Historians in the News

Call for Papers/Proposals for 2011 Mining History Association meeting in Montana

In 2011 the Mining History Association will meet on the campus of the University of Montana-West in Dillon, near the historic gold rush towns and districts of Bannack, Virginia City and Alder Gulch. The Program Committee invites proposals for papers, presentations and panels on any aspect of mining history in any era or location around the world. Related fields may include science and technology, law and governance, labor and social history, industrial archaeology, business history, preservati

Historian tells how the taco became a global food staple

You can find tacos in outer Mongolia, Amsterdam, Addis Ababa and Australia -- even in outer space (the latter thanks to NASA). They have, in fact, become as ever present as the hamburger. And that's the rub. They no longer seem Mexican, but American, says Jeffrey Pilcher, a University of Minnesota history professor who will give a talk about "Planet Taco" on Tuesday.... Fifty years ago, Mexican food could be found only in Mexico, California or the Southwest, i

Professor Jack Pole: historian of the US, dies at 87

Professor Jack Pole was the foremost British historian of the United States in his generation, and his books and articles won him recognition and acclaim in the highest ranks of US historians. He was an expert on the American Revolution but he wrote on all periods and linked the history of the US to that of Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Jack Richon Pole was born in London in 1922. His father, Joe Pole, had arrived in Britain from Ukraine as a boy. The Jewish family were en

Historians say that Obama's chance to be next FDR or Reagan fading fast

President Barack Obama's dream of being a historically transformational figure like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan may be slipping from his grasp. To be sure, he's already made one lasting mark that changed the country's course — his election as the first African-American president broke a centuries-old racial barrier. He also could break through with bold new initiatives that change the course of history, as Richard Nixon did late in his first term when he open

Kennedy Miniseries Stirs Controversy

A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that is being prepared by the History channel does not yet have a cast or a premiere date. Not a frame of footage has been shot. It does, however, have prominent critics who want it brought to a halt. The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser, say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors of fact and emphasis. But like a similar controversy over a 2003 television film abou

Steve Jobs Authorizes His Biography, by Historian Walter Isaacson

Saying Steve Jobs is tight-lipped is like saying the sky is blue. Rumors may fly in advance of Apple (AAPL) product launches, usually whipping up a frenzy that puts said product, real or imaginary, in quasi-religious terms. But you won't hear a peep from Cupertino until Jobs (or a proxy) takes the stage, standing in front of mammoth projection screens, to unveil the company's newest game-changer. But it appears that Jobs, who turns 55 next week, may be mixing up his moves as he gets

John Berlau: America's First Entrepreneur-in-Chief

[John Berlau is director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and blogs at OpenMarket.org.] February is an important month in the history of American commerce. In this month is the birthday of one of the country's earliest business innovators and large-scale entrepreneurs. During a time period of America's existence as an English colony and then a young nation -- when, to put it mildly, communication and transportation fa

North Carolina's Real History Reform: "History did not begin in 1877!"

North Carolina’s Accountability and Curriculum Reform Effort (ACRE) has proposed a curriculum that eliminates teaching U. S. History before 1877 as a required subject in public high schools. We are citizens, educators and students against North Carolina’s proposed new U.S. History Curriculum.... The purpose of this website is to educate our fellow North Carolinians about the proposed changes in the state’s History Curriculum and to generate sufficient public support to make sure tha

When presidents and slaves mingled at the White House

Sometime around the middle of April 1804, a slave named John Freeman wrote a letter to the president of the United States. Freeman, technically owned by a Maryland doctor, William Baker, had been contracted to work for Thomas Jefferson, who engaged him to serve in the White House and accompany Jefferson on trips to Monticello. Now, Freeman was writing because he wanted the president to buy him outright.... The letter was one among numerous acts of resourcefulness and in

John Castellucci: The Night SDS Burned Orest Ranum's Papers

[John Castellucci, a former reporter at The Providence Journal, was a student of Orest Ranum.] At about 2:30 a.m. on May 22, 1968, as New York City police entered Hamilton Hall, on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, to clear it of demonstrators, files belonging to Orest A. Ranum, an associate professor of history, were ransacked, and papers documenting more than 10 years of research were burned. The fire came at the tail end of a month of protests that had roiled Colu

Henry Louis Gates donates his handcuffs to Smithsonian

The handcuffs used to arrest Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates are now the property of the Smithsonian Institution. Gates told The New York Times that he donated the handcuffs after they were given to him by Sgt. James Crowley during a sit-down the two had at a Cambridge pub several months ago....

North Carolina as It Was, Split and Seething: "Blood Done Sign My Name"

Whether or not North Carolinians are more inclined than other Americans to follow Thomas Wolfe’s injunction to “look homeward,” some past the age of 50 have personal reasons to cast a retrospective glance on the state of their youth. It was a time when a century of Jim Crow laws and segregation were being challenged by the advocates of civil rights in a struggle that was often more bitter and bloody than popular history likes to admit. For Robert K. Steel, the re-evaluation of his p

Simon Heffer: We Can't Afford to Have Less History Taught at Universities

[Simon Heffer is a columnist for the Daily Telegraph (UK)] Sussex University is one of the better establishments of our higher education system. It is proposing, because of cuts, to emasculate its history department by scrapping research into, and in-depth teaching of, British history before 1700 and European before 1900. One should not need a GCSE in the subject to see the insanity of this. Our country remains shaped today by the Reformation, the Civil War and the Glorious Revoluti

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein

“American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein” is a cautiously respectful documentary portrait of a political firebrand who presents himself as a beacon of moral truth in the murk of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A scholar, author and passionate advocate of the Palestinian cause, Mr. Finkelstein, 56, is a thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.... Early in the film, directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier, Mr. Finkelstein is shown at a 1982 rally in front of the Israel

History of England starts at 1700, says university

Academics have attacked a decision by a top university to scrap research into English history before 1700. It was claimed that the move by Sussex University risked jeopardising the nation’s understanding of the subject and “entrenching the ignorance of the present”. Under plans, research and in-depth teaching into periods such as the Tudors, the Middle-Ages, Norman Britain, the Viking invasion and the Anglo-Saxons will be scrapped, along with the Civil Wars.

Rashid Khalidi draws fire from the right for remarks at awards ceremony

[Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the Middle East Forum. This essay was sponsored by Campus Watch.] “This is not an Israeli-Palestinian debate,” Stanley Cohen, the director of the Scone Foundation, said. “It is [a conference] to honor the archivist profession.” Cohen’s statement was half true: the event was not a “debate,” but only because there were no dissenting opinions to challenge keynote s

Historian says Morant does not deserve pardon

A petition to pardon Australian Boer War soldiers Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock is feeding off their myth as folk heroes instead of their reality as cold-blooded killers, an historian says.... Craig Wilcox, author of Australia's Boer War: The War in South Africa, says Morant and Handcock should not be honoured with a pardon for their war crimes. "I've got a gloomy view of the man himself and his elevation as a folk hero. Those who don't share that view are bli

"No Boy Scout": William Rust Publishes Article on CIA Operations Officer Lucien Conein

by William J. Rust

“No Boy Scout: CIA Operations Officer Lucien Conein” tells the story of a polarizing French-American paramilitary specialist who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and in its postwar successor agencies.

New England Historic Genealogical Society Receives Collection of Roosevelt Family Papers from the Theodore Roosevelt Association of Oyster Bay, New York

The new Roosevelt family materials will comprise part of the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections at American Ancestors.

Obama as professor-in-chief: The history of "professor" as a term of derision

...“When Palin and others describe Obama as professorial in style, they are invoking themes and tropes that have a long history in American politics,” says Neil Gross, an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia. “That longstanding tendency in American politics is also in this case being drawn together with an implicit criticism of liberal professors, which really only became a mainstay of conservative discourse in the 1950s.” A leading voice in that di