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: Jonathan Dresner at Froginawell.net
8-23-07
[Disclosure: Mr. Dresner is an assistant editor at HNN.]
Here we go again.The American Historical Association has proposed new rules for adding and eliminating membership categories, those “areas of scholarly interest” which allow university presses and conferenc
Source: Letter to NYT Ombudsman, Clark Hoyt
8-23-07
Dear Mr. Hoyt:
I am writing in regard to the article by Thom Shanker that appeared on Aug.23rd. The headline says "Historians Question Bush's Reading of Lessons of Vietnam War for Iraq" Mr. Shanker writes that "President Bush is right on the factual record, according to historians. But many of them also quarreled with his drawing analogies[to Vietnam]...to predict what might happen in Iraq should the United States withdraw."
The article suggests
Source: NYT
8-23-07
Philip Masters, whose passion was history, which he literally dived into to help find the undersea wreck of the ship of Blackbeard the pirate, died on Aug. 18 in the Bronx. He was 70.
The cause was a metastasized melanoma, his daughter Torrie Lloyd-Masters said.
Mr. Masters, whose jobs ranged from jewelry salesman to lighting executive to cabdriver to stockbroker, was that unusual amateur who succeeds in a professionalized field. He used evenings, weekends and vacations
Source: Turkish Daily News
8-21-07
Turkey History Institution chairman Halaço?lu claims Kurds are converted Turkmen and Kurdish Alevis are converted Armenians. Alevi institutions, politicians demand his resignation and accuse him of racism.
***
There is no such thing as a Kurdish Alevi claimed Turkish History Institution chairman, Yusuf Halaço?lu, whose comment prompted a demand for his resignation by the Alevi-Bekta?i institutions and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).
At a
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (Click here to see pictures.)
8-22-07
An historian has retired after spending his entire career writing a book for his local council.
And he hasn't finished it.
Robert Dunning, 69, began his definitive history of Somerset in 1967 and has been paid up to £38,000 a year since then.
But the work, covering every aspect of the county back to the beginnning of records, is so detailed that he's not reached half way and is handing the project over to an assistant.
In that time he has spent
Source: http://www.bianet.org
8-22-07
In a press briefing following his controversial comments on Kurds, Alevis and Armenians in Anatolia, historian Yusuf Halacoglu has refused to heed calls for his resignation. He argues that his comments were misunderstood.
Historian Yusuf Halacoglu, who is president of the Turkish Historical Society (TTK), has arranged a press briefing in order to defend his controversial comments on the ethnic make-up of Turkey.
Rejecting calls for his resignation, Halacoglu said, "
Source: NYT
8-22-07
[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]
The lawyer for the American-Iranian scholar released Tuesday after over three months in jail said the Iranian authorities still held the scholar’s passport, but that by Iranian law, she should be permitted to leave the country.
The scholar, Haleh Esfandiari, 67, said in a brief telephone interview in Tehran that said she was “fine and happy,” but declined to be interviewed.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
8-23-07
Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American scholar who was released on bail from prison in Iran on Tuesday, will not be able to leave the country anytime soon. Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning lawyer who is representing Ms. Esfandiari, told the Associated Press that her client’s passport had not been returned and that the Iranian authorities had not indicated when or if it might be.
Ms. Esfandiari is accused of endangering Iranian national security by trying to foment a “soft
Source: Tiraspol Times
8-23-07
In the opinion of a British professor and Balkan expert, Mark Almond, one of the possible solutions to the Kosovo issue involves a "Great Agreement" between the U.S. and Russia on all unresolved separatist issues.
Such a deal would involve Russia agreeing to hold its nose over Kosovo independence, with the United States and its allies promising to look the other way while the people of Pridnestrovie and some other unrecognized countries in the post-Soviet space exercise th
Source: Reuters
8-21-07
Germans are starting to rethink their negative views about Prussia, the state which ruled much of northern Germany for centuries and which has been viewed for decades through the prism of Nazism.
In particular, a book by Australian historian Christopher Clark has stirred a debate about Prussia which Germans have vilified since World War Two for representing the militarism, discipline and blind obedience that helped Hitler rise to power.
"The Rise and Downfall of Pr
Source: Counterpunch
8-22-07
[Norman Finkelstein's most recent book is Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (University of California Press). His web site is www.NormanFinkelstein.com.]
Raul Hilberg died on August 4. A refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, Hilberg was the founder of the field of Holocaust studies.
I cannot now remember when I first read Hilberg's magnum opus The Destruction of the European Jews, but it
Source: MSNBC
8-21-07
[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]
A detained Iranian-American academic was suddenly released from a notorious Tehran prison Tuesday after spending months behind bars on charges of endangering Iranian national security — allegations her family vehemently denies.
Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, had been jailed in Evin prison since
Source: http://www.hometownannapolis.com
8-21-07
A local historian hit gold earlier this month when she came across an Eastport midwife’s diaries dating back to 1898.
The diaries, or registries, listed 406 children that Annie Hanson Christensen, an immigrant from Denmark, delivered between August 1898 and August 1908. Historian Ginger Doyel, who is including some of the material in a pending book about Eastport, said Christensen went out at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather, to deliver babies.
“S
Source: Derek Catsam at dcat (blog)
8-20-07
Howard Zinn is probably the best selling historian of all time. And yet many of his supporters (rarely the professional historians who write in the areas about which Zinn has written) like to pretend that he is a maligned outsider who has been ignored by all but a brave, enlightened cadre willing to speak truth to power. While his books have sold a gazillion copies, I do not find him to be an especially good historian. By wearing his ideology on his sleeve, some might see Zinn as ruthlessly hone
Source: AFP
8-21-07
[Editor's Note: Haleh Esfandiari is the wife of George Mason University historian Shaul Bakhash.]
Iran is to release US-Iranian academic
Haleh Esfandiari, detained in Tehran since May on
security charges, as soon as a bail payment has been
made, a judiciary source told AFP on Tuesday.
"Her arrest has been changed to bail. Probably she
will be released tonight. We are waiting for the
deposit of the bail," said the source in t
Source: http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu
8-20-07
Tony Badger, a British historian, is generally considered to be one of the very best historians of the American South. New Deal / New South: An Anthony J. Badger Reader (paperback, $19.95), just published by the University of Arkansas Press, includes some of Badger's best work in his ongoing examination of how white liberal Southern politicians who came to prominence in the New Deal and World War II handled the race issue when it became central to politics in the 1950s and 1960s.
Source: OAH Newsletter
8-1-07
[Mr. Cole is the chairman of the NEH.]
... We will soon be formally announcing the pilot of a new project under the We the People banner titled Picturing America. This new initiative will open up another avenue of discovery and appreciation of our legacy, which stresses the importance of the visual arts in American history.
The major focus of Picturing America is to show that art speaks dynamically and forcefully about where a people have come from, what they have endur
Source: Nell Irvin Painter in the OAH Newsletter
8-1-07
[Ms. Painter is president of the OAH.]
... Though we have many reasons to celebrate as we enter our second century, I want to call us to the task of thinking about our aspirations and our means toward reaching our goals. Here I need to tread a fine line between complacency and alarm. On the one hand, we are nicely solvent, with a financial cushion set aside for the inevitable rainy day. On the other hand, we have in the last couple of years overspent our income to the tune of $179,000 in f
Source: Press Release--Defend the Honor Campaign Website www.defendthehonor.org
8-21-07
The Latino "war" against Ken Burns' upcoming documentary, "The War," to be aired on PBS is not over. Despite recent press statements, key Latino organizations and leaders across the country today publicly announced that the issue is far from resolved and that they will continue pressing for a respectful resolution.
Latino organizations and leaders called on Ken Burns and Florentine Pictures to meet with a representative cross-section of the national Latino leader
Source: Cinnamon Stillwell at the website of CampusWatch (embedded links in the original)
8-20-07
[Cinnamon Stillwell is the Northern California Representative for Campus Watch. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.]
Instead of providing moral clarity in a time of war, too many academics busy themselves inventing strategies to get along peaceably with genocidal terrorist groups and the governments that aid and abet them. Among the appeasers, three professors of Middle East studies stand out: the University of Minnesota's William
