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: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-21/obama-grade-from-historians-will-drop-without-health-care-bill.html
Jan 21, 2010
Five of the U.S. historians whose insights President Barack Obama sought at a dinner last summer give him grades averaging a B-plus for his first year in office if his push for health-care legislation succeeds.
Obama’s handling of the economy won praise; what was seen as a lack of leadership on health care and a missed opportunity to seize on populist outrage about bank bonuses earned criticism. Making the judgments were Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Dallek, H. W. Brands, Douglas Bri
Source: Newsreal Blog
Jan 21, 2010
The Associated Press is reporting that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has signed orders enabling radical Muslim professor of philosophy Tariq Ramadan, of Oxford University in England, and professor Adam Habib, from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, to re-enter the United States, after having been banned from doing so for over 5 years....Habib, a frequent critic of the war in Iraq, was initially denied a visa when the U.S. Government accused him of engaging in “
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 21, 2010
Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan should soon be able to enter the United States once again, ending years in which the Bush administration kept out the two prominent scholars, infuriating many academic groups.
Several academic groups have been in a protracted legal battle with the government over the visa denials to Habib, the deputy vice chancellor of research, innovation and advancement at the University of Johannesburg, and Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the U
Source: UNM Today
Jan 21, 2010
Distinguished Professor of History Paul Hutton will appear on the PBS program American Experience “Wyatt Earp,” on Monday, Jan. 25 from 9-10 p.m. on PBS. “Wyatt Earp” features interviews with Hutton and other biographers and historians of the American West to present a fresh take on an old legend.
Hutton, who is teaching an upper division course on the Western Hero, has written extensively about Earp, especially about his portrayal in movies. His article, “Showdown at the Hollywood
Source: Campus Watch
Jan 20, 2010
...Dennis Brown, University Spokesman at Notre Dame, said the University had no intention of re-hiring Ramadan, either as a visiting professor or as holder of the Joan B. Kroc Chair:We are pleased that today's order vindicates Professor Ramadan, and we look forward to the possibility of having him visit our campus soon for a lecture of symposium. However, the full-time position for which he was initially hired, the Luce Professorship, has been filled, and we do not forese
Source: MidlandsBiz.com
Jan 20, 2010
University of South Carolina history professor Dr. Robert R. Weyeneth has been elected to lead the National Council on Public History, the nation’s leading professional organization for public historians.
Weyeneth will serve a two-year term as president-elect, followed by a two-year term as president. The NCPH, headquartered in Indianapolis, publishes the flagship journal, “The Public Historian.”
“It is an honor to be recognized by my peers and to have the opportunity t
Source: Bowdoin Campus News
Jan 20, 2010
In spite of the devastating earthquake that left Port-au-Prince in ruins, noted Caribbean historian Allen Wells believes the resiliency of the Haitian people will make all the difference in how the country recovers.
"We need only look to the past to find hope for the future," says Wells.
Wells' book, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR and the Jews of Sosúa (Duke University Press, 2009), tells the story of 750 Jewish refugees from central Europe who were offe
Source: UB Reporter
Jan 20, 2010
Despina Stratigakos, assistant professor of architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, and assistant professor of visual studies, College of Arts and Sciences, has received the prestigious 2009 Book Prize from the DAAD (Deutcher Akadamischer Austausch Dienst/German Academic Exchange Service), a publicly funded independent organization of higher education institutions in Germany.
Stratigakos was honored for her 2008 book, "A Woman’s Berlin: Building the Modern City"
Source: Eli Clifton at Lobelog
Jan 19, 2010
Daniel Pipes. the controversial columnist who has had to defend himself more than once against charges that he was an Islamophobe, put to rest any doubts about his feelings towards Muslims in his National Review column, ‘’Why I Stand with Geert Wilders.’’
Pipes goes out of his way to lavish praise on Wilders, calling him “the most important European alive today.” (No word from the Vatican on if the Pope has any response to his relegation to the number two position by Pipes.)
Source: Chicago Tribune
Jan 19, 2010
The imposingly versatile Garry Wills, Northwestern University historian, political polemicist, sometime philosopher, theologian and church historian, has a new book inspired by liberal disappointment with President Barack Obama, blaming his faults as well as other American presidential disorders on the atom bomb.
He argues in "Bomb Power" that possession of the bomb, product of an enormous and secret scientific undertaking, the Manhattan Project, launched by Franklin D. Ro
Source: Washington & Lee University
Jan 19, 2010
Gordon S. Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, delivered the 2010 Founders' Day/ODK Convocation address, "Why the Founders Matter," at Washington and Lee University on Jan. 19, 2010.
Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. In addition to winning the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, he received the 1970 Bancroft Prize for The Creation of the American Rep
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2010
The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.
A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences
Source: Irish Times
Jan 16, 2010
...The Victorian historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay has been lucky so far with his biographers. His life was memorialised in a vast, two-volume biography by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan. His reputation and legacy were then kept alive by the latter’s son, GM Trevelyan, among the most influential historians of the 20th century, who also tightly controlled access to Macaulay’s papers. These included personal diaries, publication of which, Trevelyan noted, would be “unfair” to M
Source: NPR.org
Jan 16, 2010
The atomic bombs that ended World War II killed — by some estimates — more than 200,000 people. In the decades since 1945, there has been a revisionist debate over the decision to drop the bombs.
Did the U.S. decide to bomb in order to avoid a land invasion that might have killed millions of Americans and Japanese? Or did it drop the bomb to avoid the Soviet army coming in and sharing the spoils of conquering Japan? Were the prospects of a land invasion even more destructive than th
Source: Peruvian Times
Jan 15, 2010
After nine years directing a history series for national television, historian Antonio Zapata has decided it is time to go back to university to teach and do research full time.
Sucedió en el Perú has been broadcast on the national television channel, Canal 7, since 2001 and has dealt with a wide range of historical topics (are there any left to cover?).
During what is effectively the last decade Zapata has gained a reputation for extremely clear, simple and yet erudite
Source: Charleston Gazette
Jan 14, 2010
The founder of one of West Virginia's most comprehensive archives on the state's coal history, Charles Stuart McGehee, died earlier this week.
McGehee, 55, was the founder of Bluefield's Eastern Regional Coal Archives, a professor of history at West Virginia State University, and the author of five books on West Virginia. He died Tuesday.
"Stuart was an absolute treat for the state of West Virginia and the coal industry," said Bill Raney, president of the West
Source: New York Review of Books
Jan 14, 2010
I suffer from a motor neuron disorder, in my case a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): Lou Gehrig's disease. Motor neuron disorders are far from rare: Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and a variety of lesser diseases all come under that heading. What is distinctive about ALS—the least common of this family of neuro-muscular illnesses—is firstly that there is no loss of sensation (a mixed blessing) and secondly that there is no pain. In contrast to almost every other serious
Source: Salon.com
Jan 13, 2010
One of the most callous reactions to the Haiti disaster thus far has come from televangelist Pat Robertson, who told viewers of his Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday morning that he knew the real reason for the quake: The country's long-standing pact with Satan....
But is it a true story? We spoke with Andrew Apter, professor of history and anthopology at UCLA, about Haiti's voodoo traditions, the ignorance behind the evangelical community's distortions and the real cause of suff
Source: AP
Jan 13, 2010
Former Soviet prisoners of war were trained by the Nazis as guards and used regularly in the Germans' machinery of mass murder, a historian testified Wednesday at the trial of John Demjanjuk....
Dieter Pohl, an expert at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University, described the history of the so-called "Trawniki men," many of them Soviet POWs recruited by the Nazis, to the Munich state court on Wednesday....
Source: IndianExpress.com
Jan 12, 2010
It was only appropriate that he breathed his last just 500 metres away from the graves of Amir Khusrau and Nizamuddin Auliya, for Prof Simon Digby was no less a Sufi.
A noted scholar of medieval Indian history, Prof Digby lost his brief battle with pancreatic cancer on Sunday. He passed away on Sunday at his rented flat in Nizamuddin West — he was 79.
Even in his last days, Digby did not let go of his scholarly pursuits. Despite having nothing to do with a young 30-some
