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: BBC News Magazine
Feb 7, 2012
From the orphan begging for more in Oliver Twist to the heartless Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens highlighted poverty and squalor. But did he really help change things?It's an adjective that still echoes down the ages. Need to emphasise the filth and squalor of a rundown housing estate or prison? It's Dickensian...."Although in his journalism and novels he attacked specific targets - Poor Law legislation in Oliver Twist, the brutal Yorkshire schools in Nicholas Nickleby, the law [Pickwick Papers and Bleak House], government bureaucracy, lethargy and nepotism in Little Dorrit, extremist utilitarianism in Hard Times - it's hard to trace any direct consequences on reformist legislation in any of those areas to Dickens's influence," argues Prof Malcolm Andrews, editor of the Dickensian, journal of the Dickens Fellowship.Charles Dickens was born in 1812 into a volatile period often referred to as the Age of Reform, where industrialisation was rapidly reshaping Britain, and legislators were - more than ever - struggling to adapt to the demands of a changing population.He was born in the era of the stagecoach, but when he died in 1870 had witnessed the birth of the railways, the telegraph and the steamship.
Source: WaPo
Feb 7, 2012
WASHINGTON — A history professor from Texas is seeking access to long-sealed court records that he believes may help explain the motivation behind the Watergate break-in that ultimately drove President Richard Nixon from office.Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, Texas, is seeking the release of potentially hundreds of pages of documents. On Tuesday, a judge in Washington gave the government a month to object to the request.Nichter wants to unseal records that were part of the court case against seven men involved in the 1972 burglary.He said the documents originally were sealed because they were seen as unnecessary to proving the group, which was tied to Nixon’s re-election campaign, was responsible for the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Feb 7, 2012
Between gainful employment, talk of revamping the role of accreditation, interminable budget wrangling over Pell and student loans, and President Obama's State of the Union declaration that colleges and universities are "on notice" with regard to costs and outcomes, the complex and evolving relationship between higher education and the federal government is more visible than ever -- though on the question of what exactly that relationship ought to be, no consensus seems imminent.
Source: Arutz Sheva
Feb 7, 2012
The Iranian Threat is like the Arab world’s threat to destroy Israel in 1967, and Israel must attack Iran now, a Harvard University history professor told Newsweek. He said the he biggest danger is Western complacency.The magazine,which last week published a scenario of how Israel till attack Iran if it decides to do so, featured on its website on Monday an article by Prof. Niall Ferguson.He pooh-poohed five arguments why Israel should not stage a military strike on Iran: Iranian retaliation, new Arab Spring rebellion, a recession caused by doubling of the price of crude oil, boomerang support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within Iran, and the ability to live with a nuclear Iran....
Source: WaPo
Feb 7, 2012
BALTIMORE — A memorabilia collector and self-styled expert on presidential history pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to steal thousands of documents signed by leaders throughout U.S. history.Barry Landau, whose knowledge of the White House earned him appearances on network morning shows, admitted in the plea to taking documents from the Maryland Historical Society and conspiring with his assistant to steal documents from several institutions with the intention of selling them.Thousands of documents were seized by authorities over the summer from the 63-year-old Landau’s artifact-lined Manhattan apartment. Prosecutors say he schemed for years, if not decades, to steal valuable documents.The assistant pleaded guilty in October to the same charges: theft of major artwork and conspiracy to commit theft of major artwork....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Feb 7, 2012
A leading academic has sparked outrage after comparing the Holocaust that killed six million Jews to Britain's colonisation of New Zealand.Language lecturer Keri Opai claimed that New Zealand's native indigenous Maori were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following the 'holocaust' of British rule. But last night the President of the New Zealand Jewish Council slammed the Maori academic for 'trivialising state sponsored genocide'.During the New Zealand Wars of 1845-1872, which saw the Maori defended their tribal lands from British colonial forces, 20,000 Maori were killed while hundreds of thousands more were driven from their homes.Lecturer Opai told the Radio New Zealand programme what had happened to Maori during colonisation could be forgiven - but not forgotten. He said: 'If you really knew what went on, all the awful stuff, that really does break down to a holocaust....
Source: BBC News
Feb 7, 2012
Economist and former US Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith called India a "functional anarchy" some 30 years ago.Now Ramachandra Guha, renowned historian and author of India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, says instability is India's destiny.In a perceptive article in the latest issue of Prospect, Mr Guha explained why."Because of its size and diversity, because of the continuing poverty of many of its citizens, because it is (in historical terms) still a relatively young nation state, and because it remains the most recklessly ambitious experiment in history, the Republic of India was never going to have anything but a rocky ride.
Source: The Grio
Feb 6, 2012
Scholar, historian, black culture enthusiast, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America and recently appointed director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; Dr. Khalil Muhammad exemplifies the pure essence of Black History.theGrio's Wanjira Banfield sat down with Dr. Muhammad to get an uncensored account of his love affair with black culture, his unwavering desire for a conscientious America and his commitment to the global advancement and experience of African-Americans.theGrio: What led you to this journey to becoming a leader of black history preservation and eventually the director of the Schomburg Center?Dr. Muhammad: I wanted to know black history for my own personal growth. When I was in college, there was a lot of controversy surrounding African-Americans, as well as debate about whether black students were qualified to be in well known prestigious universities such as my alma mater; the University of Pennsylvania. I didn't personally feel equipped to understand those arguments. This began with me deciding that I needed to get more familiar with African-American history. I needed to learn my history, my culture.
Source: Applachian State University News
Feb 6, 2012
BOONE—An actor’s quest to learn about his ancestors took him to La Coruña, a port city in northern Spain, where Dr. Edward Behrend-Martinez’s expertise in Spanish trials helped provide the dramatic conclusion in the television program “Who Do You Think You Are?”Behrend-Martinez is an associate professor and assistant chair in Appalachian State University’s Department of History.The series follows celebrities – from sport figures and actors to musicians – who visit archives, libraries and other sites as they trace their family tree as far as records allow, all with the help of historians. The season opener, which aired Feb. 3 and is available on the program’s website, www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are, featured actor Martin Sheen who learns details about his Irish-Spanish heritage.Behrend-Martinez had never watched the television program before being called by producers to provide historic insight regarding a trial that Sheen’s great-great-great-great-grandfather presided over....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 5, 2012
Academics at Oxford University are reportedly divided over a proposed plan to name a new building at the varsity after one of its most illustrious alumnae - the first woman Prime Minister of Britain, Lady Margaret Thatcher.Wafic Said, the 72-year-old Syrian-born billionaire, has donated some 15 million pounds for a new facility at Oxford's Said Business School, due to open in autumn, and has indicated he wants to name it after the "Iron Lady" of Britain.But the proposal has divided the university....Prof Robert Gildea of Worcester College said: "I voted against giving an honorary degree to Mrs Thatcher in 1985 and my views have not changed since then."...
Source: Missoulian
Feb 5, 2012
During an open forum on the University of Montana campus recently, a professor asked new Commissioner of Higher Education Clay Christian whether his appointment would help or hurt the faculty's contract negotiations with the state."I'm hopeful it will help," Christian replied. "I hope it's a smooth transition. There is no hindrance."...In September, the state settled contracts that cover most other employees at campuses statewide. But four months later, there is still no agreement with UM's faculty, as well as professors at the University of Montana Western in Dillon and Montana State University-Northern in Havre.All university employees statewide received the same compensation deal: a 1 percent raise in the first year of the biennium and a 2 percent raise in the second year, as well as a $500 flat fee each year. The money for those raises came from increases in student tuition after the 2011 Montana Legislature chose not to fund pay hikes....Twenty years ago, history professor Michael Mayer applied for a tenure-track job at a public university out of state and had to provide his salary information. The school called later that week and asked Mayer for his current salary, not his starting salary."That was no mistake," he said. "That was my current salary at that time. It was embarrassing."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 5, 2012
Niall Ferguson was regarded so highly by his fellow Scotsman Michael Gove that the Education Secretary invited him to advise on the development of a new history syllabus.Ferguson has, though, returned the compliment by announcing that he is quitting this country because its intellectual life is so shallow.“My future is in the US,” declares the presenter of such television programmes as The Ascent of Money. “My son will be a US citizen. That is where I and my wife are probably heading.”...
Source: Boston Globe
Feb 3, 2012
When Andrew Darien first attended the University of Michigan in the late 1980s he walked onto the Big Ten school’s track team. By the time he graduated the middle-distance runner was regularly outpacing the scholarship athletes.Hanging his spikes up after graduation, the Salem State University history professor didn’t get back into the game until 16 years later when his son’s preschool teacher told him about a new master’s level running club called the Eliot Track Club....Three years after joining the four-year-old Team Eliot, the Cambridge resident and his teammates set both an American and a world record in the indoor distance medley relay last Friday. Competing at Boston University’s 2012 Terrier Invitational, the team clocked a time of 10 minutes 55.1 seconds to beat the previous record of 11 minutes .02 seconds.
Source: NYT
Feb 1, 2012
Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for the NYT....Newt Gingrich, Romney’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is denouncing Romney with one of the ugliest slurs in the Republican lexicon: a Massachusetts moderate. Other moderate Republicans are savaged as RINOs — Republicans in name only — as if they emerged from an ugly mutant strain.Yet, in fact, as a new history book underscores, it is the Gingriches and Santorums who are the mutants. For most of its history, the Republican Party was dominated by those closer to Romney than to social conservatives like Rick Santorum, and it is only in the last generation that the party has lurched to the hard right.The new book, “Rule and Ruin,” by Geoffrey Kabaservice, a former assistant history professor at Yale, notes that, to compete in the primaries, Romney has had to flee from his own political record and that of his father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan who is a symbol of mainstream moderation.
Source: C-Ville
Jan 31, 2012
For most Americans, Monticello is the home of Thomas Jefferson, an icon of American architectural expression, a treasured National Historic Landmark and the only American residence on UNESCO’s prestigious World Heritage List. But it’s also the best documented and best preserved early American plantation, and for that reason, a window into the obscure institution of slavery.Wait now, haven’t we had that conversation before? Thomas Jefferson and slavery. Yes, we have, around a DNA test in 1998 and long before that. Really, since a political journalist named James Callender accused Jefferson in 1803 of keeping a slave named Sally as a “concubine.” These days most scholars of American history believe that Jefferson fathered at least one child, Eston Hemings, and probably all six of the known children of Sally Hemings, a household slave and the daughter of the matriarch Elizabeth Hemings....
Jan 31, 2012
Mark Cousins is the Auntie Mame of filmmakers working today. By the end of Cousins’s monumental contribution to cinema, “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” a fifteen-hour voyage into the global history of cinema, you feel as if you have lived that history. It’s a hell of a banquet Cousins puts together for us with a ridiculous amount of energy and passion for his subject–he creates an enthusiastic, addictive survey of the medium through crossing continents, time periods, styles, effects, industry trends, and so forth. To call it “absolute” isn’t necessarily hyperbole.Cinespect caught up with Cousins in time for the MoMA screening of “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” which runs from February 1-16. Our conversation is what follows.
Source: American Public Media
Jan 30, 2012
Kai Ryssdal: ... Debt is, in fact, and has been, an American way of life.Louis Hyman is the author of a new book called "Borrow: The American Way of Debt." Thanks for being here.Louis Hyman: Thanks so much for having me on the show.Ryssdal: So you know, people have been borrowing and lending since basically there were paper, right? I mean it's been thousands and thousands of years. What, though, is different about the way we do it? The way Americans do it?
Source: Henry Blodgett for Business Insider
Jan 30, 2012
Henry Blodget is co-founder, CEO and Editor-In Chief of Business Insider.On Friday in Davos, I interviewed Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, who has been very vocal in recent years about how the world is careening down an unsustainable path....In one key way, Professor Ferguson now concedes, his adversary Paul Krugman has been right: The U.S. can carry a much-higher debt-to-GDP ratio than he thought. In fact, Ferguson now says, even his Harvard colleague Ken Rogoff, who wrote a seminal book about debt crisis called This Time It's Different, may be too pessimistic about the United States.But Europe, Professor Ferguson says, is still screwed....
Source: Grand Forks Herald
Jan 30, 2012
Playford V. Thorson II could come off stern in a classroom, for he had high standards and expected students to meet them. He could be gruff, especially when confronted by pomposity, whether a freshman’s or a college dean’s.But he could be charmingly whimsical and engaging, as well, former students and colleagues remember, often stopping in the middle of a lecture as if just then discovering the meaning of some event in the distant past. He delighted in the serendipity of learning.Thorson, a UND history professor for 35 years who specialized in Scandinavian and immigrant studies as well as the broad sweep of modern European history, died Thursday in Grand Forks. He was 86.“He knew books and he brought students’ attention to books, how important they were and how to interpret them,” said Gordon Iseminger, who joined UND’s history faculty in 1962, two years after his colleague....
Source: Midland Daily News
Jan 29, 2012
Former Midlanders Burton W. and Anita Folsom are the authors of a new book, "FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America." The book is published by Simon & Schuster Inc."Did World War II really end the Great Depression -- or did President Franklin Roosevelt's poor judgment and confused management leave Congress with a devastating fiscal mess after the final bomb was dropped?," states the book jacket. "The Folsoms make a compelling case that FDR's presidency led to evasive and self-serving wartime policies."The Folsoms are nationally recognized experts on the economic and domestic policies of Roosevelt....
