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: U.tv.news
Jul 26, 2009
There are a lot of questionable stories about the diminutive, sparkly and very sociable historian Andrew Roberts. An ex-girlfriend claims he has framed pictures of Margaret Thatcher not just in his study and drawing room but also next to his bed. During his single days, he was supposed to rival Casanova with his successful romantic conquests. And there's a widespread belief among the denizens of social London that his wealth comes not from history but from a family interest in the British franch
Source: GoUpstate.com
Jul 25, 2009
With backpacks in tow and cameras in hand, a group of 35 high school teachers from across the U.S. followed Larry Babits intently along the 1.25-mile battlefield trail Thursday at Cowpens National Battlefield.
There, they got blow-by-blow details of the Revolutionary War battle from Babits, a professor at East Carolina University whom National Park Service staff called the "foremost expert" on the conflict. This was just one stop during the weeklong National Endowment for
Source: Sean Wilentz in the New Republic
Jul 25, 2009
Click here to read letters from Michael Kazin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Fred Kaplan, and
Source: Press Release
Jul 25, 2009
THE UNITED STATES AND THE COLD WAR
July 26-July 31, 2009
Instructors:
• Melvyn P. Leffler, Edward Stettinius Professor of American History, University of Virginia; fellow at The Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia
• Christian F. Ostermann, director, History and Public Policy Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, D.C.
Guest Lecturers:
• Thomas Blanton, director, National Security Archive
• Malco
Source: Press Release
Jul 25, 2009
U.S.-China Relations
July 26-July 31, 2009
Instructors:
Warren I. Cohen, Emeritus Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Senior Scholar, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C.
Christian Ostermann, Director, History and Public Policy Programs, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.
Guest Lecturers:
Ambassador
Source: Adam Liptak in the NYT
Jul 24, 2009
Two big ideas animate “Packing the Court.” One is that the court has for more than 200 years illegitimately claimed a power not granted to it by the Constitution. The other is that it has on the whole used this power to protect the powerful and to thwart progress.
James MacGregor Burns is a distinguished historian best known for his work on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the book’s title is, of course, a reference to Roosevelt’s failed attempt to increase the number of justices afte
Source: Miami Herald
Jul 24, 2009
Last September, historian Marvin Dunn and a partner quietly purchased five acres of land in Rosewood, a black, self-made settlement that perished in a fury of hate more than eight decades ago.
The Rosewood massacre unfolded in a burst of racial violence that stretched through the first week of 1923. By its end, six blacks and two whites were dead -- although scholars and historians insist such numbers are woefully low -- and Rosewood was abandoned in ashes, its wretched, final chap
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Jul 24, 2009
The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded 123 grants under the FY 2009 Teaching American History (TAH) program competition. To view the list of 2009 grantees, click here. This year’s awards come at a time when it appears congressional support for the program may be waning.The Labor, Health and Education fiscal year 2
Source: Henry Louis Gates in The Root (edited by Henry Louis Gates)
Jul 24, 2009
Statement from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"It was very kind of the President to phone me today. Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.
And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS. I told the Pre
Source: Press --Wyman Institute
Jul 24, 2009
One hundred leading Holocaust and genocide scholars from around the world have signed a petition praising the Ugandan government for blocking Sudan's president from attending a conference in Uganda this weekend, because of his role in the Darfur genocide.
“During the Holocaust, the international community failed to act against the Nazi genocide,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which organized the petition. “By
Source: NYT
Jul 24, 2009
Lionel Casson, who melded his mastery of classical literature with the findings of underwater archaeology in scholarly but accessible books about the history of ancient seafaring, from the primitive dory to the vast armadas of the Roman Empire, died July 18 in Manhattan. He was 94.
The cause was pneumonia, his daughter Andrea Casson said.
Drawing from an array of sources — the writings of the historian Thucydides and the speeches of Demosthenes; cargo manifests kept by
Source: NYT
Jul 23, 2009
After keeping it sealed in a steel container for 25 years, the British Library made public on Thursday a 30,000-word memoir in which Anthony Blunt, one of Britain’s most renowned 20th-century art historians, described spying for the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid-1930s, as “the biggest mistake of my life.”
The memoir offers few new insights into the details of Blunt’s spying, about which he said little in public before he died in 1983. Its main interest, according to historians
Source: Melody Rod-Ari in the NYT
Jul 22, 2009
[Melody Rod-Ari, University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D. candidate, 2010, art history]
Getting through each day is a battle: a battle of mental stamina, emotional ups and downs, moments of self-perceived brilliance and confirmed scholastic inadequacy. Those who can identify with me are probably graduate students, too. I belong to your academic sorority. I am a doctoral candidate in U.C.L.A.’s department of art history.
What this means is that I have finished all my
Source: Brandon M. Terry at the Huffington Post
Jul 22, 2009
[Brandon M. Terry is a doctoral student at Yale University in Political Science and African American Studies. He is also a graduate of Harvard where he received an AB in Government and African and African American Studies, and studied under Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.]
This past Thursday, the renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, was reminded that sometimes, there's just one.
It is the way that his white neigh
Source: Trevor Griffey, PhD Candidate University of Washington, at his blog
Jul 22, 2009
Imagine going to a library with no catalog of its books. Each patron's request requires an educated guess about what the library may or may not have. The library will acknowledge receipt of your request within a couple weeks or so, but it will take an untold number of months for the library to let you know if it indeed has the item you've requested.
The search will be based on the kind of request you make. If you don't know their filing system, the odds are they won't bother doing t
Source: James Hannaham at Salon.com
Jul 22, 2009
HNN Hot Topics: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
[James Hannaham is the author of the novel "God Says No" (McSweeney's, 2009) and a former staff writer at Salon. ]
When I heard that prominent black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested for breaking into his own home in Cambridge, Mass., it made me proud of America. It may seem paradoxical to focus on the positive side of the preeminent s
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jul 22, 2009
HNN Hot Topics: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
For many, it was a startling portrait: the normally reserved Harvard University professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., standing on his front porch in handcuffs, appearing to yell as police officers surrounded him. Yet those were the images that circulated Tuesday, as news of Gates’ controversial arrest – and the subsequent dropping of charges against him – circulated on Web sites a
Source: Melissa Harris-Lacewell in The Nation
Jul 21, 2009
[Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, is completing her latest book, Sister Citizen: A Text for Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough. ]
Over the past several days a strange characterization of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has emerged. Many are portraying him as a radical who easily and inappropriately appeals to race as an excuse and explanation. This image of Gates is
Source: Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The Root
Jul 21, 2009
HNN Hot Topics: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
I’m saying ‘You need to send someone to fix my lock.’ All of a sudden, there was a policeman on my porch. And I thought, ‘This is strange.’ So I went over to the front porch still holding the phone, and I said ‘Officer, can I help you?’ And he said, ‘Would you step outside onto the porch.’ And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent associati
Source: American Conservative Daily
Jul 21, 2009
Is it any surprise that the historians that attended a secret White House dinner with President Obama last month are nearly all well known for a leftist outlook on history? Is Obama programming his “historical” coverage already?
Was there a Richard Brookhiser in attendance or a Larry Schweikart? Was there someone like Forrest McDonald at Obama’s secret dinner? Nope. Except for one attendee, the invited historians have all used their status as historians to make all sorts of ahistori
