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: Irish Central
Mar 27, 2012
An award winning author and Yale professor has written an open letter to the Irish nation begging them not to erect a statue to Che Guevara in Galway.Professor Carlos Eire, author of ‘Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy’ which won the National Book Award in 2003, originally submitted his letter to the Irish Times.The paper opted not to print it but it has subsequently appeared in the Galway Advertiser and on the National Review website.The professor, of Irish and Cuban extraction, is vehemently opposed to the plans by Galway city council to honor Guevara’s links with Ireland with the planned statue....
Source: The Daily Beast
Mar 26, 2012
In a riveting new account in The New Yorker, Robert Caro, the preeminent biographer of 36th president Lyndon Baines Johnson, traces the politician’s activities on the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Before the shots were fired, a Senate probe threatened to contaminate Johnson’s career, and magazine investigations had the Johnson family finances in their sites. Then fate rang out of the clear Texas sky.Caro traces Johnson’s steps on Nov. 22, 1963, from the time he left Ft. Worth, Texas, with the president through his decision to take the oath of office on the runway on board Air Force One—and on to his first order as president of the United States. While the reporting itself is impeccable, it is as always Caro’s perspicuous analysis of the manipulation of power that most impresses. The Daily Beast collects seven key moments from Caro’s must-read account of one of the most fateful days in 20th-century American history....
Source: Iowa City Press Citizen
Mar 26, 2012
As the end to her long and distinguished career at the University of Iowa approaches, professor Linda Kerber has a better word for retirement.“I prefer to say ‘liberation,’ since I expect to continue to be a historian so long as my brain and eyesight hold out,” Kerber said last week in a lecture to UI’s Graduate History Society. “It’s the formal academic structures in which I’ve been embedded — structures that I admire, structures that I sought, structures that I have always considered myself lucky to have been part of — from which I retire.”Kerber, the first woman to hold a chaired professorship at UI and one of the nation’s preeminent scholars in women’s history, will step away from classroom at the end of academic year after four decades of teaching in Iowa City. Before bidding farewell, however, she will be honored April 3 with a Distinguished Achievement Award at UI’s annual Celebration of Excellence and Achievement Among Women....
Source: Badger Herald
Mar 26, 2012
A former University of Wisconsin professor of American history who gained international recognition as a religious scholar died in Madison on Saturday at the age of 76 after a short bout with cancer.Paul Boyle was UW Merle Curti Chair Emeritus in American history. His work centered on religion and its impact on American life. He published a number of books on American history, including on the Salem witch trials of the 17th century and American culture in the age of the atomic bomb.Florencia Mallon, the chair of UW’s history department, described Boyer as humble, generous and supportive of other colleagues.“He was an incredibly unassuming person,” Mallon said. “He was one of the most outstanding people in his field. … He was an internationally-known historian, but he was a very humble man. He never blew his own horn.”...
Source: CBS Local
Mar 25, 2012
MOUNT KISKO, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — After a long battle with lung cancer, legendary Boxing writer, historian, and one of the all-time great characters, Bert Sugar, of Chappaqua, New York passed away this Sunday afternoon at the age of 75.He was surrounded by family at Northern Westchester Medical Center in Mount Kisco. His family said Sugar went into cardiac arrest.Sugar, instantly recognizable with his brown fedora and cigar, is the author of over 80 books. He will always be remembered as the publisher and editor of “Boxing Illustrated” and later “The Ring” magazine.After he passed the bar exam, he became one of the original “Mad Men” in the 60s, working at McCann Erickson and J. Walter Thompson....
Source: WSJ
Mar 25, 2012
Alan Brinkley is an historian at Columbia University.The new era doesn’t seem to have had much impact on the ad men. The opening moments of the season begins with a civil-rights demonstration on Madison Avenue, where cretinous ad men at Young and Rubicam are throwing water bombs out of the window down onto African-American marchers. At Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, there are no such juvenile attacks. Not because they have respect for the marchers, but because the windows don’t open in their building. Sterling Cooper publishes an advertisement showing that the company supports equal opportunity – eager to embarrass Y&R. But they soon find a crowd of African Americans in the lobby waiting for jobs. Perhaps needless to say, they had no interest in hiring African Americans.
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2012
Thomas Friedman is a columnist for the NYT.THE historian Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote a brutally clear-eyed piece in The National Review, looking back at America’s different approaches to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan and how, sadly, none of them could be said to have worked yet.“Let us review the various American policy options for the Middle East over the last few decades,” Hanson wrote. “Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better. Propping up dictators with military aid is both odious and counterproductive. Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan. What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East — both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it.”...
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 22, 2012
Michael J. Hogan, whose leadership style and policies as president of the University of Illinois were criticized by many faculty members, has resigned, the chairman of the system's Board of Trustees announced on Thursday.In a written statement, the chairman, Christopher G. Kennedy, said that Mr. Hogan, who has been president for less than two years, would remain in office "through a transition period" until July 1. He will then serve as a tenured faculty member, the university said. Mr. Hogan, a historian, would be replaced permanently, Mr. Kennedy wrote, by Robert Easter, who is interim vice chancellor for research on the flagship campus, in Urbana-Champaign, and has served in a number of leadership roles throughout the system."The board feels that the most appropriate next step in university leadership should come from a proven administrator with a track record of collaboration and success within our university," the chairman wrote....
Source: AHA Blog
Mar 22, 2012
American Historical Association Executive Director James Grossman testified today before the House Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. Speaking on behalf of the AHA and the National Humanities Alliance, Grossman urged the subcommittee to provide no less than $154.3 million to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for fiscal year 2013. This represents a small increase over the 2012 appropriation, and was the same amount requested by the Obama administration.Grossman told the subcommittee that the current level of support going to NEH was “akin to plowing under our seed corn,” as young scholars find themselves unable to complete the research that goes into the books that launch academic careers. This has wide implications, Grossman argued. Without an understanding of our own heritage, those of other nations, and of foreign languages, he stated, “We can neither formulate informed foreign policy or even military strategy, nor compete in a global marketplace.”
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Mar 22, 2012
Peter Novick, a University of Chicago history professor, ignited controversy by asserting the legacy of the Holocaust had become too much a part of American Jewish identity in his 1999 book The Holocaust in American Life.“What Peter did was say ‘How come no one was interested in this until the ’60s and ’70s?’ ” said Bruce Cumings, chair of the History Department at University of Chicago.Mr. Novick, described by friends as a non-observant Jew, died of lung cancer Feb. 17 at his Chicago home. He was 77....
Source: Dinyar Patel at the NYT
Mar 22, 2012
Dinyar Patel is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Harvard University, currently working on a dissertation on Dadabhai Naoroji and early Indian nationalism. He can be reached at dpatel@fas.harvard.edu.Why has modern India had such a difficult time preserving its history?Tridip Suhrud, professor who has written extensively on Mohandas K. Gandhi, blamed a lack of historical sensitivity for problems in his state. Gujarat’s local maharajas and business families, he remarked, did not place much importance on keeping records.Consequently, there has been little interest in creating or patronizing archival institutions. Mr. Suhrud can only count three other scholars currently working at the Sabarmati Ashram Library in Ahmedabad, the principal repository of Gandhi’s personal papers (properly preserved in a locked, temperature-controlled room, he noted).
Source: Jennifer Holms in the NYRB
Mar 22, 2012
Jennifer Homans is the author of Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet. She was the wife of Tony Judt, who died in August 2010. Accompanying her essay in this issue is an excerpt from his just-published book, Thinking the Twentieth Century, written with Timothy Snyder, the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
(March 2012) I was married to Tony Judt. I lived with him and our two children as he faced the terror of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was a two-year ordeal, from his diagnosis in 2008 to his death in 2010, and during it Tony managed against all human odds to write three books. The last, following Ill Fares the Land and The Memory Chalet, was Thinking the Twentieth Century, based on conversations with Timothy Snyder.1 He started work on the book soon after he was diagnosed; within months he was quadriplegic and on a breathing machine, but he kept working nonetheless. He and Tim finished the book a month before he died. It accompanied his illness; it was part of his illness, and part of his dying.
Source: Education Week
Mar 21, 2012
Several education experts recently made the case for the importance of ensuring topics such as history, science, and the arts get adequate classroom time and attention as states and districts begin to implement the Common Core State Standards.The issue was the focus of a March 15 event hosted by the Washington-based research and advocacy group Common Core, which has just announced plans to create a set of curriculum maps in history and geography pegged to the common standards. Although the common standards primarily cover mathematics and English/language arts, they also address literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects."There is no such thing as doing the nuts and bolts of reading in kindergarten through 5th grade without coherently developing knowledge in science and history and the arts. Period. It is false. It is a fiction," said David Coleman, a lead writer of the English/language arts standards, according to a blog post published by Common Core....
Source: NYT
Mar 21, 2012
Ric Savage is accustomed to wrestling, but for most of his career it was against guys named the Junkyard Dog and Skull Von Krush.Now he’s facing opponents like Susan Gillespie, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida who is on the board of the American Anthropological Association. That’s because Mr. Savage, known as Heavy Metal in his pro wrestling days, is on different turf now. Or, to be more precise, he is digging into different turf as the star of a new show that has its premiere on the cable channel Spike on Wednesday night: “American Digger.” The series, which Spike hopes will be a hit along the lines of its tattoo competition “Ink Master,” features Mr. Savage and his team traveling the country, digging up people’s lawns in search of historical artifacts. That sounds a bit like the work of archaeologists and anthropologists, and both groups are, in the words of the letter they have sent to Spike, “deeply concerned” by the show....
Source: Strategy Informer
Mar 20, 2012
Smart guy Assistant Professor of History Gregory O'Malley of the University of California Santa Cruz has aired his thoughts on Ubisoft's choice of historical setting for Assassin's Creed III.The War of Independence is the next destination for the franchise, but it's far from a 'clear cut' conflict. There's so much to draw from, he says, with "diverse and complicated" armies.Americans good, British bad? Ubisoft has been adamant neither side will come off looking so clearly defined. O'Malley agrees, citing just how complicated it all was...."There were a lot of people in North America who chose to remain loyal to Great Britain, so some American families ended up split, which could set the stage for some drama," said Gregory O'Malley."For example, Ben Franklin's son sided with Britain and they almost never spoke again," he noted."Both sides had Native American allies. Also many American colonists had spent a lot of time living on the frontier and had really changed. They seemed pretty foreign to the British, so that tension between the British and British-Americans who had kind of gone native seems interesting to me."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 19, 2012
Professor Brian Shefton, who has died aged 92, was a leading expert on Greek and Etruscan artefacts; after joining Newcastle University in 1955 as a lecturer in Greek Archaeology and Ancient History, he began to build up a collection of treasures which led to the university’s Greek Museum being renamed the Shefton Museum of Greek Art and Archaeology in his honour.It was Charles Bosanquet, then Rector of the university, who had the idea of building a collection of Greek artefacts. Newcastle had a reputation for Roman archaeology, but Bosanquet had been born in Athens and wanted to show off the other great culture of the classical world. As Shefton recalled: “He called me in and said, 'Here’s £25 to get some objects to interest people who are going to take up Greek archaeology’.”...
Source: Daily Eastern News
Mar 19, 2012
A French art historian contributed to the history of Irish art and challenged the role of women in the mid 20th century, an Eastern art professor said.Janet Marquardt, a professor of art history and women's studies and the director of the Center for the Humanities, presented the personal journals of Françoise Henry, a history that detailed her excavations on the island Inishkea North (Co. Mayo) in Ireland.Marquardt said Henry wrote about the daily events on the island, and the journals told her personal thoughts about those around her.“She kept her personal notes separate from her archeological journals, her record of the day, except for 1950 where she merged them,” Marquardt said....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 19, 2012
When Mary Beth Norton went to work at Cornell University in 1971, she was the history department's first female hire. But now the accomplished professor has a different mark of distinction: She is the oldest American-history scholar at Cornell."I've always thought of myself as the sweet young thing in the department," Ms. Norton, who will turn 69 this month, says with a laugh. "But that's not true anymore."A growing proportion of the nation's professors are at the same point in their careers as Ms. Norton: still working, but with the end of their careers in sight. Their tendency to remain on the job as long as their work is enjoyable—or, during economic downturns, long enough to make sure they have enough money to live on in retirement—has led the professoriate to a crucial juncture.Amid an aging American work force, the graying of college faculties is particularly notable. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of professors ages 65 and up has more than doubled between 2000 and 2011. At some institutions, including Cornell, more than one in three tenured or tenure-track professors are now 60 or older. At many others—including Duke and George Mason Universities and the Universities of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Texas at Austin, and Virginia—at least one in four are 60 or older....
Source: Daily Tar Heel
Mar 18, 2012
UNC alumnus Taylor Branch won the Pulitzer Prize for his three-volume history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. More recently, he has become a well-known critic of the NCAA and college sports.Branch will be speaking at Sonja Haynes Stone Center at 7 p.m. tonight on the role of violence in protest and other areas of life._Daily Tar Heel: Why did you choose to focus on violence?Taylor Branch: I think quite frankly violence and its opposite, nonviolence, ought to be a university subject.Our media, our movies, our television are permeated with violence, and yet I dare venture most of the people in the audience at Chapel Hill on Monday night will not have seen much violence firsthand.We don’t often just think about the place of violence itself. It’s one of those rare things that’s arresting and fascinating but doesn’t get a whole lot of thought....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 18, 2012
In his most-noted books, Peter Novick, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Chicago who died on February 17, questioned values held by two groups to which he belonged: historians and American Jews.His 1988 work, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge University Press), discussed historians' changing attitudes toward that stated ideal. "We should disregard far-reaching claims to objectivity," he said at the American Historical Association in 1991. "We don't have to be definitive; we can just be interesting or suggestive."...
