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: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment
Jan 12, 2009
I want to follow up today on my postings over the weekend on how organizing to defend progressive congressional representatives and punish reactionary ones is far superior to street protests as political action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
People wrote to defend street protests or minded that I said I was annoyed. I stand by what I said. Street protests have not stopped the US Congress from turning Israel into a massive arms arsenal in the Middle East or from granting it $3 bil
Source: SHAFR Counci
Jan 12, 2009
Resolutions passed by the Council of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) on January 4, 2009.
I. The SHAFR Council believes that the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series is crucial to transparency in democratic governance and to informed citizenship. In light of recent problems in the State Department's Office of the Historian (HO) that may affect the future of the FRUS series, SHAFR expresses its strong support for the Secretary of State's
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 12, 2009
Colin White, Director of the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth since June 2006, came to wider public prominence as – almost literally – the leading actor in the Trafalgar bicentenary events of 2005 and their four previous years of preparation.
White's identification with Nelson was by then so close that when his most important book, Nelson – The New Letters, came out that spring, the historian Andrew Roberts, in reviewing it, called him the admiral's "representative on earth&qu
Source: Justin Vogt in the New Yorker
Jan 12, 2009
As anyone who has lived through the past eight years can attest, disputes about the foreign relations of the United States frequently deteriorate into shouting matches. Not so with disputes about the “Foreign Relations of the United States”—the official documentary history of America’s dealings with the rest of the world. The series, not so widely known as FRUS, makes public the viscera of officialdom—diplomatic cables, intelligence reports. If you want to read a transcript of President Nixon an
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan 11, 2009
The scholars approached their topic with considerable nervousness, and that was before the Wall Street meltdown, before Bernard L. Madoff.
Would a series of lectures at a premier business school on the history of Jews making money feed negative stereotypes?
In the end, the Wharton School and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies decided to go ahead and tackle a topic that has gotten short shrift from academics until recently.
The goal, said the c
Source: Guardian (UK) blog
Jan 8, 2009
Last year, when Gordon Brown took his ministers on an awayday to Birmingham, he was described as the first prime minister to hold a cabinet meeting outside London since Lloyd George in 1921.
This was widely reported in the papers at the time and Downing Street itself was telling reporters about the meeting, which took place in Inverness because Lloyd George was on holiday in Scotland when Anglo-Irish relations reached a crisis point.
But Brown, who has a doctorate in hi
Source: Edge of the American West (blog)
Jan 8, 2009
The top, oh, I don’t know, let’s name twelve best jobs, according to the WSJ this week, citing a study that takes into account “environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress”:
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
Source: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment
Jan 8, 2009
Michael J. Totten has surged way ahead in the voting online for the best Middle East weblog. The way he has done this is very instructive and tells us something about how the Neoconservatives always run rings around the American left and leave them with nothing to do but complain about Neoconservative power.First, Totten demonized me and mobilized rightwingers in general and right-Zionists in particul
Source: http://blog.cleveland.com
Jan 7, 2009
If you spent a day on a train with President-elect Barack Obama, what would you ask him?
Lisa Hazirjian will get that chance.
She was one of about 40 supporters from around the nation selected by Obama's inauguration committee to meet Obama in Philadelphia on Jan. 17.
"It's totally unexpected and incredible," said the 40-year-old Case Western Reserve University professor who volunteered for Obama's campaign.
The train will pick up Vice Pres
Source: Anthony Grafton in The Nation
Jan 7, 2009
[Anthony Grafton teaches European intellectual history at Princeton University. His most recent books include Codex in Crisis (Crumpled Press) and, with Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (Harvard).]
In 1973, Morton Smith, professor of ancient history at Columbia University, shook the world--or at least the world of scholars who work on early Christianity. Fifteen years before, Smith had found an unknown document in the Mar Saba Greek Orthodox monastery,
Source: http://www.abc2news.com
Jan 7, 2009
Organizers of the National History Day competition are announcing a $1.9 million gift and a partnership with the National Museum of American History to expand the program and reach more students.
The program, based in a dorm basement at the University of Maryland, will receive the donation from philanthropist Kenneth Behring. The 80-year-old real estate developer is a major Smithsonian supporter, giving $100 million in recent years to support history programs.
More than
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog Sandbox
Jan 7, 2009
[Mr. Kramer, the author of Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, was a full-time tenured academic at Tel Aviv University. He is now an Olin Institute Senior Fellow at Harvard. Click here for his blog.]
Juan Cole is running two campaigns on his blog. One is against Israel—business as usual for Cole. The other is promoting his blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards competitio
Source: Stan Katz in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (blog)
Jan 6, 2009
There was ... a good deal of buzz [at the AHA] about the controversy generated by the resignation of the AHA delegate, Roger Louis (the former president of the AHA and a distinguished historian of the British empire), as chairman of the State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee, whose main function is to offer advice to the Secretary of State and the Historian’s Office concerning the ongoing publication of the Department’s formal historical record, Foreign Relations of the United States.
Source: http://verdenews.com
Jan 6, 2009
Hal Bridges, 90, of Cottonwood Village has combined his love of journalism and history to write and self-publish a first novel. The novel - "Lincoln and the Single Eye" - is a tale of Abraham Lincoln, mysticism, love and murder in wartime Washington.
"It is a serious religious novel with a background of dramatic Civil War events," Bridges said.
Bridges was born and raised in the small, South Central Texas town of Luling. That's where his connection t
Source: http://www.examiner.com
Jan 6, 2009
Inaugurations have become like coronations, according to historian Paul F. Boller, Jr., author of the book "Presidential Inaugurations".
"Sometimes I've gotten the feeling that inaugurations are like crowning a king," Boller told me in an interview. "Inaugural ceremonies have become too elaborate over the years. I could live without all that, making it into such a magnificent ceremony."
But Boller, Professor Emeritus of History, Texas Christian Univer
Source: Scott Jaschik at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Jan 6, 2009
“We were more or less raised and professionalized by wolves.”
That line by Ann Fabian, a professor of history and American studies at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, reflected the way coursework in Ph.D. programs used to be focused solely on knowledge and historiography, and was largely disconnected from the future careers of young academics.
Fabian’s comment came in a panel discussion here at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association on how graduat
Source: Navy Times
Jan 6, 2009
The Navy has a “culture problem” with its past, the service’s top historian says.
Neither sailors nor leaders have enough appreciation for how useful history could be in their day-to-day decision-making, said retired Rear Adm. Jay DeLoach. But he hopes to change that.
DeLoach said he has big plans for the newly renamed Naval History and Heritage Command, formerly known as the Naval Historical Center, at the Washington Navy Yard. It owns more than 1 million historical ar
Source: NYT
Jan 6, 2009
Christopher Hibbert, whose stylishly written, fast-paced histories and biographies embraced subjects as varied as King George IV, the French Revolution, the emperors of China and the city of Rome, died on Dec. 21 in Henley-on-Thames, England. He was 84 and lived in Henley-on-Thames.
The cause was bronchial pneumonia, said his daughter Kate Hibbert.
Although sometimes regarded askance by academic historians, Mr. Hibbert won a wide readership with his popular approach to
Source: Press Release
Jan 6, 2009
Brian LeMay, Executive Director of The Bostonian Society, announced that the Society will honor famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns with its annual Boston History Award at a benefit gala on January 29 (6 - 9 PM) at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. Robert Gallery, the Massachusetts President of Bank of America, is serving as the title sponsor of the event with Jane and Neil Pappalardo of Boston as co-chairs.
Ken Burns has produced and directed a number of outstanding historical do
Source: Daniel Franklin at the Britannica Blog
Jan 6, 2009
[Daniel Franklin is currently Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.]
The day before Christmas Professor Samuel P. Huntington died. That name doesn’t mean a lot to most people, but anyone who has had at least a casual exposure to the social sciences has at least run across Huntington’s name. Huntington deserves to be remembered not just for the lives of the students he touched but for the contribution he made and still can make to
