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: NYT
Feb 25, 2007
A LITTLE over a century ago, Henry Roe Cloud, born in 1884 on the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) reservation in Nebraska, enrolled at Yale, becoming the university’s first American Indian graduate in 1910. Today, American Indians make up 1 percent of Yale’s student body, matching their share of America’s population.
A little over a year ago, Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, a Tuscarora from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in New York, became Yale’s first American Indian faculty member whose teaching is ent
Source: John Lewis Gaddis in the NYT Book Review
Feb 25, 2007
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” Neil Armstrong said — or meant to say — when he set foot on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. Richard Nixon, who had become president of the United States six months earlier, called it “the greatest week in the history of the world since the creation,” thereby inadvertently irritating the faithful among several of the world’s greatest religions.
Even as he was celebrating that triumph, the new chief executive and
Source: NYT
Feb 25, 2007
For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the stock image of an Islamic scholar is a gray-bearded man. Women tend to be seen as the subjects of Islamic law rather than its shapers. And while some opportunities for religious education do exist for women — the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo has a women’s college, for example, and there are girls’ madrasas and female study groups in mosques and private homes — cultural barriers prevent most women in the Islamic world from pursuing such studies.
Source: http://www.delawareonline.com
Feb 24, 2007
NEWARK -- After escaping from points south, runaway slaves entered Delaware and faced "the gauntlet," the dangerous journey east from the state line to Camden. From there, the path diverged: head north toward Pennsylvania by land or east to find freedom by water.
After the Civil War, the secret paths were no longer needed. The landscape changed. Open fields gave way to buildings. Creeks were traversed by bridges, and dirt paths became concrete roads. Old homes were torn do
Source: Press Release -- UM
Feb 24, 2007
OXFORD, Miss. Winthrop Jordan, 75, professor emeritus of
history and African-American studies at the University of
Mississippi, died at his home Friday (Feb. 23) after a long
illness. He was a Quaker and a member of the Oxford Friends
meeting.
Jordan won four national prizes in 1968-69 for his book
"White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro,
1550-1812," including the Society of American Historians'
Parkman Prize
Source: Tucson Citizen
Feb 23, 2007
"Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history." - Carter Godwin Woodson, Ph.D. (1875-1950)
Black History Month was founded to celebrate the culture and accomplishments of African-Americans.
Carter Godwin Woodson, the distinguished author, editor, publisher and historian, is known as the father of black history. In addition to writing many scholarly books
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 23, 2007
T E Lawrence could in future be known as "Lawrence of Judea" instead of "Lawrence of Arabia" after a distinguished British historian claimed that he privately supported the idea of a Jewish state in the Holy Land.
While feted as an Arabist who supported independence of Arab states, Lawrence in fact regarded Arabs with a "sort of contempt", said Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Churchill.
Sir Martin said Lawrence believed fully
Source: WaPo
Feb 22, 2007
Frank M. Snowden Jr., 95, a Howard University classicist for almost 50 years whose research into blacks in ancient Greece and Rome opened a new field of study, died Feb. 18 at the Grand Oaks assisted living home in Washington. He had congestive heart failure.
As a black man, Dr. Snowden was a rarity in classics, but ancient history consumed him since his youth as a prize-winning student at the Boston Latin School and later at Harvard University. His body of work led to a National Hu
Source: http://www.yerkir.am
Feb 22, 2007
YEREVAN (YERKIR) - For the first ever an Armenian historian has accepted Turkey's thesis of collaborative study, PanARMENIAN.Net reported.
As reported by Sabah newspaper, Ara Sarafyan, one of the most important historians of the Armenian Diaspora and the editor of Blue Book accepted the suggestion of the chairman of the Turkish History Institution, Halaco?lu, to carry out a collaborative study.
It's worth noting that Armenian President Robert Kocharian stated that norm
Source: http://www.ahora.cu
Feb 22, 2007
British historian Asa Briggs said Thursday that Cuba’s nearly half a century resistance to US hostility is a major and admirable political act that deserves humankind’s respect.
"It is admirable that it has been able to confront the United States," Briggs told reporters during a brief visit to Cuba, where he arrived on a cruise ship.
He told Prensa Latina that the best part of his voyage was to visit Cuba for the second time. The first was in 1983. You don’t n
Source: Email to HNN from Max Holland
Feb 22, 2007
23 February 2007
Robert E. Casey, Jr.
Special Agent in Charge
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Dallas Field Office
One Justice Way
Dallas, Texas 75220
Dear Mr. Casey,
I am a journalist and author, currently writing a history of the Warren Commission for the New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf.
In the long process of writing this book, I have written several articles on aspects of President Kennedy’s
Source: Press Release -- Sweet Briar College
Feb 22, 2007
Thomas Jefferson’s clan was not just dysfunctional, there were “some seriously twisted people in that family,” she says.
Kierner will present a lecture, “Martha Jefferson Randolph: Virginian,” at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 1 in Memorial Chapel at Sweet Briar College. She will discuss Randolph, who had captured her interest while she was researching her 2004 book, “Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America.”
Randolph appeared to the historian – at least
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Feb 22, 2007
[HNN Editor: Last week the Chronicle published a brief article on Toaff. This week brought a more extended discussion. This excerpt lists the main new details.]
Mr. Toaff's initial public statements varied widely as the controversy played out. In an interview with the newspaper La Stampa two days before the book's release, he claimed that the trauma of persecution in the Middle Ages had instilled "some fringe
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Feb 22, 2007
To explore the hazards of refusing to eat in response to a negative tenure decision, The Chronicle spoke to an academic hunger striker of years past.
...
Ralph E. Luker is a retired, well-known historian of the civil-rights movement and a member of the prominent group blog Cliopatria, part of George Mason University's History News Network Web site. Thirteen years ago, he was a man on the verge of losing his academic career. Mr. Luker engaged in a hunger strike when his bid f
Source: Press Release -- Washington College
Feb 22, 2007
In commemoration of George Washington’s birthday, Washington College has announced three finalists for the 2007 George Washington Book Prize.
The $50,000 award – co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Historic Mount Vernon -- is the largest prize nationwide for a book on early American history, and one of the largest for nonfiction.
The finalists are A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Hol
Source: http://dailybeacon.utk.edu
Feb 21, 2007
Cynthia Fleming has a remarkable memory.
For an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee, this skill of quickly retrieving historical details comes in handy.
Without notes, Fleming flawlessly lectured on the civil rights movement while speaking to students in one of her African-American studies classes last week. In fact, Fleming humorously says she never uses notes.
As an oral historian who joined the Peace Corps in 1971 and served in
Source: LAT
Feb 21, 2007
U.S. and Iraqi forces have moved aggressively in the last week to combat Sunni Arab insurgents in neighborhoods across the capital and to establish a stronger presence in religiously mixed districts long plagued by sectarian violence.
But as the new security crackdown enters a second week, they face their most sensitive challenge: whether, when and how to move into the Shiite-dominated slum of Sadr City, stronghold of the Al Mahdi militia....
Any new move into Sadr City
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Feb 21, 2007
When he saw the letter, Donny George Youkhanna knew it was time to get out of Iraq.
It was late this July, and someone had dropped an envelope containing a bullet on his parents' driveway in Baghdad. The writers threatened to kidnap and behead Mr. George's teenage son, Martin. They knew that the boy's father worked with the Americans, they wrote, and they accused the boy, a Christian like his father, of teasing Muslim girls.
It was too much. Within a few days, Mr. Georg
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Feb 21, 2007
A female professor at the University of Toledo has resigned and four male professors are filing a complaint following a recent report that said the university’s history department was hostile to women, according to The Independent Collegian, the campus’s student newspaper.
The report said that women in the department called it “toxic” an
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Feb 20, 2007
[Eric Rauchway is professor of history at the University of California at Davis, and the author most recently of Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America, soon available in a Hill & Wang paperback. If you want to see him attempt the online scholarly discourse described here, you might have a look at Open University.]
Thrift, piety, and guilt conspire to give me good environmentalist habits. I bicycle to work every day. I periodically walk around our house, turning off l
