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: Press Release for the Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism, ed. Robert James Maddox
Apr 11, 2007
When President Harry Truman authorized the use of atomic weapons against Japan, he did so to end a bloody war that would have been bloodier still had the planned invasion of Japan proved necessary. Revisionists claim that Truman’s real interest was a power play with the Soviet Union and that the Japanese would have surrendered even earlier had the retention of their imperial system been assured. Truman wanted the war to continue, they insist, in order to show off America’s powerful new weapon.
Source: PRNewswire
Apr 11, 2007
Today, PBS informed the Defend the Honor Campaign of their decision to reverse their position and include the Latino experience in Ken Burns' forthcoming World War II documentary, The War. In a letter released today, PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger reported that, "PBS, Ken Burns and his co-director/producer Lynn Novick have decided to create additional content that focuses on stories of Latino and Native American veterans of the Second World War."
The PBS plan also inc
Source: Press Release--http://www.washingtondecoded.com
Apr 11, 2007
The editor of Washington DeCoded is Max Holland, a journalist and
author who has lived in Washington since 1976.
The inspiration for the website comes from an essay penned by George
Orwell in 1946, just after the end of World War II. In"Politics and
the English Language," Orwell observed that"Political language--and
with variations this is true of all political parties, from
Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable, and to give an ap
Source: WaPo
Apr 11, 2007
Tariq Ramadan has a huge following in Europe but a controversial profile in the United States. The Islamic scholar has been barred from entering the country since 2004, when he was denied a visa he needed to accept a professorship at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Yesterday, however, students at Georgetown University heard and questioned the influential Egyptian-born writer as he gave the first of three public lectures to be delivered on the campus by satellite video hooku
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Apr 11, 2007
[James W. Laine is a Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College.]
India's Supreme Court on Monday ordered the western Indian state of Maharashtra to stop the criminal prosecution of an American scholar, James W. Laine, who had been charged with deliberately stirring sectarian strife in an academic book published four years ago.
The publication of Mr. Laine's book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, by Oxford University Press in 2003 angered some caste and r
Source: http://www.hurriyet.com
Apr 11, 2007
Armenian historian Ara Sarafian has commented on the mentality guiding Armenian nationalists, noting that radicalism in the Armenian community worked the same way it did in the Turkish community, and that many Armenians had not grasped the significance of the re-opening of the Akdamar Island Armenian Church on March 29.
Sarafian called the church's re-opening, which took place after a long and expensive restoration process carried out by the Turkish government "an important pe
Source: George Packer in the New Yorker
Apr 10, 2007
Note: This article by George Packer only recently was posted online. When it first appeared in the magazine HNN published a short summary
.
Colonel H. R. McMaster, the commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, is forty-three years old, a small man, thick in the middle, with black eyebrows that are the only signs of hair on a pale, shaved head. His feature are deeply furrowed across the brow and along the nose, as if hi
Source: Committee on Academic Freedom, Middle East Studies Association, Letter on the Finkelstein Case
Apr 10, 2007
10 April 2007
The Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., Ed.D.
President De Paul University
1 E. Jackson
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Fax: 312-362-7577
Dear Father Holtschneider:
I write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern regarding the tenure case of Professor Norman Finkelstein.
We fear that the generally accepted academic pr
Source: Alex Beam in the Boston Globe
Apr 10, 2007
[Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.]
... Everyone is doing their bit [to celebrate Earth Day]. Me, I am reading the important book, "How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment and Nation in the Third Reich."
I know what you are thinking. I have fallen for a hoax. No one in their right mind would research and publish a book stating, "The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com
Apr 10, 2007
Dr Alwyn Ruddock, a former reader in history at the University of London, was the world expert on John Cabot’s discovery voyages from Bristol to North America (1496-98). What she was said to have found out about these voyages looked set to re-write the history of the European discovery of America. Yet, when Dr Ruddock died in December 2005, having spent four decades researching this topic, she ordered the destruction of all her research.
In an article published in Historical Resear
Source: http://www.examiner-enterprise.com
Apr 10, 2007
Nationally recognized historian John Hope Franklin, a 92-year-old native of Oklahoma, criticized the Cherokee Nation Friday for a recent tribal vote that excluded descendants of Cherokee slaves from tribal membership.
He said no group should try to disassociate itself from another group that for so long has been part of its history.
“I just think it is scandalous, really,” Franklin said.
Cherokee Chief Chad Smith has said that as a sovereign nation, the tri
Source: NYT
Apr 10, 2007
A few miles upstream from this red-roofed village in the Périgord region of southern France, the meandering Vézère River flows past the entrance to the Gorge of Hell. A trail runs along the base of a limestone cliff to a locked steel door. Behind the door, which can be opened to a visitor only by appointment, is the oldest depiction of a fish ever discovered.
About 25,000 years ago, a prehistoric artist carved the yardlong, bas-relief sculpture into the yellowish ceiling of a shallo
Source: Michael Novak at Britannica Blog
Apr 10, 2007
[HNN Editor: Brooke Allen is the author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. Michael and Jane Novak are the authors of Washington's God. Recently Allen and the Novaks have engaged in a feisty debate at Britannica Blog about the religious faith of the founders, here.]
It was sad to read Ms. Allen’s description of my daughter Jana and me as “Mr. And Mrs. Novak.” Of course, we could already see from her blog th
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
Apr 10, 2007
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael B. Oren, a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research and educational institute. He is the author of the best-selling Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford, 2002), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award; a history of the 1956 Sinai Campaign (Ca
Source: Eric Alterman at his blog, Altercation
Apr 9, 2007
I wish reporters would exercise more judgment when reporting people's comments. It happens all the time, but here's one example I noticed over the weekend in an AP story about my friend Kai Bird's discovery that Alger Hiss was probably not the spy identified in the Venona papers as"Ales" but, rather, a U.S. official named Wilder Foote. It's a story to whose research I have contributed in the past, though I try to stay away from Alger for lots of reasons. Anyway,
Source: HNN Staff
Apr 9, 2007
A few weeks ago Col. H.R. McMaster, who holds a Ph.D. in history and is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Dereliction of Duty, was featured in a 60 Minutes story about his work in freeing Tal Afar of terrorists. This week he was featured in a New Yorker (issue: April 10, 2006) story by George Packer,"The Lesson of Tal Afar."
Source: Eric Foner in a review in the NYT Book Review
Apr 8, 2007
I think it’s time to declare a moratorium on scholars’ denigrating other scholars for failing to achieve popularity. As [William] Freehling’s own extensive footnotes demonstrate [in his new book, The Road to Disunion], those much-maligned specialized studies are the building blocks of historical knowledge. Nor is his dismissal of what he calls “multicultural social history” in favor of the study of politics persuasive. Surely, the task of the historian is to integrate the two.
Freeh
Source: Gordon Wood in the NYT Book Review
Apr 8, 2007
According to many people in the West today, human rights trump all other claims and values, including those of custom, community and culture; everyone in the world, including every individual in strange faraway places like Darfur, has certain inalienable rights simply because he or she is a human being. As conventional as this claim has become for us, in the entire sweep of history it is quite extraordinary and of fairly recent origin. How did it come about and what has been its history? These a
Source: Higher Education Supplement
Apr 8, 2007
Israeli academic accuses campus groups of being 'ambassadors of Israel'. Melanie Newman reports
An Israeli academic has suggested that Jewish student groups are courting Muslim anger by aligning themselves with the state of Israel.
Ilan Pappé, who is leaving Haifa University to take up a chair in history at Exeter University this year, said some Jewish students had become "ambassadors of Israel".
He said: "Muslim anger is directed at them not becau
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Apr 6, 2007
When Maya R. Jasanoff returns to Harvard University, her alma mater, as an associate professor of British history this July, she'll be enriching a family tradition. The Jasanoff family has eight degrees from Harvard among them and strong ties to Cambridge, Mass.: Ms. Jasanoff's parents are also Harvard professors and her brother, Alan P. Jasanoff (Class of 92), is an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I was looking to move
