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: AHA Blog
Feb 4, 2008
The proposed revisions to the AHA Constitution were overwhelmingly approved by the membership, by a vote of 605 to 58. The revisions have been through a long process of consultation and review; after preliminary approval by the AHA Council last June, they were placed before the membership in Perspectives and two interactive discussion forums, which led to some small modifications. The revisions were then submitted to the AHA business meeting in January and received unanimous approval, and then d
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Feb 4, 2008
Oral history should not be subject to approval by institutional review boards, according to dozens of comments submitted by historians and others to the federal Office for Human Research Protections, which announced last October that it would amend the rules governing what kinds of research qualify for expedited review by the boards.
Some researchers and some boards, commonly known as IRB’s, have interpreted the existing rules to mean that oral history is exempt from such oversight
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 4, 2008
The Crucifixion of Christ "wasn't as bad as it's been painted", an outspoken Marxist academic will claim on the BBC this month.
Terry Eagleton, Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester, will say on Radio 4's Lent Talks that Jesus "got off pretty lightly" because it only took him three hours to die, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
He adds that Jesus's scourging was a "blessing in disguise" because it hastened his death.
Source: Press Release--New York Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama!
Feb 4, 2008
[HNN Editor: Signers include these historians: Columbia University's Martha Howell and Alice Kessler Harris, NYU's Linda Gordon, Maria Montoya, Barbara Weinstein, and Marilyn Young, Hofstra's Carolyn Eisenberg and Susan Yohn, SUNY/Old Westbury's Laura Anker and Rosalyn Baxandall, Amherst's Martha Saxton, Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva, and Maggie Williams of William Patterson University.]
Over 150 New York feminists and peace activists—among them actors Kathleen Chalfant, Kerry Washing
Source: Times (UK)
Feb 3, 2008
Charles Freeman’s 2003 book The Closing of the Western Mind upset Christian theologians. So will this one. As before, he argues that the coming of Christianity terminated the tradition of free, tolerant debate that had prevailed in the classical world, replacing it with irrational dogma, enforced by savage persecution, that obstructed the advance of western thought for centuries. But his new book has a sharper focus, selecting as a defining moment the year AD381 when Theodosius, emperor of the e
Source: Reuters
Feb 3, 2008
The future of Pakistan, and how it balances the need for Muslim symbols with the secularism needed to run a modern state, will be important for the future of the world, according to historian and theologian Karen Armstrong.
Nuclear-armed and reaping the grim harvest of "extremism" resulting from the West's support for a religious war to drive the Soviet Union out of neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistan has a big question to answer, says Armstrong.
"How do yo
Source: AP
Feb 3, 2008
The Sept. 11 commission's executive director had closer ties with the White House than publicly disclosed and tried to influence the final report in ways that the staff often perceived as limiting the Bush administration's responsibility, a new book says.
Philip Zelikow, a friend of then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke with her several times during the 20-month investigation that closely examined her role in assessing the al-Qaida threat. He also exchanged frequent
Source: NYT
Feb 3, 2008
[Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität Berlin, and taught philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University.]
... Germany is not alone in its quest for the right sort of memory, and it has done a better job than most. But the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power should be an occasion to reflect on how historical crimes are remembered. I propose we restrain our attention to the suffering
Source: Randy Cohen, The Ethicist, in the NYT Magazine
Feb 3, 2008
I’m a history professor — my period is 1500-1800 — with an M.A. student who wants to pursue a doctorate. While she is smart and capable, she is very religious, subscribing to the “young earth” theory that the world is only 6,000 years old. I am to work with her for a year and then recommend her to Ph.D. programs. Must I do so if I find her views incongruent with those of historians? — NAME WITHHELD, CALIFORNIA
Unless your student’s religious beliefs impair her work — and you don’t s
Source: Press Release--David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Feb 3, 2008
The government of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1944 secretly proposed creating a “Greater Syria” that would have shut Holocaust escapees out of Palestine and thwarted creation of a Jewish state, according to an Israeli scholar, citing newly-released French government documents.
“This raises important questions about Winston Churchill’s attitudes toward Jewish refugees and Zionism,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studie
Source: Zachary M. Schrag at http://institutionalreviewblog
Feb 2, 2008
In response to the October 2007 announcement in the Federal Register calling for comments about the existing guidance on expedited review, oral historians and their allies have flooded OHRP with complaints about IRB review of oral history and requests for an unambiguous exemption.As the original announcement noted, comments sent in response to Federal Register notices are
Source: Newsweek
Feb 2, 2008
More than half the presidents have served under a commander before taking office. That service, says historian Michael Beschloss, had a particular impact on these six:
Washington, Jackson, TR, Ike, JFK, Bush I.
Source: Kathleen Dalton, "Finding Theodore Roosevelt" in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Feb 1, 2008
My search for Theodore Roosevelt did not begin with me standing as an admirer looking up in awe at his statue. Nor did it, indeed, start as an attempt to contradict the heroic stories so often told about him. That came later. I had been trained in my undergraduate days, as most historians were in the sixties, to dismiss him as a ridiculous jingo, an imperialist hardly worth knowing better. Leaders had betrayed us. It was not uncommon in that era, when psychology often served as a tool of po
Source: Mark N. Katz in the Middle East Journal (Vol. 62, #1, Winter 2008)
Feb 1, 2008
[Mark N. Katz, Professor of Government and Politics, George Mason University. He has written extensively on Moscow’s foreign policy toward the Middle East.]
Re: Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez.
Ginor and Remez argue in this book that the Soviet Union played a much larger role in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War than has been recognized previously. Far from seeking
to avoid the outbreak of this war or being
surpr
Source: Robert Cherny, OAH Treasurer, in the OAH Newsletter
Feb 1, 2008
... Revenue has matched expenses for the first six months of the fiscal year, and we have a slightly positive balance of $10,269. This is a significant improvement over last year. You’ll recall that, last year, we started the fiscal year with a debt of $179,000 to IU (who handles many of our expenses, and whom we periodically reimburse). Halfway through the last fiscal year, our debt to IU had actually increased. This year we have a significant positive balance with IU rather than a debt. (And
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Feb 1, 2008
You say your book, Day of Empire, is a warning. How so?
I'm suggesting that, ironically, the secret to becoming a world "hyperpower" is tolerance. If you look at history, you see great powers being very tolerant in their rise to global dominance. So there is a sort of warning for today's hyperpower—the United States. The secret to our success for over 200 years has been our ability to attract the best and the brightest from all over the world. We can't just let every immig
Source: Dissent
Feb 1, 2008
Years later, I would tell my friends never to shirk their jury summonses. This is the most democratic experience you’ll ever have, I’d insist.
But when I first arrived at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse, located in what was the gritty area of downtown Oakland in the late 1980s, I had little desire to serve on a criminal trial. I simply assumed that no sane assistant D.A. would accept me as a member of a jury because I was a professor, a Berkeley resident, and a lifelong liber
Source: politics.co.uk
Feb 1, 2008
Historian Tristram Hunt has dismissed a report attacking political backing of patriotism in UK schools.
A report published today by the Institute of Education at the University of London attacks politicians' enthusiasm for patriotism, suggesting the country's history is not something to be proud of.
Dr Hunt, also of the University of London, says this approach is "very immature".
"The point is not whether history was right or wrong from a 2
Source: Commentary (subscription only)
Feb 1, 2008
Others have offered a kinder, gentler view of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. than the one provided by Edmund Wilson in his diaries. “He was a great historian and an incomparable witness,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, in announcing the library’s acquisition of Schlesinger’s voluminous personal papers this past November. LeClerc went on to compare Schle-singer, who died a year ago at the age of eighty-nine, with Voltaire—to the latter’s detriment. Voltaire, after all, m
Source: NZPA
Feb 1, 2008
HNN Editor: On February 9, 2008 Mr. Hayward, the subject of this entry, raised objections to this story. This is his statement:
In 1993 I received a two-year Master of Arts degree from the University of Canterbury, comprising a supervised one-year research thesis (written in 1991) and four classroom-taught papers (1992). I received a grade of “A+” for the thesis and four grades of “A” for the papers.
I have regretted for the last seventeen years that my 1991 thesi
