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: Reuters
2-27-06
Author Dan Brown attended a London court on Monday at the start of a trial in which two historians are accusing him of copying their ideas in his best-selling religious thriller "The Da Vinci Code".Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent are suing Brown's British publisher, Random House, for lifting "the whole architecture" of the research that went into their 1982 non-fiction book "The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail".
Brown's book has mo
Source: Harvard Crimson
2-24-06
Lawrence H. Summers, who began his presidency by tangling publicly with black studies scholar Cornel R. West ’74, is set to end his five-year term by approving tenure appointments for at least four Faculty members in the African and African-American Studies Department.
West was among the first of six professors from that department who left Harvard during the Summers years.
But now, with the Summers presidency nearing a close, the department is on the verge of making
Source: WSJ
2-24-06
... Press accounts usually describe Mr. Irving as a Holocaust "revisionist" or denier. That he is, as a British court found in 2000, when it ruled against him in a defamation suit that he had brought against American scholar Deborah Lipstadt. But Mr. Irving is something worse, partly because he is something better: A man of learning and a certain kind of intellectual brilliance, he made dishonest use of both qualities in an attempt to restore the reputation of the Nazis and blacken tho
Source: Haaretz
2-22-06
American historian Deboarh E. Lipstadt announced Wednesday she was withdrawing from an Israeli cartoon competition poking fun at the Holocaust that she was to judge. Lipstadt, who is currently in Rome, said she had made a mistake and that she calls on the organizers to cancel the contest.
The contest's organizers said they had not yet received word from the Emory University faculty member that she had pulled out.
Amitai Sandi, one of the conte
Source: NYT
2-24-06
Paul Avrich, a historian of the anarchist movement that played a role in the Russian Revolution and flourished in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, died on Feb. 16 at Mount Sinai Hospital. He was 74 and lived in Manhattan.The cause was complications from Alzheimer's disease, said his wife, Ina Avrich.
Named distinguished professor of history at Queens College in 1982, Dr. Avrich, whose field was Russian history, wrote 10 books, mainly about anarchism
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog, Sandbox
2-23-06
On Tuesday, Juan Cole posted this appeal on his website, Informed Comment:If among my loyal readers there are any attorneys with expertise in libel law, in the US or UK, who might be willing to consult on a possible series of lawsuits for reckless defamation of character resulting in professional harm--done on a contingency basis--I'd much appreciate hearing from you.
Source: The Star (South Africa)
2-24-06
Unshaven, unrepentant and unbowed since he was sentenced on Monday to three years for denying the Holocaust, 67-year-old Irving said American Jews - like those in Nazi Germany of the 30's - held "disproportionate power" in business, media and the entertainment industry.
"They are a very clever people disproportionately represented with extreme opinions and in 20 to 30 years the problems they faced in Nazi Germany will face them in America, I sincerely believe this,&qu
Source: WSJ
2-23-06
It is best not to mince words. The imprisonment of David Irving by the Austrian authorities is a disgrace. It is a state punishment for a crime -- that of expression and argument and publication -- that is not a legal offense in Mr. Irving's country of birth and that could not be an offense under the First Amendment. It is to be hoped, by all those who value the right to dissent, that his appeal against both sentence and conviction will be successful.
Strictly speaking, "contex
Source: NYT
2-23-06
James E. Hinton Jr., a documentary photographer who chronicled the racial and social upheavals of the 1960's, died on Sunday at a hospital in the Bronx. He was 69 and lived in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
The cause was metastasized prostate cancer, his family said.
Mr. Hinton's pictures captured nameless actors in historical events and also those who made them happen.
He was a producer, director or cameraman — and sometimes narrator — for about 70 documentaries, wit
Source: Concord Monitor
2-23-06
Ken Burns doesn't shy away from big subjects. The Civil War, jazz, baseball, the American West: He's tackled them all. Burns's upcoming documentary on the American experience of World War II is no exception. But beneath the grand, ambitious subject are people, each of whom experienced the war as life, not history. The statistics - more than 50 million dead, many of them civilians - are staggering and impossible to comprehend. But for families throughout America, the conflict
Source: Sun (UK)
2-22-06
Disgraced historian David Irving today claimed he was jailed because authorities are scared of what he has to say.
Speaking from the Austrian prison where he has started a three-year term for denying the Holocaust, the 67-year-old said he had simply been exercising freedom of speech.
He also confirmed he would appeal against the sentence, and called prosecutors "crazy" for mounting a bid to lengthen it.
“I think they are trying to silence me and b
Source: David Cesarani in the Guardian
2-22-06
[David Cesarani is research professor in history at Royal Holloway, and author of Eichmann: His Life and Crimes David.Cesarani@rhul.ac.uk]
The sentence handed down on David Irving by a Viennese court for denying that the Nazis used gas chambers to murder Jews at Auschwitz, and for declaring Hitler innocent of that crime, evidently left him stunned. It also stirred something of a "backlash" in this country, where sections of th
Source: The Guardian Unlimited
2-22-06
Austrian state prosecutors are to lodge an appeal to try to lengthen the three-year jail term handed down to David Irving, the British historian imprisoned in Austria for lying about the Holocaust. They said he remained a beacon for the European neo-Nazi movement and had been treated too lightly after the judge at Monday's trial declared Irving's show of remorse to be a case of crocodile tears.
Irving's long and controversial career appeared to be over yesterday, with his retirement years be
Source: The Australian
2-22-06
THE twin brother of David Irving yesterday challenged the sincerity of the historian's claim that he now believes millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis and that gas chambers did exist.
John Irving is so unlike the right-wing historian and Holocaust denier that he serves as chairman of Wiltshire Racial Equality Council in England.
Asked about his brother's recantation before a Vienna court, John Irving said: ''If I said 'E pur si muove!' would it mean anything to you?''
Source: Sam Roberts in the NYT
2-22-06
Richard Sutch and Susan Carter don't expect anybody to take their new book to the beach.
For starters, it weighs 29 pounds. It has five volumes. And it's densely packed with more than a million numbers that measure America in mind-boggling detail, from the average annual precipitation in Sweet Springs, Mo., to the wholesale price of rice in Charleston S.C., in 1707.
"You'd have to be a certain kind of personality type," Professor Sutch said.
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Source: NYT
2-22-06
Theodore Draper, a combative historian and social critic and one of the last of a generation of freelance intellectuals who wrote and lectured largely without academic affiliations or formal credentials, died yesterday at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 93. His death was announced by his wife, Priscilla.
Mr. Draper went from Communist Party fellow traveler in the 1930's to liberal anticommunist in the 1950's and 60's before breaking with the Cold War hawks and attacking the Unite
Source: Yotam Barkai in the Yale Herald
2-17-06
When Yale formally hires a professor of Middle East Studies sometime in the next few years, students accustomed to comfortably liberal lecturers may be confronted with a notorious anti-Western firebrand. Faculty at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies (YCIAS) have confirmed that Juan Cole, an openly anti-George W. Bush, DC ’68, and anti-Israel history professor at the University of Michigan, is under consideration to fill a new slot as an interdisciplinary professor of contemporary
Source: Phyllis Chesler at Frontpagemag.com
2-21-06
[Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including the bestseller Women and Madness (1972) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She has just published The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised edition of Women and Madness. She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (197
Source: Daniel Pipes in the NY Sun
2-21-06
In an article published in the NY Sun Daniel Pipes says that he has been accused by conspiracy websites of working hand and glove with the Danish editor who published the cartoons of Muhammad.
Click on the Source link above to read his account.
Source: Peter Carlson in the Wa Po
2-21-06
Anthony Griffin remembers the signs. How could he forget them?
A black lawyer, he grew up in Baytown, Tex. Back in high school in the late '60s and early '70s, he would borrow his mom's car and drive around East Texas, exploring. He saw the signs in a couple of towns.
"I was terrified," he says. "You're driving with your buddies and you say, 'Thank God, it's not dark. Let's get the hell out.' "
George Brosi remembers the signs, too. Edit
