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: Informed Comment (Blog run by Juan Cole)
Jun 14, 2009
[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]
Some comentators have suggested that the reason Western reporters were shocked when Ahmadinejad won was that they are based in opulent North Tehran, whereas the farmers and workers of Iran, the majority, are enthusiastic for Ahmadinejad. That is, we fell victim once again to upper middle class reporting
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog, Sandbox
Jun 13, 2009
The Washington Post runs an article today, exploring the origins of President Obama's heels-dug-in stance on Israeli settlements. White House officials described Obama's position to the Post as"years old and not the product of recent events or discussions." The Post then traces it way back to some of Obama's Jewish friends from Chicago days. The earliest i
Source: Deborah Lipstadt in a commentary at CNN.com
Jun 12, 2009
[Deborah E. Lipstadt is currently Resnick Invitational Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of "History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier."]
I write this from my office in the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where I have been privileged to have ha
Source: Beverly Gage in the NYT Book Review
Jun 12, 2009
On March 11, 2003, about a week before President George W. Bush began bombing Iraq, the cultural historian Jackson Lears published an Op-Ed article in The New York Times pleading for sanity. He sensed that it was already too late, and suggested that war opponents might be “fingering a rabbit’s foot from time to time.” As a historian, however, Lears couldn’t help asking when the “regenerative” impulse to seek national glory through war first took root. The result is “Rebirth of a Nation,” a fasci
Source: Harper's
Jun 11, 2009
T.R.M. Howard was not everyone’s idea of a civil rights hero, and his accomplishments have been widely neglected. But as historian David Beito and sociologist Linda Royster Beito demonstrate in their book Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, he was in fact one of the most effective black civil rights leaders of his generation and a key figure in bringing civil rights to Mississippi and empowering black voters in Chicago. I put six questions to David Beito ab
Source: AP
Jun 11, 2009
The late historian John Hope Franklin was "an angry, happy man" whose work as the head of a commission on race helped pull the country together, former President Bill Clinton said Thursday.
Clinton was one of a dozen speakers at a service at Duke Chapel to honor Franklin and his wife, Aurelia, who would have celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary Thursday.
The former president elicited laughter from the crowd when he related a story about Franklin handling
Source: NBC17
Jun 11, 2009
A local historian credited with creating the field of African-American history was honored Thursday, nearly three months after his death.
Hundreds of people came to Duke's chapel to celebrate the life of John Hope Franklin.
He was widely regarded as the nation's preeminent African-American historian.
Franklin wrote several books on African-American history, including the widely published "From Slavery to Freedom."
"He's still wor
Source: John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr at Washington Decoded
Jun 10, 2009
While we were writing Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, based on Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks, we anticipated a hostile reaction from battered but still rancorous remnants of the pro-Communist left in the academic world and partisan pundits. Together they have denied for more than fifty years that Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s had much significance, denounced claims linking the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) with Soviet espionage, and proclai
Source: NYT
Jun 10, 2009
The future of the history profession (as well as the journal’s title) are the subject of a roundtable discussion to be held this month at the annual convention of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Many historians “are on the defensive,” said Thomas W. Zeiler, the executive editor of Diplomatic History and the moderator of the panel. (Mr. Zeiler, who floated the name change, said he did not have a particular replacement in mind.)
The shift in focus began in t
Source: http://www.allgov.com
Jun 9, 2009
The State Department has decided to replace its top historian, responsible for overseeing the publication of the U.S. government’s official history of American foreign policy, after an investigation turned up allegations that included a “lack of interest” in history.
Marc J. Susser was appointed to the historian job in 2001 by President George W. Bush, and proceeded to take over the task of producing the voluminous “Foreign Relations of the United States” series. Over the next sever
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jun 5, 2009
A Virginia Circuit Court judge dismissed a lawsuit this morning against George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media.
Thomson Reuters Inc. had sued the university in a Virginia court in September for at least $10-million in damages, claiming that Zotero, a free software tool created by the university, made improper use of the company’s EndNote citation software.
Zotero is a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser that is designed to help scholars store and org
Source: Email to HNN by Hunter College's Dorothy O. Helly
Jun 5, 2009
Jo Ann K. McNamara died in New York City May 20, age 78, from complications from shoulder surgery in March. Her most recent book is a translation of Paris in the Middle Ages (2009), written by Simone Roux. Prof. McNamara was a scholar of world-wide renown. Her most widely acclaimed book, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millenia, was published by Harvard University Press in 1996 and reviewed in the New York Times Book Review by Antonia Fraser. She argued that women as nuns have strugg
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed blog
Jun 5, 2009
As assistant editor of the Papers of Andrew Jackson, Tom Coens spends a lot of time reading Old Hickory's mail.
So this spring, when he saw a Web site offering an 1824 letter from the seventh president for $35,000, Mr. Coens recognized it immediately as belonging to a collection at the New York State Library, in Albany.
"I was familiar with how the letter physically looked," says Mr. Coens, an assistant research professor of history at the University of Tennes
Source: Carl A. Zimring in a special report written for HNN
Jun 4, 2009
[Carl A. Zimring is Assistant Professor of Social Science in the Professional and Liberal Studies Department at Roosevelt University. Rutgers University Press will publish a paperback edition of his book Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America this fall. He would like to thank Erik S. Gellman, Michael K. Honey, and Lisa Phillips for assistance with this article.]
At a time when American labor has new hopes (with the possibility of the Employee Free Choice Act b
Source: Campus Watch
Jun 4, 2009
Stanford Middle East history professor Joel Beinin's appearances on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) Palo Alto cable television program"Other Voices" reliably produce anti-American, anti-Israel invective. In September 2008, Beinin declared,"The American empire is going down," and during a taping for the February 2009 show,"
Source: AP
Jun 3, 2009
Former President Bill Clinton is coming to North Carolina to speak at an event honoring the late historian John Hope Franklin and his wife, Aurelia.
Duke University said Wednesday that the campus will host an event next week to celebrate the Franklins. Clinton will be one of the featured speakers.
During his presidency, Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom and later appointed Franklin in 1997 to chair a national task force on race. Franklin died in
Source: Harvard Crimson
Jun 3, 2009
Ernest R. May, a genial professor who led Harvard College with collectedness and a sense of diplomacy and stood at the forefront of the study of U.S. foreign relations over his 55 years at Harvard, died Monday from complications following surgery. He was 80.
May left his mark on the University, filling a wide array of roles, including dean of the College, associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Institute of Politics.
“There are a small
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Jun 3, 2009
On June 3, 2009, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate former Republican Congressman Jim Leach as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
In making the announcement, President Obama said, “I am confident that with Jim as its head, the National Endowment for the Humanities will continue on its vital mission of supporting the humanities and giving the American public access to the rich resources of our culture. Jim is a valued and dedicated publi
Source: Boston Globe
Jun 3, 2009
Harvard University will announce tomorrow that it will establish an endowed chair in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, in what is believed to be the first professorship of its kind in the country.
Harvard President Drew G. Faust described the academic post as “an important milestone” in an ongoing effort by faculty, students, and alumni to raise the profile of LGBT studies at the university.
The university has received a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard
Source: Jerry Haber at The Magnes Zionist (blog)
Jun 2, 2009
Well, I am going to go out on a limb. If there is one book that has come out recently on the history of Israel and Zionism that you should read, then David N. Myers' book on Simon Rawidowicz is the one.
Myers's book contains the translation of a chapter that Rawidowicz wrote for, and then suppressed from, his great work on Jewish nationalism, Bavel vi-Yrus
