Historians in the News

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: Charles Bittner in a letter to the editor of the AJC
7-12-07

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: Wins support from reader in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

[Bittner, of Atlanta, is academic liaison for The Nation magazine and six months ago attended the American Historical Association convention, during which the incident occurred.] Atlanta's finest jaywalk right into mockery The findings of the police investigation into the arrest and injury of world-renowned historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto for jaywalking were preposterous ("Inquiry clears officer, but jaywalker won't step back," Page 1, July 5).

Source: http://europe.courrierinternational.com
7-12-07

Richard Bulliet: Recommends establishment of commission to rewrite history of Muslims in Europe

Richard Bulliet, professor of history at Columbia University, argues that the history of Europe has to be rewritten to correct the portrayal of Muslims. "Violence is the dominant motif of Western histories on Islamic relations. Everyone is reminded on a regular basis that a Muslim army penetrated deep into northern France in 732 before being heroically stopped by Charles Martel at Tours, and another Muslim army laid siege to Vienna in 1529 before being turned back by bad weather and heroic

Source: Press Release
7-12-07

Historians among those receving $50,000 Fletcher awards for civil rights work

NEW YORK – Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management, Inc., today announced the selection of the 2007 class of Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellows. The fellows are recipients of a charitable initiative created by Mr. Fletcher in 2004 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education. The fellowship program will award each of the five Fletcher Fellows a stipend of $50,000 for work that contributes to improving race

Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
7-12-07

Larry Berman: Interviewed about the double life of Vietnam spy journalist

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Larry Berman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Davis, and the author of three books on Vietnam, including No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam. He is the author of the new book, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent.FP: Larry Berman, welcome to Frontpage Interview.Berman: Thank you for the oppo

Source: New America Media
7-12-07

Iris Chang: Japanese Film Paints her as Chinese Spy

New Japanese film “The Truth about Nanjing” depicts Chinese-American author Iris Chang as a Chinese spy, Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily reports. An advertisement seeking actors for the film says, “Chang was an agent working for the Chinese government and spread the rumor of the massacre.” Chang wrote the New York Times Bestseller The Rape of Nanking (1997) and committed suicide in 2004 after a nervous breakdown. Ben Hamamoto, a columnist of the San Francisco Japanese paper Nichi Bei T

Source: San Francisco Chronicle
7-11-07

Frances Richardson Keller: Feminist historian, was 92

Frances Richardson Keller, a feminist historian and retired lecturer at San Francisco State University, has died of a stroke in Cleveland. She was 92 when she died on June 25. Ms. Keller, past president of the Western Association of Women Historians, taught students for decades about themes such as ascendant patriarchy, slavery, polygamy and subjugation of women. Her teaching was not focused on facts and dates but on possible meaning, according to her son William Kelle

Source: The Star (Canada)
7-11-07

Timothy Naftali: Expat Canadian takes reins of Nixon Library

It took a transplanted Canadian to do it, but the warts and blemishes return to Richard Nixon's whitewashed place in history today. The shrine to America's most shamed president here officially moves from private to federal hands under the guidance of 45-year-old Timothy Naftali, a Montreal-born historian and expert on presidential recordings. Naftali is transforming the homage to Nixon from what critics had disparaged as a Disneyland-type tourist trap into an honest hi

Source: Nixon Library
7-11-07

Allen Weinstein: Speaks at opening of the new Nixon Library

"This is a long-awaited milestone in Presidential library history," said Professor Weinstein. "Historians, researchers, and the general public will eventually be able to come to this library and find all of President Nixon's materials under one roof." Weinstein said that the transfer of the facility makes possible the eventual consolidation of Richard Nixon's pre-Presidential and post-Presidential materials, which have been housed in the private facility since 19

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
7-11-07

Victor Davis Hanson: Higher education as therapy

American universities have "jettisoned the classical approach" to education and replaced it with a "therapeutic" one, says Victor Davis Hanson, an emeritus professor of classics at California State University at Fresno. The change has left Americans without "a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy, and history," he writes [in The American]. Higher education once had two important aims, argues Mr. Hanson. The first was to teach critical informati

Source: New York Sun
7-11-07

Larry Berman: Suit to win access to LBJ's Presidential Daily Briefs seems to sway some judges

A federal appeals court is expressing skepticism about the CIA's claim that its technique for briefing presidents is so sensitive that it must be protected from public scrutiny, even 40 years after the fact. Two judges considering a lawsuit seeking access to so-called Presidential Daily Briefs provided to President Johnson during the Vietnam War era cast doubt yesterday on the spy agency's assertion that the way it updates the nation's chief executive is itself an intelligence metho

Source: NYT
7-11-07

Henry Kissinger: Object of Maureen Dowd's sarcasm

Like W., Senator McCain values the advice of Henry Kissinger and said, “We can find wisdom in several suggestions put forward recently by Henry Kissinger.” Why they continue to seek counsel from the man who kept the Vietnam War going for years just to protect Richard Nixon’s electoral chances is beyond mystifying. But Mr. Kissinger holds their attention with all his warnings of “American impotence” emboldening radical Islam and Iran. Can’t W. and Mr. McCain see that American muscula

Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz
7-10-07

Paul Moon: Historian Wades Into Auckland Treaty Claim Controversy

A new book on Auckland's Maori past threatens to ignite fresh debate as Ngati Whatua negotiate with the Crown their claim to parts of Auckland city. 'The Struggle for Tamaki Makaurau' details the 1741 Auckland invasion by Ngati Whatua ancestors who almost completely wiped out the existing Te Waiohua population, a branch of Tainui. The book is likely to be controversial says its author, AUT University historian Professor Paul Moon. "In 1840, Ngati Whatu

Source: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com
7-10-07

Tom Oestreicher: Civil War historian touring libraries this month

Tom Oestreicher, a best–selling author, historian, and nationally–recognized authority on the American Civil War, will be part of the 2007 Hawaii State Public Library System Young Adult Summer Reading Program, at 10 O'ahu public libraries in July. Oestreicher, who hails from Sycamore, Ill., has conducted more than 500 lecture presentations throughout the United States on the American Civil War for the past 35 years. He wears an authentic Union Army officer's uniform for his presenta

Source: Robert Townsend writing at the website of the AHA blog
7-9-07

History blogger closes site, afraid his identity would be disclosed

Sadly, the PhDinHistory blog closed its digital shutters and went offline over the weekend, apparently permanently. In its brief four months online, the site offered a rich array of insights into the graduate experience, as well as compelling analyses of data about the history profession and often biting critiques of the flaws and foibles of our profession. As a doctoral student looking to a career in the profession, the blog’s author sought the cloak of anonymity. Even though I was often on the

Source: David Forsmark at frontpagemag.com
7-10-07

John Agresto: Mugged by reality in Iraq

If ever a critique was written "more in sorrow than in anger," it is John Agresto’s Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions. In fact, the tone of the book is often of deep disappointment and disillusion, bordering on depression.Agresto, an idealistic neocon intellectual, joined the effort to rebuild Iraq and was tasked with establishing a modern university system. He was a visionary whose enthusiasm for his job soon dissolved into fr

Source: Press Release--UNO
7-10-07

Oliver Pollak: Collaborates on history of the University of Nebraska

How do you cram 100 years of growth, setbacks, change, prosperity and parking problems into 220 pictures and 20,000 words? As UNO enters the final year of its first century, two faculty members have published a book that attempts to do just that. Presented in chapters that focus on the school's different eras and incarnations, University of Nebraska at Omaha is a chronological account of the history of Omaha's metropolitan university. In bringing the book to life, hist

Source: CUNY News Announcement
7-10-07

Eric Alterman: CUNY Board Names Alterman Distinguished Prof at Brooklyn College

Called “the most honest and incisive media critic writing today” in the National Catholic Reporter, and author of “the smartest and funniest political journal out there” in the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Alterman, professor of English at Brooklyn College has been elevated to “Distinguished Professor” by the Board of Trustees at City University of New York (CUNY). In recommending Professor Alterman for this recognition, Brooklyn College’s English Department chair, Professor Ellen

Source: Max Boot in the NYT Book Review
7-8-07

Ian Kershaw: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

... “counterfactual” history has become fashionable lately, with historians speculating on paths not taken, in books with titles beginning “What If?” Ian Kershaw doesn’t go quite that far in “Fateful Choices,” but he does attempt to show how one of the most consequential events of the 20th century — World War II — took shape, and why it might have turned out differently. A professor at the University of Sheffield in England and the author of an acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitl

Source: NYT Book Review
7-8-07

Gunter Grass: Friend John Irving in front page NYT Book Review praises his honesty about Nazi connections

... While it was acceptable to Grass’s critics that he had volunteered for the submarine corps at the age of 15, the revelation that he was drafted into the Waffen SS, the combat force of the SS, in 1944, when he was 17, was a shock. Grass spent the final months of the war with the force — later convicted en masse of war crimes by the Nuremberg tribunal. Why had he waited so long to tell? his critics asked. (As if there had ever been a time when he wouldn’t have been criticized for

Source: James Loewen email to HNN and others
7-9-07

James Loewen: Textbooks are still repeating lies

I have just finished my end of a new second edition of LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME. By the end of calendar 2007, LIES will reach approx. 1,000,000 in sales. While the new Harry Potter book will reach this milestone about 4 hours after it comes out, later this summer, nevertheless, I'm happy and hope to get my publishers (the New Press and Simon & Schuster) to celebrate with some kind of event around Xmas.Besides, I have invented a new index, called the"scholarly bestseller index," which takes the number of footnotes and multiplies by copies sold. By that measure, LIES scores 819,000,000 (yes, I counted the footnotes, just for this email!), while H. Potter scores 0.