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: Robert B. Townsend at the AHA Blog
Jun 21, 2010
[Robert B. Townsend is Assistant Director, Research and Publications of the American Historical Association.]
The economic hard times rocking the discipline took their toll on the AHA this past year, as membership in the Association fell 7.4 percent from the year before. This erased gains made over the previous five years and dropped membership down to 13,946 active members.
We are pleased to note, however, that eight history departments now have 100 percent membership
Source: Robert Townsend at the AHA Blog
Jun 21, 2010
[Robert B. Townsend is Assistant Director, Research and Publications of the American Historical Association.]
A sense of optimism pervaded the annual meeting of Association of American University Presses (AAUP) this past weekend, even as the staff at those presses grappled with budget cuts and rapid changes in the way scholarship is disseminated.
As in years past, history was described as a vital part of the work and catalogs of most university presses. A number of the
Source: AP
Jun 21, 2010
American wars usually begin with a bang, yet it's the endings that usually have long-lasting influences, a gathering of prominent military historians told West Point instructors who are training the next generation of Army officers.
"Wars don't end simply, where someone declares victory," said Brian Linn, a professor at Texas A&M University, one of 14 academics, authors and other military history experts who took part in Monday's "War Termination Conference"
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jun 21, 2010
The largest party to come out of the 13 June elections in Belgium is the New Flemish Alliance, which wants to get rid of Belgium. Its strategy, in the words of its leader, Bart De Wever, is to consign the Belgian state to "evolutionary evaporation". This matters to all of Europe, wrote Simon Jenkins. As the headline puts it: "Plucky Belgium is leading the way. Today Flanders, tomorrow Scotland." Across the continent, "the craving for lower tier self-government refuses to
Source: AHA Blog
Jun 21, 2010
The AHA Council adopted “Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian,” a report offering best practices for evaluating public history scholarship in history departments, at its June 5 meeting. The report provides clear advice on evaluating public history work for college and university administrators, department chairs, and faculty. The National Council on Public History a
Source: APA.az
Jun 18, 2010
Turkish Historian Prof. Dr. Yusuf Halacoglu stressed that Ottomans did not commit a genocide against Armenian people and said, "If there were such a project, the 2,5 million Greek people in Anatolia would not stay alive", APA reports quoting turkishny.com web-page.
Speaking at a conference entitled "So Called Armenian genocide and Displacement" [in Baku], former director of Turkish Historical Society, Yusuf Halacoglu refuted Armenian claims regarding to 1915 inc
Source: Chosun Ilbo
Jun 18, 2010
The Korean War was started by Stalin, who wished to establish pro-Soviet government in the Korean Peninsula, and Kim Il-sung, who wanted unified Korea, a leading Chinese academic told the state-run media Thursday.
The Global Times quoted Shen Zhihua, the director of the Shanghai-based Center for Cold War International History Studies and professor of history at East China Normal University as making the remarks based on confidential documents released after the demise of the Soviet
Source: CHE
Jun 18, 2010
In two years, students, historians, and anyone else curious about nearly a century of history should have 100,000 pages of Tennessee newspapers at their fingertips. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize local newspapers from 1836 to 1922....
The state's history during the period covered by the project includes the forced relocation of American Indians, known as the Trail of Tears, which began in Tenne
Source: Bloomberg News
Jun 18, 2010
Seventy years after issuing his call for France to defy the Vichy collaborationist regime, Charles de Gaulle is again dividing the French.
The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose political party is descended from the World War II general’s followers, has included De Gaulle’s wartime memoirs in the curriculum for next year’s high-school literary classes. Sarkozy is in London today to commemorate De Gaulle’s June 18, 1940, radio broadcast urging a defeated France not to giv
Source: InsideVandy.com
Jun 18, 2010
Paul Hoswell Hardacre, a retired Vanderbilt University professor noted for his expertise on the Stuart period of English history, died on April 10 in Pasadena, Calif., at the age of 94. The professor of history, emeritus, taught at Vanderbilt for 34 years.
“Paul Hardacre served Vanderbilt long and ably as a teacher, scholar and participant in numerous councils of the university,” V. Jacque Voegeli, dean of the College of Arts and Science, emeritus, and professor of history, emeritus
Source: DigitalBurg.com
Jun 17, 2010
When Jon Stewart asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty last week for some examples of how he intended to administer “limited and effective” government, the Republican governor did not roll out boilerplate rhetoric on welfare or farm subsidies. Instead, he took square aim at traditional higher education.
“Do you really think in 20 years somebody’s going to put on their backpack, drive a half hour to the University of Minnesota from the suburbs, haul their keister across campus, and sit a
Source: Hartford Courant
Jun 16, 2010
Bruce Fraser knew that history is not the study of the dead, but of the living, at an earlier point in time. It is about the great and the powerful, but also about the lives and hopes of ordinary people. It tells us where we are from, connects us with a sense of place. Few did more to explore and explain the place between Boston and New York than Mr. Fraser.
Mr. Fraser, 63, executive director of the Connecticut Humanities Council since 1982, died Sunday after battling cancer for nea
Source: The Straits Times (Singapore)
Jun 16, 2010
A LEADING World War II historian has warned against manipulating history as France this week commemorates 70 years since Charles de Gaulle made his stirring appeal to resist Nazism.
Jean-Pierre Azema, author of more than a dozen works, said he was worried that some truths about France's wartime past were being played down amid the surge of patriotism around De Gaulle's June 18 appeal from London.
'History is being used as a political tool in a kind of national story-te
Source: AP
Jun 16, 2010
...Fixing Louisiana's estuarine environment is estimated to cost between $10 billion and $50 billion. To do the costly work, Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian, said Obama could tap a share of the billions of dollars BP is expected to pay for damage caused by the oil spill. Obama was scheduled to meet with BP executives Wednesday to negotiate a deal on compensation for the fishermen and towns affected by its April 20 blowout of the 5,000-foot-deep well.
"They (the Wh
Source: WPUR (Boston)
Jun 15, 2010
Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin knows the Kennedy family well. She has studied their role in American history — and she’s a longtime family friend.
But Goodwin still found plenty of surprises in the FBI’s file on the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, released Monday by the FBI.
Goodwin told WBUR’s Bob Oakes that the files deepen and complicate known stories about Kennedy’s life. She was stunned, she says, to see how many death threats the FBI had coll
Source: NPR,org
Jun 15, 2010
...Before Obama's first Oval Office address, historians were taking the measure of what might be possible for the president.
"The first thing I hope he accomplishes Tuesday night is to make very clear to the American public the dimensions of this catastrophe — the feel, the smell, the touch of it," says Joseph Persico, a presidential historian and former speechwriter for Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.
"What I also hope is that he sends the message tha
Source: South Bend Tribune
Jun 15, 2010
If you think Isaac Newton spent most of his time under an apple tree contemplating gravity, an Indiana University professor wants you to think again.
History and philosophy of science professor William Newman says Newton had a secret life as a scholar of alchemy, the 17th century pursuit of an elixir of life and turning metals into gold....
Source: Radio Netherlands
Jun 15, 2010
The University of Amsterdam has appointed British academic Stephen Small the first professor in the Dutch history of slavery.
The chair is financed by NiNsee, the study centre for slavery and the Netherlands. Dr Small is Associate Professor in African American Studies at Berkeley University in California....
Source: Boston Globe
Jun 15, 2010
The late Senator Edward M. Kennedy lived under the constant threat of violent death, a burden he inherited from his slain brothers, according to FBI records released yesterday detailing hundreds of threats issued by hate groups or relayed by agency tipsters and police across the country....
“Many people thought the FBI may have been digging into Ted Kennedy’s personal life. We’re so used to the FBI stories of the ’60s and ’70s being about Hoover bugging famous people’s bedrooms,’’ s
Source: Minn Post
Jun 14, 2010
You wouldn't expect a woman named Savitri Devi to be interred next to George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party. But Devi was no ordinary Hindu.
"Where Savitri Devi really hit the money was after World War II, when neo-Nazism morphed into a globalized form," said British historian Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke. "It was talking about the white races against the colored people of the world, so therefore her globalized view of Aryans uber alles, transcendin
