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: http://www.provincetownbanner.com
9-6-07
Historian, teacher, playwright and activist Howard Zinn’s landmark 1980 book, “The People’s History of the United States,” taught academia that history told only from the point of view of winners and conquerors isn’t real history at all. Zinn’s book gave voice to those in the margins and on the fringes and losing sides. These voices of rebellion, opposition and daring are heard even clearer in Zinn’s 2004 companion book, “Voices of a People's History of the United States,” and in a theatrical ev
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Education
9-5-07
In the cartoons, an astonished character will at times need to grab his eyeballs as they come flying out of his head. Something like that happened to me a few months ago while going through the fall catalog of Columbia University Press. Buried deep in its pages – well behind all the exciting, glamorous titles at the bleeding edge of scholarship – was the listing for Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy by Richard D. Kahlenberg. (It has just appe
Source: Inside Higher Ed
9-5-07
The academic year in the United States is opening with flare-ups of tensions over the Middle East, and specifically over scholars who write critically of Israel.
On Tuesday, the Middle East Studies Association released two letters protesting what the group considers to be serious violations of academic freedom. One concerns Norman Finkelstein, the DePaul University political scientist who was denied tenure in June and who has since been placed on a paid leave, with his classes calle
Source: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail
9-6-07
THE furore over an official history of Queensland has spread to Parliament,
with the Opposition accusing the Premier of wasting taxpayers' money.
Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney joined a growing band of critics questioning
the legitimacy of the $900,000 taxpayer-funded book deal awarded to Griffith
University academic Ross Fitzgerald.
Dr Fitzgerald scored the plum job to write a new history of Queensland to
commemorate the state's sesquicentenary in 2009 without a public tender
Source: http://www.roanoke.com
9-4-07
For nearly two years, tourism officials from Winchester to the
tip of Southwest Virginia have been working on a Wilderness Road driving
tour for visitors interested in the early migratory history of American
pioneers.
They have developed an illustrated brochure and an interactive Web site
focusing on the trail's 500 miles through Virginia and its museums,
festivals and historic buildings from Frederick County west through
Shenandoah, Rockbridge, Botetourt, Roanoke, Montgomery,
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) (Click here for embedded links.)
9-7-07
As the American Psychological Association debates whether its members should be involved in so-called coercive interrogation, Alfred W. McCoy is trying to get psychologists to own up to their past.
Mr. McCoy, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Inter rogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Metropolitan Books, 2006). The book is a detailed indictment, brimming with outraged accusations — what one revie
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/
9-4-07
Well-known Halifax historian Lou Collins died Saturday in hospital. He was 85.
Collins was a noted Halifax teacher, historian and leader. He served as an educator for more than 20 years at schools in Halifax and Windsor. He retired in 1983 as principal of Cornwallis Junior High School in Halifax.
"The name Lou Collins is synonymous with heritage preservation in Nova Scotia," Philip Pacey, president of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia, said.
A fou
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
9-4-07
During its 8:30 a.m. segment this morning, our colleague, KC Johnson, appeared with Stuart Taylor, his co-author of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, on ABC-TV's"Good Morning, America". At that link, you can see the segment and/or read
Source: Yorkshire Post
9-3-07
... Peter Brears is one of Britain's leading food historians. Formerly director of York's Castle Museum and for 15 years director of Leeds City Museums, he has carried out research projects at many historic venues, including Hampton Court Palace, Belvoir Castle, Petworth and Harewood House, where he often designs seasonal food events.
Much in demand across the UK, he works with organisations that include Historic Royal Palaces, the National Trust, English Heritage, and many museums
Source: The Age
9-1-07
IF THE past is a foreign country, as L.P. Hartley wrote in his novel The Go-Between, it is evidently one of the most popular travel destinations.
It is also one of the most contentious. At the festival yesterday, philosopher A.C. Grayling, author of Among the Dead Cities, a work questioning the morality of the Allied saturation bombing of Germany in World War II, was asked by a member of the audience whether critics of the bombing were guilty of imposing contemporary standards on pa
Source: LAT
9-2-07
Filmmaker Ken Burns defends his work as heavily orchestrated, “manipulated truth” -- just don't call him "enthusiastic."
***
WHEN Ken Burns was working on his first professional documentary, in 1979, he pestered playwright Arthur Miller for an interview on its subject, the Brooklyn Bridge. Miller had written "A View From the Bridge," so Burns figured he would have wisdom to share about the stately span. But when the fledgling filmmaker traveled to Mi
Source: Asaf Romirowsky at FrontpageMag.com
9-4-07
[Asaf Romirowsky is a Campus Watch Associate Fellow for the Middle East Forum and the Manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.]
Middle East scholar Walid Phares in his recent book The War of Ideas: Jihad against Democracy outlines the ideological basis in which the jihadists use to perpetuate their anti Western agenda. Phares who was born and raised in Lebanon brings to the table his personal experience as a Middle Easterner as w
Source: Jacob Laksin at FrontpageMag.com
9-4-07
[Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine.]
It’s not every day that a book is discredited by the simple act of its publication. But that’s precisely what will happen with the release this week of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, an expanded version of the now-notorious London Review of Books essay by professors-turned-provocateurs John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard‘s Kennedy School of Government.
In the origi
Source: Radio Free Europe
9-3-07
[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]
Iranian-U.S. scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was released from a Tehran prison on August 21, has reportedly received her passport from Iranian authorities and left Iran.
The Associated Press quotes her daughter, Haleh Bakhash, as saying Esfandiari plans to stay in Austria for a week to reunite with family before going back to the United States.
Her lawyer, Abdul-
Source: Inside Higher Ed
9-4-07
Facing allegations that he plagiarized sections of his doctoral dissertation in the 1980s, the president of the Southern Illinois University system announced Friday that the department that awarded his degree would evaluate the charges – a plan complicated by the fact that the department of educational administration and higher education is based at Southern Illinois’s Carbondale campus.
Southern Illinois’s student newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, reported that at the Friday press con
Source: Ascribe
9-4-07
Writing about 9/11 is not a textbook case for historians, says a Purdue University history expert.
"When students read about Pearl Harbor, World War II and the Cold War in their textbooks, it has always been clear what nations the United States was at odds with," says Randy Roberts, a professor of American history. "The war on terror is not so clear. Terrorism is associated with the Middle East, but historians do not want to use broad brushstrokes to condemn the
Source: Megan Marshall in Slate
9-4-07
[Megan Marshall's biography The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism won the Francis Parkman Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography and memoir.]
At about the same time I was taping up cardboard boxes in Berkeley [at the Women's History Research Center (1976)], Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who'd graduated from her own version of WHRC —the Mormon Sisters Inc., of Arlington, Mass., which put out a feminist new
Source: http://www.pressrepublican.com
9-4-07
PLATTSBURGH -- Ed Bearss paced the deck of the back veranda at Clinton
Community College, his eyes vibrant from the energy he had over the topic he
was discussing.
His voice echoed as a couple of dozen people listened intently, some of them
bundled in heavy clothing to fight of the chill coming from a brisk wind off
nearby Lake Champlain."This is a good day to be talking about this topic," he said, noting that
the weather on Oct. 11, 1776, was very similar to this late August
Source: http://www.herald-mail.com/
9-4-07
SHARPSBURG - A long-ago conflict came to life Monday for a dozen or so
members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who huddled around
famed Civil War historian Edwin C. Bearss at Antietam National Battlefield.
Hanging on every word as Bearss described the opening clashes of what would
be a long day of bitter battle and bloodshed, they were treated to the kind
of detail one doesn't always get in history books.
Evoking, perhaps, an image of Gen. Douglas MacArthur,
Source: NYT
9-1-07
After a news agency reported in July that an important art historian had faked her credentials, a nationwide wave of allegations and confessions followed that has so far swept up a movie director, a renowned architect, the head of a performing arts center, a popular comic book writer, a celebrity chef, actors and actresses, a former TV news anchor and now the Venerable Jigwang....
In an intensely competitive country that has long put a premium on impressive degrees, suspicions that
