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: Graham Earnshaw at China Beat (Blog)
Jun 15, 2008
Jonathan Spence is of course one of the great authorities on Chinese history, but the value of history is in its relevance to the present, so at a time of such huge volatility in the affairs of China, there is great curiosity as to how he views current trends. We have the means to find out in his current series of Reith Lectures being given one per week in England and broadcast through the BBC's websites, currently non-blocked in China.
Source: Paul Kuhn at the website of Politico.com
Jun 15, 2008
One week into the general election, the polls show a dead heat. But many presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any.
Historians belonging to both parties offered a litany of historical comparisons that give little hope to the Republican. Several saw Barack Obama’s prospects as the most promising for a Democrat since Roosevelt trounced Hoover in 1932.
“This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American
Source: Allen Weinstein, archivist of the US, at SMU (NYT)
Jun 15, 2008
Begin with the Salem witchcraft trials of the 1690s. Move forward to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the early Republic, and from there to the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Turn then to the arbitrary political arrests of the First and Second World Wars, the many abuses of the cold war McCarthy era, and from there to the civil liberties climate in our own time. Find your conscience and hold it close.
One of the pivotal connective links from earliest repressive effo
Source: http://www.startribune.com
Jun 14, 2008
CALLAO, PERU
'Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago."
Simple enough, right? But not for Demetrio Tupac Yupanqui.
Instead, he regales visitors to his home in this gritty port city on Lima's edge with his Quechua version of the opening words of "Don Quixote": "Huh k'iti, la Mancha llahta suyupin, mana yuyarina markapin, yaqa kay watakuna kama, huh axllasqa wiraqucha."
Source: Chicago Tribune
Jun 14, 2008
Doctoral students are known for taking a long time to finish their dissertations, but one of this spring's University of Chicago graduates broke the curve and then some.
Thirty-four years after beginning his graduate studies in history, Mark Horowitz finally received his doctorate Friday, his thinning gray hair tucked under a black velvet graduation beret.
His family, especially his wife, Barbi, who endured more than three decades of listening to arcane facts about King
Source: http://chronicle.uchicago.edu
Jun 13, 2008
Ramón Gutiérrez, a historian of race and ethnic relations in American life, has been named Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.
Gutiérrez, the Preston & Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College, will begin a three-year term Tuesday, July 1, succeeding Waldo Johnson, Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration.
Gutiérrez, one of the nation’s leading Latino scholars, has received n
Source: The Nation
Jun 13, 2008
Historians divide history into epochs. The Gilded Age and the Great Depression, for example, are familiar to most Americans. Our current epoch, however--a period that has seen soaring grand fortunes for a new American superrich and a fading American Dream for nearly everyone else--lacks a label. That's why The Nation is joining the Institute for Policy Studies in a new contest. We invite you to help us Name Our Epoch! Send an e-mail toNameOurEpoch@ips-dc.o
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jun 13, 2008
Controversial faculty reassignments and resignations in March of this year, following other disputes, have left the Middle East Center at the University of Utah in turmoil. The tumult comes only a year before the university must reapply for the grant from the U.S. Department of Education that supports the center, which is among the oldest such academic units in the country.
In mid-March, Robert D. Newman, dean of the College of Humanities, removed two professors from joint appointme
Source: News Story by Damion Pechota, HNN intern
Jun 13, 2008
A six-and-a-half year prison term for mail fraud and obstruction of justice is not keeping Conrad Black, a Canadian born media mogul and member of the British House of Lords, away from writing.
Besides his now infamous role at Hollinger International Inc., Black is also the author of biographies on Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. With prison on his itinerary, the fate of Black’s writing was in question.
According to The Canadian Press, the Florida low-security prison, where Blac
Source: CNN
Jun 12, 2008
CNN spoke to Rykwert about how buildings and spaces act as a metaphor for society, our transition from citizens to customers and the challenges facing the built environment in the 21st century.
CNN: What do you mean exactly when you talk about the city and its buildings as a metaphor for society?
Joseph Rykwert: One of the obvious things is that when a new big building goes up people immediately find nicknames for it -- the "gherkin" [30 St Mary Axe] and the &
Source: History Today
Jun 12, 2008
Books on Empire and the Gothic architect Pugin have won the Wolfson History Awards announced this week. Revealed at a ceremony at Claridge’s in London on June 10th, the prizes went to Rosemary Hill for God’s Architect and John Darwin for After Tamerlane. The winners of the annual Wolfson Prize, which was established in 1972, both receive £20,000. The judges were Sir Keith Thomas, Dame Averil Cameron, Professor Richard Evans and Professor David Cannadine. Books, which should be scholarly but attr
Source: Independent (UK)
Jun 12, 2008
Richard David Greenfield, historian: born London 10 January 1931; Professor of History, University of Asmara, Eritrea 1999-2007 (Emeritus); Senior Consultant, Eritrean Research and Documentation Centre 1999-2008; died Oxford 1 June 2008.
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Richard Greenfield had an unparalleled grasp of the history and politics of the countries of the Horn of Africa, and will perhaps be best remembered for his 1965 book Ethiopia: a new political history.
From 1999 until 2
Source: http://www.newswise.com
Jun 12, 2008
University of Saskatchewan history professor James Miller has been awarded $1.4 million from the federal Canada Research Chair (CRC) program to advance his study of how churches and the federal government have attempted to make amends with residential school victims.
As a leading expert on residential school abuse, Miller’s CRC renewal comes as no surprise. His research is receiving national media attention as he has become a valuable source for thoughtful commentary on today’s fede
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jun 12, 2008
The first appearance in Israel by Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer since the publication of their controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, impressed a largely student audience at the Hebrew University, but left some faculty members wondering about their honesty.
A threatened boycott failed to have any effect, and the talk passed off with nothing more dramatic than some lively debate and repeated declarations from the pair that they are neither anti-Semit
Source: ProgressiveHistorians (blog)
Jun 11, 2008
The argument we're (not quite) having here -- and to which Adam Hochschild in Historically Speaking makes another important contribution -- concerns a series of rich and timeless questions: what exactly is a historian? Should the term be applied only to those who possess doctoral degrees and publishing histories, or are historians a more broad and multifaceted group? Is everyone a historian, as Carl Becker famously argued? And assuming we can define the "wheat" and the "chaff,&quo
Source: Whitney Joiner at Salon.com
Jun 11, 2008
The small Texas town where I live, Marfa, is the home base of one of the largest U.S. Border Patrol sectors, covering 165,000 square miles and encompassing 25 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border. From my house, I can hear the Border Patrol headquarters' intercom, alerting agents to calls on line two or line three; their green and white patrol cars are everywhere, around town and throughout far west Texas. It's a daily reminder that we are living on the edge of a line in the desert, a line that Hom
Source: Anthony Grafton in the New Republic
Jun 11, 2008
History was born in Greece in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. It has flourished ever since then, in diverse but recognizably related forms, and it still exists today, as a form of inquiry into the past, a literary genre, and a set of practices plied and taught in universities. That's our story, in the West, and we're sticking to it. Or at least John Burrow is. After a swift glance toward ancient ways of keeping records, Burrow begins his elegant and erudite book with a rich study of Herod
Source: WaPo
Jun 10, 2008
[Michael Dobbs writes the Fact Checker column for The Post. He is the author of "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War."]
Giving Americans back their history may not rank with ending the war in Iraq or balancing the budget, but it should be high on the to-do list of the next president. Our declassification system has broken down. Historians are waiting an average of seven years for replies from presidential libraries to their F
Source: http://www.hometownannapolis.com
Jun 9, 2008
Historians are supposed to bring us the truth, as they see it, about the past - and not necessarily the version of events that justifies a historical commemoration into which their listeners have poured time, effort and money.
So even if you don't want to accept the conclusions Dr. C. Ashley Ellefson gave at a recent two-day symposium organized by Annapolis Alive!, you have to respect his professional integrity.
Dr. Ellefson, an expert on Colonial-era legal history, is
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jun 9, 2008
Some Israeli academics are not too happy that Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, are scheduled to speak on Thursday at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The title of their talk: “Is the ‘Israel lobby’ good for Israel?”
Both men have also courted controversy in the United States with their argument that Israel wields disproportionate influence on the United States’ foreign policy.
Mr. Walt is a professor of in
