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: Brent Staples on the NYT editorial page
Mar 26, 2009
Every death leaves a conversation unfinished. The one I regret not finishing with the historian John Hope Franklin, who died Wednesday at the age of 94, focused on what it was like to be a rising black intellectual in the Jim Crow South. In particular, I wanted to hear more about Dec. 7, 1941, the day he and his wife, Aurelia, drove from Charleston, S.C., to Raleigh, N.C. — covering the better part of two states — before they reached home and learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Source: OAH Press Release
Mar 26, 2009
Joyce Appleby, professor emerita, University of California, Los Angeles, has been selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to receive the 2009 Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award, which is given annually to an individual whose contributions have significantly enriched our understanding and appreciation of American history. On Saturday, March 28, OAH President Pete Daniel and President-Elect Elaine Tyler May will present the award in Seattle, Washington, during the 102nd
Source: MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL in the Nation
Mar 26, 2009
Yesterday the great Historian John Hope Franklin passed away at the age of 94.
I did my doctoral work at Duke University and had the the opportunity to encounter Professor Franklin many times during my graduate training. Each time it was a privilege because John Hope Franklin was a superstar intellectual who managed to be utterly open and personally humble with students. He made us feel like partners, rather than subordinates, in academic inquiry.
In an age when black p
Source: http://www.medievalists.net
Mar 25, 2009
In March 2009, Julian Luxford of the University of St. Andrews made international headlines with a discovery of a passage in a 15th-century manuscript that contained an account of Robin Hood - see the
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Mar 25, 2009
The Co-Chairs of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, Rep. David Price (D-NC) and Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI), have prepared a Dear Colleague letter in support of $230 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities in fiscal year 2010. Please call your member of Congress and ask him/her to show their support for the humanities by signing the letter before it is submitted on April 1, 2009, to Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) and Ranking Member Michael Simpson (R-ID) of the Interior, Environment, &a
Source: AFL-CIO blog
Mar 24, 2009
Some of the nation’s top historians have signed a petition asking Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and protect the freedom to form unions and bargain.
Organized by University of Washington historian Michael Honey, who is president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), the petition includes the signatures of 100 historians from around the country. They’ve looked at our nation’s historical record and say that it’s clear we need to pass the Employee
Source: NPR
Mar 24, 2009
A new book backs former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic's claim that was promised immunity by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke if he stepped down from politics. Purdue University professor Charles Ingrao, co-editor of the book Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars' Initiative, says the offer was made because Western officials knew that Karadzic would not be be arrested.
Source: John Ellis at Frontpagemag.com
Mar 24, 2009
[John Ellis is Professor Emeritus of German Literature at UC Santa Cruz, and President of the California Association of Scholars.]
On February 25, 2009, an article by Patricia Cohen appeared in the New York Times: “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth.” Its thesis was a familiar one: an economic downturn will lead to a decline in the number of college majors in the humanities because in hard times enrollments shift toward majors with direct vocational utility. Th
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (Blog run by Juan Cole)
Mar 24, 2009
Listen to my interview with Steven Inskeep of National Public Radio's"Morning Edition" on myths about Saudi Arabia's puritanical and hyper-Protestant Wahhabi branch of Islam. I argue that there is no statistical or social scientific evidence that Wahhabis are more prone to violence or terrorism than other branches of Islam. Note that it is a narrow argument about the myth of Wahhabism as a font of terrorism in a
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com
Mar 23, 2009
Related Links
HNN Hot Topics: Armenian Holocaust
Prominent German historian Hilmar Kaiser is presently in Ankara carrying out research in the Turkish archives. In an interview with Sunday's Zaman this week, Kaiser says the field of history "is flooded with political advocates who are less historians than opinion-formers," drawing a picture full of gray areas, showing there is still ample
Source: http://www.tcpalm.com
Mar 21, 2009
History is not some dull collection of stories from the past but rather “endlessly fascinating because it’s about life, human nature and the cause and effect of individual talent and ability,” according to award-winning author and historian David McCullough, who spoke to capacity crowds Saturday at the Emerson Center’s Celebrated Speaker Series.
McCullough, who earned Pulitzer Prizes for his non-fictional accounts of former U.S. presidents John Adams and Harry Truman, as well as the
Source: Adeed Dawisha at Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
Mar 20, 2009
The idea for this book took shape in the post-2003 period as I searched for answers and tried to make sense of the quagmire into which Iraq seemed to be sinking. Successive governments, first appointed by the Americans, later elected by the Iraqis, would fail in the most rudimentary functions of governance. More than six years into the new era, the state was still less than capable in extending essential services and providing security for its citizens, with the result that in the perceptions of
Source: http://news.columbia.edu
Mar 19, 2009
The authors of three acclaimed books—a study of the 1914 massacre of striking coal miners in Colorado, an analysis of the impact of death and dying in the Civil War, and a reinterpretation of the Comanches in the southwestern borderland in the 18th and 19th centuries—will be awarded the Bancroft Prize for 2009, Columbia University announced.
The winners are Thomas G. Andrews for Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press); Drew Gilpin Faust
Source: Raymond Arsenault in the NYT Book Review
Mar 19, 2009
Historians who write about close friends or relatives do so at their peril. Personal engagement, so essential to the memoir, can confound historical judgment and scholarly detachment, especially when family honor hangs in the balance. Beryl Satter, the chairwoman of the history department at Rutgers University in Newark and the proud daughter of one of the central characters in “Family Properties,” has taken the hard road to glory in her study of race and housing discrimination in Chicago during
Source: Binghamton.edu news
Mar 19, 2009
Alexander Hamilton’s handling of the panic of 1792 provides lessons for today’s economic turmoil, a financial historian said at the March 13 Romano Lecture.
“If you have a really good leader in a crisis, the leader acts boldly,” Richard Sylla told an audience at the Anderson Center Chamber Hall. “You don’t waver and you don’t change your mind. You want to keep the banks lending.”
Sylla, the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets and
Source: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment
Mar 19, 2009
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Source: National History Center
Mar 18, 2009
The National History Center’s Founding Director, Professor Wm. Roger Louis, Kerr Chair of British History at the University of Texas at Austin, is the 2009 recipient of the Professor of the Year Award. The Senate of College Councils, the student governance organization that represents its 50,000 students at the University of Texas in academic affairs, grants the awards to faculty members nominated by UT students who have demonstrated outstanding teaching ability and a continuing dedication to st
Source: Conrad Black at National Review Online
Mar 18, 2009
Jim Powell has returned to the charge about Franklin D. Roosevelt accusing me of trying to avoid “embarrassing questions” about the New Deal and evade the chastisement I earned by writing a biography of Roosevelt, rather than an anthology of his favorite economists.
We went around this track before, in an exchange in the Wall Street Journal five years ago, which I referred to in my National Review Online piece, to which he replied in his
Source: Juan Cole at the website of TPM Cafe, which is conducting a roundtable on his book: Engaging the Muslim World (March 2009)
Mar 16, 2009
My new book is a series of case studies in US and NATO relations with a Muslim country or movement, and I feel vindicated that I chose well. I talk about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, all of which are in the headlines as the book appears in bookstore
Source: NYT
Mar 15, 2009
A quarter century ago, a Ukrainian historian named Stanislav Kulchytsky was told by his Soviet overlords to concoct an insidious cover-up. His orders: to depict the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s as unavoidable, like a natural disaster. Absolve the Communist Party of blame. Uphold the legacy of Stalin.
Professor Kulchytsky, though, would not go along.
The other day, as he stood before a new memorial to the victims of the famine, he recalled
