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: New York Magazine
Oct 14, 2011
When even a Fox News readers' poll puts support for the Occupy Wall Street protests at more than 60 percent, it's safe to say we have something of a movement on our hands. The demonstrations are approaching the one-month mark stronger than ever, expanding beyond New York to cities across the world. With no end in sight (but with winter on its way), one question keeps coming up: "How is this going to end?"Mark Naison knows a few things about protest movements. A political activist and professor in Fordham's Urban and African-American Studies programs, Naison attended Columbia University in the sixties, where he joined the Congress of Racial Equality and Students for a Democratic Society. In 1968, he was part of a group that occupied Columbia buildings in opposition to the construction of a gym in Morningside Park. (It was never built.)
Source: CBS News
Oct 14, 2011
(CBS/AP) RANDOLPH, N.J. - The New Jersey college professor who asked a stuttering student to pose his questions outside of class time said she has become a victim of "character assassination," and that she didn't mean to silence him.Elizabeth Snyder told The New York Times she's received "the most hateful, vile, vicious e-mails" since the story came out earlier this week.Snyder said she had asked Philip Garber Jr. - who suffers from a severe stutter - to pose his questions after class, in order to put him at ease and not to take up too much class time.Snyder told the paper Garber, a 16-year-old taking courses at the County College of Morris, "seemed to want to answer every question" in Snyder's history class....
Source: WaPo
Oct 12, 2011
RANDOLPH, N.J. — Officials at a community college in northern New Jersey declined to say Wednesday whether they disciplined an adjunct professor who asked a stuttering student not to speak, but acknowledged that the professor acted improperly.Administrators at County College of Morris said history professor Elizabeth Snyder was wrong to email 16-year-old Philip Garber Jr. to urge Garber to save his questions for after class “so we do not infringe on other students’ time.”...
Source: Bendigo Advertiser
Oct 12, 2011
The Bendigo RSL Memorial Military Museum has supported a call to uncover some hidden war treasures.New Zealand war historian Frank Glen wants to locate letters, documents and medals from the war fought by Bendigo volunteer soldiers between 1860 and 1872 across the Tasman against Maori tribesmen.Dr Glen regards as significant the involvement of Bendigo’s volunteers because of their number.Captain James Skene, after whom the Kennington Street was named, commanded 98 volunteers he enlisted.Of the 2400 enlisted volunteers from Australia, more than 120 were enlisted from Bendigo. Of the 22 killed in action, at least five were from Bendigo....
Source: Newswire
Oct 11, 2011
Newswise — The estate of Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Ph.D., an accomplished writer, historian and alumna of the University of California, San Diego, has left $1.1 million to support the UC San Diego Libraries. The gift from the Alice G. Marquis Living Trust, which represents the largest bequest ever to the Libraries, will help to maintain and enhance collections and services of the UC San Diego Libraries, with a portion of the gift specifically designated to augment the existing H. Stuart Hughes UCSD Libraries Endowment for Modern European History. The Libraries will also direct some of the funding from the bequest to establish a new study area open 24 hours, five days a week, in Geisel Library.
Source: WFMY News
Oct 11, 2011
Greensboro, NC -- We wanted to dig a little deeper into the issue of why people don't vote. We know we need to vote. We know it's a privilege. So why don't more people take advantage and vote?So we invited Dr. Omar Ali, an historian and independent political analyst with UNC Greensboro to see if there's a particular reason why they don't turnout....
Source: Vanderbilt News
Oct 11, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street movement could offer a similar opportunity to left-wing politicians as the Tea Party movement did to the right, says a Vanderbilt University historian.Occupy Wall Street is a continuing series of demonstrations in New York City that has spread to more than 70 other cities. Participants have said they are protesting corporate greed, the influence of lobbyists on lawmakers and general social and economic inequities in the United States.“We don’t know yet whether Occupy Wall Street along with the worsening economic crisis will gel into a powerful mandate like the labor movement that took root four years after the Great Depression began in 1929,” said Gary Gerstle, the James G. Stahlman Professor of American History at Vanderbilt. “But history teaches us that movements that begin in very fragmented, unexpected and surprising ways can go on to wield a lot of influence.”...
Source: Smithsonian Blog
Oct 11, 2011
The National Portrait Gallery’s historian David C. Ward is a biographer of Charles Willson Peale and has written extensively about such figures as Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway. He has curated exhibitions on Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, as well as last year’s controversial “Hide/Seek. Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” Over the past two decades, however, he has occasionally turned from history to verse and has recently published a small volume of poetry entitled, Internal Difference, from Carcanet Press. “Ward’s carefully plotted chapbook describes American social spaces, past and present, and the links between them,” writes critic David Kinloch in the June/July issue of PN Review. In one poem, the historian amusingly offers a poet’s take on the imagined inner world of Andy Warhol, an artist attempting to escape the confines of his own accelerating celebrity.“Camouflage Self-Portrait”
Source: Portland Press Herald
Oct 11, 2011
PORTLAND - Stephen Aylward, a popular and respected professor at Saint Joseph's College who was instrumental in developing Portland's Riverton Rail Trail, died Thursday from injuries he suffered in a car accident. He was 57.Mr. Aylward taught history and political science at Saint Joseph's College in Standish for the past four years. He was remembered by colleagues Monday as a dedicated teacher and scholar who connected with his students, particularly in the area of political theory.Dr. Jonathan Malmude, an assistant professor of history at Saint Joseph's, said Mr. Aylward had a way of relating political science to other fields, such as history, business, sociology, theology and classical studies."He could connect with students intellectually and demonstrate practical explanations of the discipline," Malmude said. "His perceptions were really based on a true commitment to the common good. (He was) balanced and measured in the way he approached things. He was a really good teacher."...
Source: NYT
Oct 10, 2011
RANDOLPH, N.J. — As his history class at the County College of Morris here discussed exploration of the New World, Philip Garber Jr. raised his hand, hoping to ask why China’s 15th-century explorers, who traveled as far as Africa, had not also reached North America.He kept his hand aloft for much of the 75-minute session, but the professor did not call on him. She had already told him not to speak in class.Philip, a precocious and confident 16-year-old who is taking two college classes this semester, has a lot to say but also a profound stutter that makes talking difficult, and talking quickly impossible. After the first couple of class sessions, in which he participated actively, the professor, an adjunct named Elizabeth Snyder, sent him an e-mail asking that he pose questions before or after class, “so we do not infringe on other students time.” As for questions she asks in class, Ms. Snyder suggested, “I believe it would be better for everyone if you kept a sheet of paper on your desk and wrote down the answers.”Later, he said, she told him, “Your speaking is disruptive.”...
Source: Tehran Times
Oct 10, 2011
TEHRAN -- Iranian history scholar died of natural causes. He was 91.Born in 1920 in Nahavand city, he got his diploma in Hamedan. In 1969, he got his doctorate in history from France’s Paul Sabatier University.He was the history professor at the University of Shahid Beheshti since 1972....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 7, 2011
Last month, freshmen at Dominican University of California spent a night stargazing with the help of 20 amateur astronomers from San Francisco. The night under the stars was part of their academic year, in which they will study the history and evolution of the universe.This emerging approach to teaching is called Big History, and it is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the origins of the universe and the complexity of its development, from the Big Bang to the future of the planet, mixing topics that at many colleges would be covered separately in courses on biology, physics and philosophy, among other fields...."It is unique because it is more than one Big History course," said Mojgan Behmand, director of general education and the first year experience at Dominican. “We look at Big History through the lens of a discipline, and our coursework is based on the collective wisdom of 35 faculty members."Half of the course precedes human history, Behmand said. Other universities have offered Big History before, she said, but only as a single course.
Source: NPR
Oct 7, 2011
Guy Raz talks to Beverly Gage, associate professor of history at Yale University and author of the book The Day Wall Street Exploded: The Story of America in its First Age of Terror, about the history of protests on Wall Street.MELISSA BLOCK, host: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.GUY RAZ, host: And I'm Guy Raz.The so-called Occupy Wall Street Movement is in its third week of protests, a block from the nation's financial center in New York. The daily demonstrations carry echoes of a century ago and the decades leading up to the Great Depression. It was a time when protests were a regular feature on Wall Street and powerful financiers, like J.P. Morgan, were pilloried in song.(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY NAME IS MORGAN, BUT IT AIN'T J.P.")UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) My name is Morgan but it ain't J.P. There's no bank on Wall Street that belongs to me...
Source: The Hill
Oct 6, 2011
Criticism of the president has long been a staple of politics, but experts say lawmakers are becoming more extreme in their rebukes of the commander in chief.White House scholars say that although every president has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous barbs, it has not historically been members of Congress hurling them. But more lawmakers are now doing so, and that has diminished the office of the presidency, historians say....H.W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas-Austin and the author of books on several presidents, said he is not aware of “mockery of the president by elected officials” at the frequency that Obama has been getting it.“Generally, there has been respect among elected officials for the office of the presidency,” Brands said. “The attacks have usually come from editorialists.”...“In public statements like these, it is difficult to prove or disprove race as a factor,” said Julian Zelizer, professor of history at Princeton University. “My hunch would be that, in these times of polarized politics, we would see this tough rhetoric no matter what the president’s race.”
Source: Lexington Clipper-Herald
Oct 6, 2011
OMAHA - Abraham Lincoln was neither saint nor demon.What he was, said historian Eric Foner, was a shrewd politician, a Republican who believed in his party and in keeping the union together.What Abe couldn't do today is get elected, Foner said after speaking to about 100 students, instructors and fellow historians Wednesday at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery" said Lincoln tried to be a peacemaker among factions in the newly formed Republican party, he wasn't an avowed Christian and wasn't particularly handsome or charismatic. His running in 2012 would be doubtful....
Source: BBC
Oct 4, 2011
Media watchdog Ofcom has decided not to investigate complaints about David Starkey's controversial comments on Newsnight regarding the UK riots.Historian Starkey partly blamed the disorder on "gangster" culture and said "the whites have become black" on the BBC programme in August.But Ofcom said Starkey's comments "were moderated by the presenter".It also said his views were "countered strongly by the views of other contributors" on the BBC Two programme.The BBC received nearly 900 complaints from viewers....
Source: WaPo
Oct 4, 2011
Two recent books argue that explorers Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama were more like Christian crusaders than greedy mercenaries or curious adventurers. Other historians, however, remain skeptical.The books, released in the weeks leading up to Columbus Day (Oct. 10), claim the reason the famous navigators sought a direct trade route to India was to undermine Islam.“I think historians have known about this, but they haven’t taken it seriously,” said Carol Delaney, author of “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem.” Delaney, a retired anthropologist, is currently a research scholar at Brown University.Delaney’s book argues that Columbus wanted to find gold to finance a new crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims, believing that Jerusalem must be in Christian hands before Jesus’ Second Coming....
Source: College of William & Mary
Oct 4, 2011
It’s been a decade and a half since manuscript hunter George Greenia discovered a missing medieval Spanish document in the archives at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library.Now Greenia, who serves as professor of Hispanic studies at the College of William and Mary, has chronicled his discovery and the historic contents of the 700-year-old manuscript in “The Lost Privilegio de Alcalá de Henares de 1295.” His essay is one of several pieces written by a group of medievalists in the anthology, La pluma es la lengua del alma: Ensayos en honor de E. Michael Gerli, published in September 2011.The document, dated Aug. 8, 1295, is a concession of royal privileges signed by King Fernando IV granting freedom and liberties to the citizens of Alcalá during the Spanish Reconquista. According to Greenia, it’s also the fourth oldest document to mention the city, which lies about 20 miles east of Madrid.The single sheet of sheepskin parchment, measuring 24 by 18 inches, is in immaculate condition considering its age, said Greenia. What it provides scholars is an invaluable piece of history into medieval democracy, he added....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 3, 2011
...The statement -- "No More Plan B" -- appears in the new issue of the AHA publication Perspectives and was written by Anthony Grafton, a Princeton University historian who is president of the AHA, and James Grossman, executive director of the association.Grafton and Grossman cite data from the last year (and the last several years before that) in which more history Ph.D.s are entering the job market than there are tenure-track openings. Despite the talent of the new history Ph.D.s, "many of these students will not find tenure-track positions teaching history in colleges and universities," they write....In interviews, Grossman and Grafton both acknowledged that they were seeking to change the way most professors and graduate students think."We're trying to say, 'Wake up. Times have changed. There are more opportunities and that's a good thing,'" said Grossman. "This is not about the negativity of wringing our hands and saying that there are no more jobs."
Source: NYT
Oct 3, 2011
If there is a physical place that represents the intersection of democracy and capitalism in America, it is probably at the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street. Protest movements have been drawn to Wall Street — both the physical location and the abstract idea — since the founding of the country.DealBook spoke to the historian Steve Fraser, whose books include “Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace” and “Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life,” about the groups that have gathered there in the past.
