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: Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam
8-17-07
[Richard Silverstein runs Tikun Olam, a blog dedicated to resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict.]
Yesterday, I wrote a post about the scurrilous campaign waged by Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine and their allies against Barnard anthropology professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. Distressed that this Palestinian-American academic is verging on earning tenure from a dis
Source: John Gravois in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
8-20-07
Scholars of anthropology and of Middle East studies are rallying around Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College whose tenure bid, like that of Norman G. Finkelstein at DePaul University earlier this year, has become the subject of an online skirmish in the larger conflict over research on the Middle East.
Central to the controversy is Ms. Abu El-Haj's book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Soc
Source: CBS News Sunday Morning
8-19-07
In America, more land is devoted to growing turf grass than any other plant. NASA has even mapped America's lawns from space. But you might be surprised to learn that neither the lawn nor the lawnmower are American at all — they come to us from Britain.
"Edwin Budding invented the lawnmower in 1830," Ted Steinberg, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, told Sunday Morning correspondent Serena Altschul. "He got the idea for the lawnmower
Source: Times (UK)
8-18-07
IT’S 9.30AM IN MINNEAPOLIS. The bridge over the Mississippi that used to take Taner Akçam to work won’t be rebuilt for a year, but that’s not what’s vexing him. His problem is the Turkish Secret Service.
Professor Akçam is a Turk and an historian. In 1999, 84 years after the event, he completed a harrowing doorstop of a book on the Armenian genocide – densely factual and unsparing of the Turkish culprits – now published in English. As a result, he is being hounded from Istanbul to h
Source: National Journal
7-13-07
In a world of endless information, it's only natural to wonder how others manage their media lives. In the first of an occasional series of conversations with leading figures in government, politics, and other spheres, National Journal's William Powers asked Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who runs America's first great information outlet, about his own media choices.
NJ: I'm interested in your media habits, the publications, broadcasts, websites, and other media fare tha
Source: http://www.earnedmedia.org
8-17-07
The American Civil War was more unpopular than the current war in Iraq. During the Civil War, 630,000 men died during the fight to end slavery and gain liberty for African-Americans.
Historian and defense industry expert Charles Patricoff believes that based on history our role in Iraq should be a permanent one. "Look at how we helped rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II. Because of the good we did there and are doing in Iraq, I don't believe we should ever leave Iraq.
Source: HNN Staff
8-17-07
Political Scientist Michael Gunter is defending himself from charges of bad ethics in having agreed to review a controversial book about the Armenian Massacres for which he had written a blurb. In his review of Guenter Lewy's The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, Michael Gunter praises the author for writing a fearless book. The book takes the position that the Turks are not guilty of the crime of genocide against the Armenian people.
The review a
12-31-69
An exchange between Rick Perlstein, author of a history of the Goldwater campaign, and David Horowitz, the former radical-turned-conservative who argues that the academy is overrun by liberals.RICK PERLSTEIN 8/15/07
The right's preeminent shrieking harpy—no, not Ann Coulter; even worse than Ann Coulter—importunes me with an"e-newsletter" about the latest goings-on at his David Horowitz Freedom Cen
Source: Winfield Myers at the website of Campus Watch (Source includes embedded links.)
8-16-07
Lisa Anderson, the former dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs best remembered for her failed attempt to bring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to campus, had a complaint yesterday for the Web publication Inside Higher Ed.
"Young scholars of Middle Eastern literature or history are finding themselves ‘grilled' about their political views in job interviews, and in some cases losing job offers as a result of their answers," Anderson s
Source: http://eurweb.com
8-16-07
Asa Grant Hilliard, III, world renowned Pan-Africanist, educator, historian, and psychologist, passed from this life on August 13, 2007 in Cairo, Egypt.
Dr. Hilliard was in Egypt to deliver a keynote lecture at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization (ASCAC), an organization he helped found.
He was also lecturing for a study trip led by Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago. The cause of death is attributed to com
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
8-16-07
Controversial research on Israel and the Palestinian territories has become the basis of yet another campaign to prevent a professor from winning tenure. A group of Barnard College alumni has drafted an online petition asking their alma mater to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology whose scholarship, they say, is flawed and skewed against Israel.
The group’s criticisms of Ms. Abu El-Haj focus on her book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice
Source: Inside Higher Ed
8-16-07
Like many academics, Christopher Wolfe has lots of ideas about what the ideal university should be. Unlike all but a handful, though, he’s decided to take action in a big way, by creating a new institution.
After close to 30 years at Marquette University, Wolfe, a political science professor known for his course on constitutional law that weeds out the formerly pre-law undergraduates from the future lawyers, will leave his tenured job to prepare full-time for the fall 2011 launch of
Source: NYT
8-16-07
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not even in bookstores, but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events with the authors.
John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, were not totally surprised by the reaction to their work. An article last spring in the London R
Source: Michael Neumann at Counterpunch
8-15-07
[Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. ]
In December 2000 I had the privilege of meeting Raul Hilberg at a conference in Berlin.
The conference celebrated the 100th anniversary of Franz Neumann's birth. Franz Neumann was at first a politically engaged legal theorist, close to the German Social Democratic Party. Forced into exile by the Nazis, he gained respect for his work Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National So
Source: AP
8-14-07
Thomas W. Gaehtgens, an internationally respected art historian, has been appointed director of the Getty Research Institute.
Gaehtgens, 67, will join the institute on Nov. 1. He currently heads the German Center for the History of Art in Paris, which he founded in 1997.
His appointment, announced Tuesday, concludes a 10-month search for a successor to Thomas Crow, who said last fall that he was accepting a chair in modern art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at N
Source: AHA Blog
8-13-07
Earlier this year, the National History Center (NHC) created the Teagle Foundation Project, through a grant from the Teagle Foundation, to examine the role of historical study in liberal learning.
The American Association of Colleges & Universities defines liberal education as “a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a strong sense of value, ethics, and civic engagement.” The Teagle Foundation Project will examine how
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
8-14-07
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has posted a job vacancy announcement seeking to fill the position of Historian in the Office of the Secretary for Homeland Security. The deadline for applying for the position is August 21, 2007.
Dr. Priscilla Jones was appointed as the first Historian of the Department of Homeland Security in February 2004. She left her position in early August 2007 to return to the Air Force History Office where she worked for ten years before joining DHS
Source: Richard Brookhiser in the NYT Book Review of Richard Kluger's Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea
8-12-07
I cannot recommend this book, however [compelling the subject: American expansionism]. Kluger’s writing is some of the worst I have ever had to read. Let facts be submitted to a candid world. Kluger on the French Revolution: “French grievances were vented in alternating waves of liberation and repression that swept the overwrought masses toward the cauldron of anarchy.” Kluger on James K. Polk: “Perhaps, if one favors a Freudian frame of reference, Polk’s almost reckless aggressiveness in offic
Source: Campus Watch
8-10-07
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature and Chairman of the Middle East Languages and Cultures department at Columbia University, figures prominently in the work of those of us trying to bring accountability and balance back to the field of Middle East studies. His anti-Western, pro-Islamist, and, at times, anti-Semitic commentary have been noted by Campus Watch on many occasions.
Indeed, he holds the current "Quote of the Month&qu
Source: Press Release--National Archives
8-14-07
On Tuesday, September 11, at 7 p.m., Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein will host an "American Conversation" with award-winning historian and biographer Geoffrey Ward. They will discuss Ward's book The War: An Intimate History, a companion to the PBS documentary by Ken Burns. A book signing will follow the discussion. The book will be released nationwide by Alfred A. Knopf Publishers on September 11.
The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945, is the companion vol
