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: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Apr 24, 2008
Alan Charles Kors, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania who has been a longtime scourge of political correctness, speech codes, and other issues in higher education, has been awarded a $250,000 prize by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The citation for the Bradley Prize, to be presented in June, recognizes Mr. Kors as both a scholar of European intellectual history and a defender of free speech.
Mr. Kors drew notice in 1998 as a co-author of The Shadow University: Th
Source: Andy Guess at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Apr 24, 2008
Looking back, it’s as if Cleveland Sellers was preparing his entire life to become president of Voorhees College.
After all, he was born in Denmark, S.C., home of the historically black Episcopal institution, and he even graduated from the college’s affiliated high school in 1962. For the past 15 years, Sellers has driven an hour and 15 minutes — each way, each day — between Denmark, where he still lives, and Columbia, where he is director of the African American studies program at
Source: http://www.swissinfo.ch
Apr 23, 2008
Some 500 Nazis, Italian fascists and supporters of the French Vichy regime found shelter in Switzerland at the end of the Second World War, says a Swiss historian.
swissinfo talked to Luc van Dongen who has opened the Pandora's box of the 1943-1954 period, throwing light on Swiss asylum policy and uncovering the traces of numerous highly controversial political and economic refugees.
The university professor's recently published book, "Un purgatoire très discret" (A
Source: Gilbert King in the NYT
Apr 23, 2008
[Gilbert King is the author of “The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder and the Search for Justice in the American South.”]
THE Supreme Court concluded last week, in a 7-2 ruling, that Kentucky’s three-drug method of execution by lethal injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts cited a Supreme Court principle from a ruling in 1890 that defines cruelty as limited to punishme
Source: Trudy Kuehner, reporting on a teachers' conference, CHINA'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE WEST, held by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Apr 23, 2008
Andrew Wilson of the U.S. Naval War College explained how
the image of a weak backward China adrift in a modern world,
bullied by Western powers, dominates China's historical
memory and national identity. Its early encounters with the
West are viewed through the prism of the Qing Dynasty's
(1644-1911) nineteenth-century humiliations, exemplified by
a series of Western military victories enshrined in"unequal
treaties." But in China's earliest encounters with the West,
the M
Source: Foreign Policy
Apr 23, 2008
They are some of the world’s most introspective philosophers and rabble-rousing clerics. A few write searing works of fiction and uncover the mysteries of the human mind. Others are at the forefront of modern finance, politics, and human rights. In the second Foreign Policy/Prospect list of top public intellectuals, we reveal the thinkers who are shaping the tenor of our time.
[HNN Editor: Among the 100 were these 8 people, each of whom was identified as a historian, though some are
Source: scoopo8.com
Apr 22, 2008
Alexander Heffner: Of all your investigation into America's past, is today's the most intriguing political climate in our history?
Julian Zelizer: This is one of the most interesting periods to follow. We are at a moment when the conservative movement is struggling. The movement, which had a huge impact on American society, is struggling politically and intellectually. Yet, at the same time, conservatives have deep roots in American politics so their influence won't disappear. As a
Source: Martin Kramer at his blog: Sandbox
Apr 22, 2008
You will remember the case of Nadia Abu El-Haj, the anthropologist who last year received tenure at Barnard after a furious controversy over her book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Jane Kramer has written a panegyric to her for The New Yorker, simply brushing off serious-minded criticisms of Abu El-Haj's book.
Kramer (no relation to me) also has given the back story to her piece in a radio interview (from minute 21:0
Source: Press Release
Apr 22, 2008
When the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, thousands of people around the world seized the opportunity to become citizen-scientists and take an active part in the dawning space age. Known as Moonwatchers, these teenagers, homemakers, schoolteachers, and otherwise amateur astronomers provided professional astronomers with critical and otherwise unavailable information about the satellite's movement. In a new book published this week titled "Keep Watching the Skies!: The Story o
Source: Newsday
Apr 21, 2008
Even as the prosecution continues of the former director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association in the theft of historic letters, a surprising revelation has surfaced:
The Oyster Bay organization was ripped off before, but at that time managed to keep it quiet.
Former director Edward Renehan Jr. of Rhode Island, who is accused in the theft of four historic letters, provided information earlier this month that made public secret information about the prior case, according
Source: GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT in the NYT Book Review of Judt's new book, REAPPRAISALS: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (Penguin Books)
Apr 20, 2008
... “You don’t have to be Jewish to understand the history of Europe in the 20th century, but it helps,” Judt writes, and while it has certainly helped him as a historian, he has also made a very striking personal pilgrimage. In the 1960s he was an ardent young socialist-Zionist, spending time on a kibbutz and flying to Israel in her hour of need when the 1967 war began.
He is now a caustic opponent of Israeli policy, and of American policy toward Israel also, even offering sympathe
Source: NYT
Apr 20, 2008
In his book “Franklin & Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life,” which comes out next week, Joseph E. Persico suggests that the affair between Franklin Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer (later Rutherfurd), which was supposed to have ended in 1918, resumed even sooner than most scholars believed — indeed, that it may never have ended at all....
While working on his book, Mr. Persico obtained from Lucy Mercer’s granddaughters a bound copy of
Source: http://bishkek.kp.ru
Apr 19, 2008
It's difficult to find a bookstore without a shelf dedicated to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Leonid Mlechin's "The Fuehrer's Biggest Secret" is the latest addition. Mlechin, a renowned historian, author and TV host, discusses Hitler and why he remains such a puzzling and prominent historical figure decades after his death.
KP: Don't we already know all there is to know about Hitler?
Mlechin: In world history there are certain personalities responsible for su
Source: UPI
Apr 19, 2008
A Scottish historian says the Highland bagpipe and the traditions, history and legend surrounding it were 19th century inventions.
While the bagpipe has ancient origins and a long history in Scotland, pipers did not play as the clansmen went into battle or at the funerals of Scottish chieftains, said Hugh Cheape. His book on the bagpipe is soon to be published by the National Museums of Scotland, The Daily Telegraph reported.
"The written and received history of t
Source: Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
Apr 19, 2008
Dear colleagues,
In addition to 62 codes of ethics for historians and others (please see circular of last week), the Network of Concerned Historians website (http://www.concernedhistorians.org) also contains 71 legal cases that for one or another reason are of importance to historians. Most are available in English, some also in French, Spanish, or another language. These cases come from international courts or national supreme court
Source: China View
Apr 18, 2008
Noted Togolese historian Atsutse Agbobli on Thursday condemned recent calls for boycotting the Beijing Olympics and warned against any move to politicize the games.
"I think westerners are poorly placed to push for a boycott of the Olympics," he told Xinhua.
"It is imperative that the Olympic flame remains a symbol of rapprochement between peoples," he said.
Agbobli said he does not understand why Western politicians have tak
Source: Laura Wilkinson in the Daily Star
Apr 18, 2008
That coalition forces have behaved with such blatant disregard toward these ancient monuments flies in the face of the 1954 UNESCO Resolution outlining the criteria for the protection of cultural sites in the event of armed conflict.
After five years of occupation, these stories have become awfully familiar. At the same time, the weight given to Iraq's ancient artefacts suggests how Orientalist international attitudes toward Iraq's art and cultural production are.
Source: OpEdNews
Apr 17, 2008
America’s military presence in Iraq represents “a basic violation” of its “historic identity,” that of a nation founded in opposition to imperialism, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis said.
Americans have neglected an important lesson from their own past, Ellis, an authority on the Revolutionary War period, said. “We have become the imperial power. We have become Great Britain and have succeeded Great Britain as the hegemonic power of the world. I would think we would w
Source: Steve Weinberg at the website of InsideHigherEd
Apr 17, 2008
[Steve Weinberg’s just-published trade book is Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.]
For all that they are seen as bastions of knowledge and unfettered flow of information, colleges and universities are not typically known for welcoming rigorous scrutiny of themselves. They often have love-hate relationships with the journalists who cover them.
So imagine my surprise in 2002 when R. Dean Mills, dean of the University of Missouri’s
Source: Megan Stephenson in the Daily Iowan
Apr 16, 2008
Like many people living in the digital age, Marshall Poe was curious - amazed, actually - by how Wikipedia works.
A worldwide encyclopedia, created, edited, and used by laypeople - how does that function as an unbiased, reliable database of information?
While the UI history associate professor was researching the history of Wikipedia for the *Atlantic Monthly*, he realized these pseudo-experts had a consistency. All people know something, and they now have a place to sh
