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: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Nov 19, 2011
Rep. Don Young and historian Douglas Brinkley argued during a Congressional hearing Friday after Brinkley testified in support of keeping the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off-limits to oil development and Young used the word "garbage" and called him "Dr. Rice," confusing Brinkley's name with that of the university where he teaches, Rice University in Texas.Brinkley, who recently wrote a book about the conservation movement in Alaska, said he would like to see President Obama create a new national monument in ANWR to prevent future development on the coastal plain, which geologists say is the most promising on-shore prospect for oil development in the nation.He said the monument should be named after President Eisenhower, for his role in creating the wildlife range....
Watch Brinkley video here.
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2011
“When I was a kid,” David Greenberg recalled in a recent e-mail, “my perceptions of Nixon were shaped as much by ‘Saturday Night Live’ and songs like ‘Ohio’ (‘Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. . . . ’) as by political journalism, which I didn’t read until I was older.” In the intervening years, Greenberg, whose book “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image” was published in 2003, has had plenty of opportunity to consider the various ways we view the presidency...
Source: Fox News
Nov 18, 2011
Few historical events have received more attention or been more carefully reenacted than the assassination of President Kennedy. Yet as the country approaches the 48th anniversary of that tragic day in Dallas, a team of historians and retired Secret Service officers claims to have used new technology on old evidence to solidify the judgment that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The NatGeo channel will air the new tests as part of a one-hour documentary this Sunday night called "JFK: The Lost Bullet." Historian Max Holland led the team that applied digital technology to a number of home movies taken on Nov. 22, 1963, including the famous Zapruder film....
Source: Spiegel Online
Nov 18, 2011
In a SPIEGEL interview, the best-selling British historian Ian Kershaw talks about the last days of the Third Reich, why the Germans persevered when it was clear that all was lost and the devastating consequences of the failed July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler.SPIEGEL: Professor Kershaw, you have spent the last three years studying the collapse of Nazi Germany. In the end, are we left to shake our heads in amazement at the absurdity of the final phase, or do you, as a historian, also feel something akin to admiration for the perseverance of the Germans?Kershaw: The head-shaking predominates, at any rate. I'm convinced that we English would have given up much earlier. It's certainly unusual for a country to continue fighting to the point of complete self-destruction. It's the sort of thing we usually see in civil wars, but not in conflicts in which hostile nations are at war with one another.SPIEGEL: The question of why the Germans persevered for so long is the starting point of your new book. What would have been the obvious thing to do?
Source: Slate
Nov 17, 2011
Cornel West, the public intellectual, activist and Ivy League professor, is taking a "significant pay cut" to leave Princeton and return to where he began his teaching career: Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.His new title: Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practices....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Nov 17, 2011
Four professors who have changed their teaching approach to engage their students in the learning process and have provided research opportunities for undergraduates are being honored today as U.S. Professors of the Year....Mr. Volk, a professor of history and chair of the Latin American studies division, has been teaching Latin American political history for 26 years. To maximize discussion time in the classroom, he posts video lectures on the Web that students can watch before the class. Mr. Volk said he started doing that so that students can actively participate in their own learning."Every class is a discussion, because that is the way that students can construct their own understanding and knowledge, rather than me telling them what's going on," he said....
Source: Cambridge Student Online
Nov 17, 2011
Dr David Starkey has ignited conflict with his fellow academics by calling a Trinity history Fellow an "immigrant who was trying to push a multicultural agenda in education", and arguing that most of Britain was a "white mono-culture."Starkey, who is an honorary fellow at Fitzwilliam College, became involved in the dispute with Dr Joya Chatterji and Professor Richard Evans, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College, at a recent historians' conference debating the future of history teaching in schools.Dr Starkey made the argument that the national curriculum should consist of "a serious focus on your own culture" echoing Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove's recent announcement that he aimed to put "our island story" at the heart of Britain's national curriculum....
Source: WEAU.com
Nov 17, 2011
La Crosse, Wis. – A UW-La Crosse Professor who has been named the state’s top educator says his students deserve the recognition. “This award, in the end, belongs to them. I wouldn’t be here without them,” says Greg Wegner, UW-L professor of history. “My ability to teach, research, write and publish is refreshed and renewed through teaching students.”Wegner will accept the 2011 Wisconsin Professor of the Year award today in Washington, D.C. He was selected from college educators across the U.S. for the award from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Wegner, a UW-L graduate, says questions are what ‘make a university tick’ and a good teacher respects the power of the question....
Source: Bloomberg News
Nov 17, 2011
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Stephen Greenblatt won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in New York last night for "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern" (Norton), the history of an ancient Roman book, Lucretius's "On the Nature of Things," and how its rediscovery fueled the Renaissance."I find myself fighting back tears," said Greenblatt, a humanities professor at Harvard. "My book is about the power of books to cross boundaries, to speak to you impossibly across space, time and distance. To have someone long dead seem to be in the room with you and speaking into your ear."...
Source: Talking Points Memo
Nov 17, 2011
Notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff — like the D.C. lobbying reform world — is calling B.S. on Newt Gingrich’s claim that he was paid handsomely as a “historian” for Freddie Mac.“I know he says they paid him as a historian to give a historic lesson, but I’m unaware of any history professor being paid that much money to give someone a history lesson,” Abramoff told NBC’s David Gregory....
Source: PRI
Nov 16, 2011
Some historians are raising concerns about a new book by Fox News star Bill O'Reilly, looking at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.A reviewer for the National Park Service's bookstore at Ford's Theatre has recommended that the store pull the book due to "lack of documentation" and "factual errors." Another review from the Civil War Society said the book contains numerous errors and one passage that is completely untrue."In 325 pages, there are four, minor misstatements, all of which have been corrected. There are also two typeset errors, one involving a date. That's a pretty good record," O'Reilly said on his show recently. He declined to discuss the matter further.Kenneth C. Davis, author of the "Don't Know Much About History" series of books, is currently working on a book called "Don't Know Much About The Presidents." He said that minor factual errors, especially typos, or misstating the acreage of a farm, as O'Reilly's book does, shouldn't be a big deal....
Source: Daily Eastern News
Nov 15, 2011
The former chairman of the history department for 16 years, died on Friday at the Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center in Charleston.Robert Edward Hennings, 86, served as the chairman of the history department from 1974-1990 and helped steer the department through challenging times and was responsible for many excellent hires, said Anita Shelton, chair of the history dept.Hennings came to Eastern when the history dept. had recently been created out of the old social science department.He was also one of several faculty members to launch the very successful Historical Administration masters program in 1974, Shelton said....
Source: CBC
Nov 15, 2011
A book about controversial 20th century saint Padre Pio has won the Cundill Prize, a $75,000 award from McGill University for historical literature.Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto won the top award on Sunday in London for his book Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age.Padre Pio was an Italian Capuchin priest famous for his stigmata who was declared a saint because of his popularity, despite much skepticism at the Vatican. The Cundill jury called the book “masterful” and acclaimed it as an examination of the politics of sainthood and the persistence of mysticism in the modern world....
Source: LA Times
Nov 15, 2011
Newt Gingrich appears to have a different definition of the word “historian” than, say, Webster's. Gingrich was asked last week at a Republican debate in Michigan about his $300,000 contract to work for mortgage giant Freddie Mac five years ago. Gingrich said he was a retained as a “historian” and that he warned executives there that reckless loans would lead to collapse. “I offered them advice on precisely what they didn’t do,” he said at the debate. “My advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, ‘We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that’s what the government wants us to do.’ As I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible.”...
Source: NOLA
Nov 15, 2011
Richard Greenleaf, a historian who was chairman of Tulane University's history department and director of its Stone Center for Latin American Studies, died Nov. 8 in Albuquerque, N.M., of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 81.Dr. Greenleaf was "a pioneering and towering figure in Latin American colonial history," said Thomas Reese, who succeeded Dr. Greenleaf as the Stone Center's executive director. "He trained generations of scholars."A native of Hot Springs, Ark., Dr. Greenleaf grew up in Albuquerque and earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at the University of New Mexico.He started his teaching career in 1953 at the College of St. Joseph on the Rio Grande in Albuquerque.A year later, he moved to Mexico City to teach at the University of the Americas, where he was chairman of the department of history and international relations, academic vice president and dean of the Graduate School....
Source: NYT
Nov 15, 2011
Les Daniels, one of the earliest historians of comic books — from the launching (off the doomed planet Krypton) of Superman in 1938 through the countercultural comix movement of the ’60s — and an author of horror novels, died on Nov. 5 at his home in Providence, R.I. He was 68.The cause was a heart attack, said Diane Manning, his sister and only immediate survivor.Mr. Daniels wrote 10 nonfiction books — among them histories of superheroes and of major publishers like DC and Marvel — and five works of fiction, all revolving around a globe-trotting, time-traveling vampire, Don Sebastian de Villanueva.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 15, 2011
David Starkey has provoked more controversy by claiming that most of Britain is a ‘mono-culture’ and that immigrants should assimilate.The TV historian rejected claims by other academics that it is a diverse country, describing it as 'absolutely and unmitigatingly white' outside of London.His outburst comes three months after he blamed ‘black culture’ for the summer riots and claimed that parts of Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech had been right.He made his latest comments during a historians conference discussing Education Secretary Michael Gove's announcement that he wanted to put ‘our island story’ at the heart of Britain's national curriculum....
Source: AFP
Nov 14, 2011
BAGHDAD — US army Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Brooks is on his third tour in Iraq, but his mission has not been a typical one: as an army historian, he is charged with documenting the history of the Iraq war.On his latest deployment, Brooks, 48, is the command historian for United States Forces - Iraq (USF-I), making him the army's top historian in the country.He is still working to document the history of the conflict, with emphasis on American involvement, even as US forces are leaving Iraq. The US withdrawal is to be completed by year's end.There were once 16 army historians in Iraq but that number is now down to two, Brooks said....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 14, 2011
It is shaping up to be the tastiest historical scrap since Rob Newman's comedy professor character compared the girlfriend of David Baddiel's don to Peter Beardsley. The warring academics, beloved of 1990s students for their "that's you, that is" repartee, have made way for Niall Ferguson and Pankaj Mishra, after the latter likened Ferguson to Tom Buchanan in the Great Gatsby.As with all the best academic spats, spectators are advised to equip themselves with a dictionary and a history degree to follow the action.
Source: Yale Daily News
Nov 14, 2011
The History Department hopes to determine why the number of history majors has dropped significantly in recent years as it prepares for an external review next semester.The University awarded 131 history degrees in the 2010-’11 year, down from 217 in 2001-’02, according to data from the Office of Institutional Research. History professors interviewed said the department is investigating the cause of the decline, but they and students disagreed over whether it should be cause for concern.“We want to be reactive to any kind of changes in the undergraduate environment,” Steven Pincus, director of undergraduate studies for the History Department, said. “Yes, there has been a decline in the number of majors — it is not a catastrophic decline, but we want to know why that’s happening and what we can do to make the major more attractive to undergraduates.”In February, a committee of professors from other universities will visit the department to assess its strengths and weaknesses and make suggestions for future improvement, History Department chair Laura Engelstein said. The department held its first meeting last Tuesday to discuss changes, and Pincus has assembled an advisory committee of current history majors to receive student feedback on the major, he said....
