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: Tulsa World
Oct 18, 2007
Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts issued a written statement on Wednesday saying he is taking an indefinite leave of absence, following intense scrutiny spawned by financial, political and other allegations raised in a lawsuit.
This announcement comes eight days after Roberts said on national television: "I have not done anything wrong for which I needed to step aside."
Billy Joe Daugherty, pastor of Victory Christian Center, has been named ex
Source: Sidney Blumenthal in Salon
Oct 18, 2007
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died this past February, would have celebrated his 90th birthday this week, on Oct. 15, an event commemorated with the publication of his "Journals: 1952-2000," culled by two of his sons, Andrew and Stephen, from 6,000 pages down to a mere 858, far too short. If the American century were cast as a Broadway show, this would be the playbill.
Schlesinger lived many lives, in academia, in politics and in cafe society. Of course, he was among the
Source: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk
Oct 17, 2007
Keynote speaker, David Edgerton, Hans Rausing Professor in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, discussed how we need to change the way we understand science.
"We need to change and improve the elite understanding of science," says Professor Edgerton, "We need to learn from the long and significant interactions there have been between science and society, not least in Britain itself."
In his lecture, Professor
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2007
Judy Crichton, one of the first women to produce news on network television and the first executive producer of “American Experience,” the acclaimed public television history series, died in Manhattan on Sunday. She was 77 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications of leukemia, her daughter Sarah Crichton said.
As executive producer of “American Experience” from 1988 to 1996, under the auspices of WGBH, the Boston PBS affiliate, Ms. Crichton oversaw the product
Source: http://www.zwire.com
Oct 16, 2007
Paul V. Dutton, a professor of history at Northern Arizona University and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, wants Americans to pay attention to their health-care system.
His new book, "Differential Diagnoses: A Comparative History of Health Care Problems and Solutions in the United States and France" (Cornell University Press, $29.95), has a long name, but a clear purpose.
It describes how the two systems work, how they evolved and th
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed
Oct 16, 2007
...Turkey’s government ... has been quick to point [to] American scholars (there are only a handful, but Turkey knows them all) who back its view that what’s needed with regard to 1915 is not to call it genocide, but to figure out what to call it, and what actually took place.
Normally, you might expect historians to welcome the interest of governments in convening scholars to explore questions of scholarship. But in this case, scholars who study the period say that the leaders of T
Source: James Kirchick in the New Republic
Oct 15, 2007
... Yet while the audience in the Roone Arledge Auditorium and millions of television viewers laughed and booed at the Islamist rube [i.e. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad], there was one man--ensconced at Columbia University, no less--who was likely nodding along in agreement. His name is Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, and he legitimizes, with a complex academic posture, the deservedly reviled views on homosexuality espoused by Mahmoud
Source: http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com
Oct 15, 2007
“Clarifying” professor Charles Piot has published his attack on the blog—promised in his appearance at the February “Shut Up and Teach” forum, in which he said that critics of the Group of 88 should “shut up and teach”—in the most recent issue of Transforming Anthropology.
In reading this post, keep in mind: above all else, the Piot article gives a sense of what is considered a scholarly publication in his field.
The “Piot Principles,” as laid out in his article:
Source: Spiegel
Oct 15, 2007
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being 'out of control.'
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Kolko, editorials in US papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review are pushing for military action against Iran. How does the leadership in the US military view such a conflict?
Gabriel Kolko: The A
Source: http://www.democratandchronicle.com (Rochester, NY)
Oct 15, 2007
A German historian spoke to about 100 people yesterday at the Memorial Art Gallery on the risks that German rescuers took to help Jews during the Holocaust.
During her lecture, Barbara Schieb focused on the story of Rochester residents Erich and Ellen Arndt, who went into hiding for 837 days during Berlin's Nazi era. Schieb showed a video interview of Ellen Arnst, when she was still alive a few years ago, telling her story of survival.
"Our helpers didn't know what
Source: AP
Oct 15, 2007
CLEVELAND — A teacher wounded in a shooting rampage at a downtown high school said Monday that the student gunman was disruptive and was failing the teacher's world history class.
Michael Grassie, 42, spoke at MetroHealth Medical Center before his discharge. He was wounded in the abdomen last week by Asa Coon, 14, who killed himself after wounding a second teacher and two students.
Grassie, sitting in a wheelchair, said Coon was doing poorly in his class at SuccessTech
Source: John Q. Barrett in an email to his list.
Oct 15, 2007
[Mr. Jackson, a professor at St. John’s University School of Law, is writing a biography of Justice Jackson.]
In his long, engaged and very consequential life, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) covered a lot of ground and knew, it seemed, everyone. In his youth, one of his many acquaintances was Justice Robert H. Jackson.
Their paths almost crossed for the first time in London in August 1945. Jackson was there as President Truman’s appointee, negotiating with Br
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 15, 2007
Nicholas Bromell started off his presentation at the American Studies Association meeting on Friday by asking a packed room of participants if they knew the names of any conservative think tanks that are powerful in Washington. Groups like the Heritage Foundation were quickly named by the professors. Bromell, a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, then asked if they could name any liberal groups, and the audience was stumped.
Of course there are such o
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Oct 14, 2007
In November 1861, President Lincoln went to the Library of Congress and checked out a few books, including the Book of Mormon. During the next few weeks, Lincoln, preparing to name Utah's new territorial governor, borrowed three more books on Mormons.
Fifty years later, when Utah Sen. Reed Smoot, a Mormon, cancelled his honeymoon to return to Washington and help pass a needed treaty, President Hoover invited the newlyweds to spend their first two weeks as a married couple at the W
Source: Journal News (Westchester)
Oct 14, 2007
A long time before Lady Liberty appeared, New York was welcoming immigrants like no other American city.
And the reason dates back centuries, historian Kenneth Jackson said in a lecture Friday night. While other cities were established by groups looking to protect their religious beliefs, New Amsterdam began as a center of trade. Founded by the Dutch in 1624, the city quickly attracted diverse nationalities. The driving force, then as now, is a pursuit of prosperity, Jackson said. T
Source: NYT Book Review
Oct 14, 2007
There are two Israels: one inside the Green Line, the 1967 border, the other an occupying power extending beyond it. The first is a vibrant democracy, with Arab members of Parliament, university professors and lawyers, beauty queens and soldiers, and even a Muslim cabinet minister. There are no separate roads for Arabs and Jews in the name of that all-purpose explanation “security,” no villages made inaccessible because their roads have been dug up by army bulldozers, no checkpoints and no secur
Source: NYT Book Review
Oct 14, 2007
In “The Far Traveler,” Nancy Marie Brown tries to solve the mystery of a beautiful woman named Gudrid who appears in two Icelandic sagas and crossed the North Atlantic, from Iceland and Greenland to Newfoundland and Norway, eight times. Who was this intrepid woman, and why did she roam off the edge of the known world? Thousand-year-old clues lie scattered about, but few are conclusive.
Brown’s springboard and inspiration are the sagas, filled with revenge killings, out-of-wedlock bi
Source: Dan W. Butin at the Britannica Blog
Oct 13, 2007
A column by Hugo Schwyzer in Inside Higher Ed this week bemoans “educrats” who demand that he do a better job of making sure that his students are actually learning what he is teaching. But no, Schwyzer will have none of it. Instead he’s going to fight the good fight and resist making real accommodations:
But I’m still going to teach — primarily through lecture in an ancient, top-down, one-sided way. I’m going to pour out my enthusiasm and my passion, laboring in a field filled with
Source: WaPo
Oct 13, 2007
Roy A. Rosenzweig, 57, a social and cultural historian at George Mason University who became a prominent advocate for "digital history," a field combining historical scholarship with digital media's broad reach and interactive possibilities, died Oct. 11 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington County. He had lung cancer.
Dr. Rosenzweig, who taught history at GMU for the past 26 years, founded the university's Center for History and New Media in 1994. As its director, he o
Source: Daily Nebraskan (Student newspaper)
Oct 12, 2007
Barbara Weinstein made a stand Thursday night by calling for the prevention of government intervention in the academic community.
Weinstein, a history professor at New York University, spoke as part of the sixth annual Carroll R. Pauley Memorial Lecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, calling out restrictions set by the government on records, visa applications and other limits to academic freedom.
Her lecture was followed by a response from Waskar Ari, UNL profes
