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: Sean Wilentz in the New Republic
7-10-06
In March 1965, a delegation of historians joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fifty-four-mile march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. Weeks earlier, Alabama state troopers had brutally broken up a voting rights march in Selma with nightsticks and tear gas, and King aimed to finish what the protesters had started. The historians, who included the renowned Richard Hofstadter, went south to take a stand. That the normally circumspect Hofstadter struck his tasks at Columbia University and made t
Source: California Aggie
7-10-06
Beginning Summer Session II, Keith David Watenpaugh, associate professor of modern Islam, human rights and peace in the department of religious studies, will teach Middle East/South Asia Studies 180, "The Question of Iraq." The class will focus on the historical, cultural and ethical components of mass violence, sectarian conflict, neocolonialism, terrorism and torture.
As one of the only scholars to have studied in Iraq both before and after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Wa
Source: NYT
7-12-06
... Just how similar passages showed up in two books is a tale of how the largely obscure $4 billion a year world of elementary and high school textbook publishing often works, for these passages were not written by the named authors but by one or more uncredited writers. And while it is rare that the same language is used in different books, it is common for noted scholars to give their names to elementary and high school texts, lending prestige and marketing power, while lesser known writers h
Source: NYT
7-12-06
One of the most frequently used high school history texts is “Holt the American Nation,” first published in 1950 as “Rise of the American Nation” and written by Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti. For each edition, the book appeared with new material, long after one author had died and the other was in a nursing home. Eventually, the text was reissued as the work of another historian, Paul S. Boyer.
Professor Boyer, emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madis
Source: George Weigel in Tidings Online
7-7-06
This Fourth of July comes during a year in which fretting about the impact on the life of the Republic of "theocons" and "theocrats" (a.k.a., "serious Christian believers") has become a blood sport - with more bloodletting likely in the months ahead. That makes it a good moment to reflect, with British historian Michael Burleigh, on what Christianity gave the West, of which the United States is one important expression.
Professor Burleigh proposes that
Source: Australian
7-6-06
THE ABC's decision not to publish a biography about broadcaster Alan Jones was regrettable and pointless, a historian of the national broadcaster says.
Emeritus Professor Ken Inglis, who wrote a history of the ABC, said yesterday he was concerned that the ABC's decision not to publish the book by long-standing Four Corners journalist Chris Masters could be used to stop the broadcast of controversial programs.
Jonestown was commissioned by ABC Enterprises, which raises m
Source: "History Matters" in the Guardian
7-9-06
[Take part - It's your heritage
History Matters - pass it on is a campaign to raise public awareness of the huge contribution that history, heritage and the built environment make to our quality of life. It unites the whole heritage sector, led by the National Trust, English Heritage, the Historic Houses Association and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and events will be held over the next six months at hundreds of historic locations across England and Wales. Supporters include David Star
Source: Daniel Pipes's blog
7-13-06
In an echo of the Mearsheimer-Walt critique of strong U.S. ties with Israel, Michael Massing has a lengthy article in the New York Review of Books,"The Storm over the Israel Lobby." In it, he devotes three paragraphs to the Middle East Forum, Campus Watch, and myself. I wrote a letter to the editor pointing out a mistake and asked Massing a question. The Review published my letter and Massing's attempt at a rebuttal under the t
Source: Press Release -- Allan Lichtman Campaign
7-7-06
A new Washington Post poll shows that Maryland's U. S. Senate race is wide open, with about a third of voters undecided.
Support for Cong. Ben Cardin has cratered since the last independent poll taken about two months ago, as Allan Lichtman's demonstration of the flaws in his record has struck home with voters. Cardin's percentage among registered Democrats has plummeted by 14 points, as nearly 40 percent of his support has melted away. His support is down to 25 percent - an astoni
Source: Guardian
7-4-06
The coffee table in Lord Skidelsky's office, near the House of Lords, is strewn with weighty publications. Among them are the Economist, the International Herald Tribune and a fat slab of hardback: Niall Ferguson's The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred. His lordship is a reviewer for the New Statesman, Prospect and the New York Review of Books. He places another tome on his desk with a thud, briefly removes his jacket to reveal a natty pair of gold-embossed red braces, and complains: &qu
Source: Common-Place.org
7-1-06
Henry Wiencek is the author of the acclaimed An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (2003), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in history and the Best Book of 2003 award from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.
Common-place: One of the striking revelations in Imperfect God is just how intertwined Washington's life was with the institution of slavery. Everyone knows he owned slaves, but few recognize just how pervas
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
7-7-06
An art historian at Columbia University says the Metropolitan Museum of Art paid $50-million last year for a 19th-century painting that only appears to be the work of the early Italian master known as Duccio. According to The Times of London, the Columbia professor, James Beck, says the painting, which depicts the Madonna and Child, does not resemble any of the handful of known works by Duccio, a 14th-century painter who is regarded as one of the founders of Renaissance art.
Source: Dr. History (blog)
6-29-06
I was doing some random searching last week and came across noindoctrination.org. This is one of those websites that allows students who feel like their professors or schools are pushing "sociopolitical agendas" and "supplanting, suppressing, and ultimately excluding alternative views" a place to publicly air their grievances.
I didn't find very many of the stories I examined that compelling, but what did interest me was that close to 30% of those listed on the s
Source: David Garrow in Newsday
7-5-06
... In Atlanta, local cheerleaders hailed the purchase as a municipal triumph. The papers will remain in the city King called home, with their ultimate destination his alma mater, Morehouse College. But the cheering obscures serious problems that the sale does not resolve and may exacerbate.
What will be the fate of the rest of King's Atlanta papers? What kind of access will be provided to the papers already sold? And what precedent does this sale set for other historical collection
Source: Taylor Branch op ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7-5-06
All Atlantans can rightly celebrate Mayor Shirley Franklin and the donors who have pledged to keep 7,000 historical treasures together in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s home city. But these leaders have assumed a responsibility that goes far beyond money and civic pride. A noble work teeters precariously, less than half-done, and the whole world has a stake in the outcome.Hidden conditions imposed by the King family helped frustrate two previous sales that would have prese
Source: Press Release
7-5-06
CHESTERTOWN, MD - Washington College has appointed historian and essayist Adam Goodheart as the new director of the College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Office of the President announced Wednesday, July 5. Goodheart, who served as a visiting fellow of the Center during the past four years, succeeds Ted Widmer, a presidential historian and former speechwriter for the Clinton Administration's National Security Council, who directed the Center since its inceptio
Source: LAT
7-2-06
When Vern Bullough was asked what launched him into the field of sexual history 50 years ago, he quipped, "I blame it all on my mother-in-law."
His future wife's mother had abandoned her family to live in a committed relationship with another woman — a scandalous event for Salt Lake City in the mid-1940s.
Bullough, then a teenager, was "more or less goggle-eyed" when he met them, but quickly quit gawking and began educating himself. He plied the tw
Source: Scotsman
6-28-06
ACADEMICS have criticised the author of a controversial study of Mary Queen of Scots for thanking them in print for helping with a book that they said they knew nothing about.
David Tweedie, a lawyer and amateur historian, singled out several Scottish historians who he claimed "helped in the writing of this book".
But last night several of those listed in the acknowledgements section of David Rizzio and Mary, Queen of Scots: Murder at Holyrood demanded that th
Source: Detroit Free Press
7-2-06
Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis, the dean of American Middle East scholars, flatly predicts that Europe will be Muslim by the end of this century.
George Weigel, a leading American theologian, frets about "a Europe in which the muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter's in Rome, while Notre Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine -- a great Christian church" will "become an Islamic museum."
L
Source: Boston Globe
6-30-06
Timothy Naftali, a historian at the University of Virginia who has written on American counter-terrorism policy, has proposed a measure that he thinks could make releasing detainees [from Guantanamo] less of a gamble.
The fact that we can't charge a low-level Taliban or al Qaeda member with a crime, he argues, doesn't mean we have to keep him locked up. Why not let him go but keep track of him?
Naftali's model is a co-ordinated, decades-long operation carried out by Ame
