEGEL: Professor Friedländer, in contrast to other accounts of the history of the Holocaust, in your book "Nazi Germany and the Jews, the Years of Extermination," you
Source: Eagle-Tribune
10-8-07
A University of Pittsburgh historian has discovered one of the strangest and most compelling documents ever related to the 18th-century slave trade - and it has a Salem connection so strong that experts at the Peabody Essex Museum are buzzing.
The petition was uncovered by Marcus Rediker, 55, while researching his fifth book, "The Slave Ship: A Human History." It is a bloodcurdling satire, until now lost to history. Written by Scottish doctor, radical, Encyclopaedia Britan
Source: Michael Novak at Britannica Blog
4-10-07
[HNN Editor: Brooke Allen is the author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. Michael and Jane Novak are the authors of Washington's God. Recently Allen and the Novaks have engaged in a feisty debate at Britannica Blog about the religious faith of the founders, here.]
It was sad to read Ms. Allen’s description of my daughter Jana and me as “Mr. And Mrs. Novak.” Of course, we could already see from her blog th
Source: Winfield Myers at the website of Campus Watch, the organization founded by Daniel Pipes
10-8-07
Howard Zinn, the radical historian who wrote that"objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable," remained true to his word when he claimed recently that the organization StandWithUs is"an offshoot of Campus Watch."The objective truth is that StandWithUs has no relation whatsoever to Campus Watch--a empirical fact Zinn might easily have discovered ha
Source: Columbia Spectator
10-2-07
There are Columbia professors, and there are Columbia institutions. Jacques Barzun is the latter. Undergraduate, provost, and everything in between, professor Barzun fundamentally redefined the Columbia experience through a half-century of dedicated service. Western, worldly, and undeniably brilliant, Barzun faithfully embodies the University’s greatness. As we approach his 100th birthday, a personal centennial, it is worth reflecting on his many accomplishments—for his is truly a Columbian life
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) summary of article by Rauchway in the New Republic
10-8-07
For all their successes, American universities "have the same problem now as in the 19th century," writes Eric Rauchway, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis. The problem, he says in a brief history of state universities, is insufficient financial support from federal and state governments.
Congress opened debate on research universities in 1857, says Mr. Rauchway, with the
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
10-8-07
U.S. military officials tell The New York Times that anthropologists assigned to combat units in Afghanistan are helping to ease tensions with the local population and reduce the use of lethal force. But that success is likely to bring the long-simmering debate over the relationship between anthropologists and the U.S. government to a full boil....
Anthropologists who favor such cooperation cite the upside of the encounters. Montgomery McFate, a cultural anthropologist who works as
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
10-8-07
When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran addressed faculty members and students at Columbia University last month, he invited everyone present to visit Iran and to engage the faculty members and students at its 400 universities. He failed to mention that Iran's academics refrain from accepting invitations to attend conferences abroad, for fear of being arrested and accused of belonging to networks recruited to bring about regime change in their country. Indeed, Iran's own minister of intellige
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed
10-8-07
Faculty members identify as liberals and vote Democratic in far greater proportions than found in the American public at large. That finding by itself won’t shock many, but the national study released Saturday at a Harvard University symposium may be notable both for its methodology and other, more surprising findings.
The 72-page study — “The Social and Political Views of American Professors” — was produced with the goal of moving analysis of the political views of faculty members
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed reporting about a new study concerning the ideological tilt toward liberalism in the academy
10-8-07
... Jonathan Zimmerman, director of the History of Education Program at New York University, also agreed that “it was time to stop talking about the ’60s.” Zimmerman noted that the percentage of academics voting for Republican presidential candidates was in the 30s through the 1980s, but then dropped. Some of that may have been the popularity of Bill Clinton, but Zimmerman said that for many academics “something really important and troubling happened in the ’80s and ’90s.” He elaborated: “I thi
Source: LAT
10-7-07
When President Bill Clinton was undergoing his impeachment woes, true-blue allies were in short supply. As Republicans gleefully rallied around the Starr Report, many Democrats went into duck-and-cover mode. Denouncing impeachment as GOP overreach, they nevertheless admitted that Clinton's behavior was wrong. Not, however, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. With his able co-conspirator historians Sean Wilentz and C. Vann Woodward, Schlesinger organized Historians
