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: Editor & Publisher
Sep 11, 2006
NEW YORK Eric Alterman, perhaps the first writer to get a blog on a mainstream national news site, has been dismissed after 10 years by MSNBC.com.
"P.S., I’m Fired," he heads an email to others in the media.
His blog, Altercation, however, will be picked up by the liberal site Media Matters. He will also become a senior fellow there. Alterman has also been a longtime columnist at The Nation magazine. He teaches at City University of New York.
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Source: Martin Marty in Sightings, the newsletter of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Sep 11, 2006
"Dumb me!" one says or thinks -- at least this one does -- when awakened to knowledge of what one's sleepy eyes and consciousness had long overlooked. For a half-century, I, like the colleagues of my generation among American religious historians, could babble for thousands of hours and write thousands of pages and yet show little awareness and make slight mention of Muslim-Protestant relations in this nation. Change for me began in 1988, when we started the "Fundamentalism Proj
Source: The Elm, Wash College Student Newspaper
Sep 8, 2006
The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience has recently undergone a facelift in its leadership by promoting Adam Goodheart, professor of American Studies, to director.
Goodheart said he is "helping to turn Washington College into a kind of 'magnet school' for students interested in American history, politics, and culture, archaeology, historic preservation and similar fields."
The Center, constantly striving to connect American history to t
Source: Press Release
Sep 8, 2006
CHICAGO, IL -- SEPTEMBER 8, 2006 – A group of leading American historians today
sent the following letter to Mr. Robert Iger of ABC. Signatories include
Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Schlesinger and Sean Wilentz, Princeton University,
this year's winner of the Bancroft Prize, the American history profession's
highest honor. Stressing the significance of the “traumatic” events of 9/11, the
signers of this letter are calling on Mr., Iger to stand up for responsible
medi
Source: Bruce Craig, writing in the newsletter of the Coalition for History
Sep 8, 2006
n a meeting with representatives of the research community on 6 September 2006, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein reported on the progress being made in the effort to implement the "National Declassification Initiative (NDI)," a new set of policies, declassification practices, procedures, and organizational structures believed necessary to create a more reliable executive branch-wide declassification program for federal records. The Archivist said, "When we last met i
Source: Cavalier Daily
Sep 7, 2006
f you've ever taken "Religion in America Since 1865," you probably recall religious studies Prof. Heather Warren periodically strumming away at her guitar during class. The reason for Warren's display of guitar skills is not to give her rendition of a John Mayer ballad but to engage her students as she illustrates her main points.
"One of the things I do find within many faiths, particularly in American religious life, [is that] people sing what they believe," Wa
Source: Stephen Balch in the National Review Online
Sep 7, 2006
In recent years, Hamilton College has done little that would have pleased its namesake. It's hard to imagine that any of the founding generation's leaders—perhaps excepting Paine—
could find much to their liking in the college's fawning treatment of radical icons or its fervent multiculturalism. It was Hamilton that sought to bring former weather underground member and convicted terrorist, Susan Rosenberg, to campus as an instructor and "artist-in-residence", as it was Hamilton
Source: David White in Campus-Watch.org
Sep 7, 2006
Juan Cole's supporters have taken to portraying the antiwar University of Michigan history professor as a victim of a neoconservative cabal that deep-sixed his job application at Yale. There's only one problem with that conspiracy theory: It's not true.At the same time when Cole's pursuit of a job at New Haven was gaining so much attention, it turns out he was also applying for a job at Duke and getting passed
Source: Daily Kent Stater
Sep 7, 2006
Last year the university hired about 260 full- and part-time faculty. Every department, school and college handles these hirings based on their individual policies within the university's guidelines.
This year already welcomes a new president and dean. Additional faculty positions have been approved in fast-growing fields such as journalism and fashion design. Those don't even touch on the routine replacements and part-time faculty the university hires every year.
In 20
Source: Howard LaFranchi in the Christian Science Monitor
Sep 6, 2006
As the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, President Bush is reemphasizing his focus on the war on terror as the defining struggle of the age. With historical analogies his constant tool, the president compares Osama bin Laden to the ideological foes the United States faced in the 20th century - Lenin and Hitler, for example - and likens the struggle against Islamic radicalism to the cold war.
Such comparisons can help Americans understand the foe the US is up against, a
Source: Patrick Garrity in the WSJ
Sep 6, 2006
[Patrick Garrity is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. This article first appeared in the Claremont Review of Books.]
In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, a Yale University student asked one of her instructors, "Would it be OK now for us to be patriotic?" The professor, John Lewis Gaddis, widely regarded as the dean of American Cold War historians, replied: "Yes, I think it would."
Even allowing for the emotions of the moment, s
Source: Sequim Gazette
Sep 6, 2006
Inside her classroom, piles of books and journals are stuffed into plastic containers and crowd tabletops and bookshelf tops. Groups of desks congeal and set into the middle of the room, topped by upended chairs, like stalagmites in this cave of learning.
One might be able to learn here, if they don’t put an eye out first.
In a sense, it is organized chaos, says Tricia Billes, Sequim Middle School seventh-grade teacher. A messy calm before the storm.
When h
Source: Edward J. Renehan Jr. at his blog
Sep 5, 2006
The biographer and historian William H. Harbaugh, professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia who died in the spring of '05, was a great friend and mentor to me. His Power & Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (FS&G, 1961) remains the very best single-volume biography of TR ever published. Meanwhile, his biography of John W. Davis - Lawyer's Lawyer (Oxford Un
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Sep 5, 2006
A landmark 1953 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which affirmed the
government's use of the"state secrets" privilege to withhold
information is the focus of a new book called"In the Name of
National Security" by constitutional scholar Louis Fisher.
The 1953 case, United States v. Reynolds, revolved around a request
by three widows for access to an accident report about a military
plane crash in which their husbands died in 1948. The government
refused to release the requested report.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 4, 2006
Austria's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by right-wing British historian David Irving and upheld the conviction in his Holocaust denial case, the Austria Press Agency reported Monday.In February, a Vienna state court convicted Irving of denying the Holocaust and sentenced him to three years in prison.
The Alpine country's highest court rejected the appeal during a closed session last week, APA said, citing a preliminary communication from the court.
Source: ABC
Sep 4, 2006
A recent New York Times article about John McCain's growing "kitchen cabinet," contained a piece of information that might have been meaningless to many American readers, but resonated strongly with most British ones.
According to a McCain aide, the article said, one of the senator's unofficial advisors as he ponders a possible run for the White House is the British-born Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. Though relatively unknown in the United States,
Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Sep 3, 2006
Fifty-five leading Holocaust scholars have denounced a new book which asserts that criticism of President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust is "anti-American" and "America-bashing." The book also contains false allegations against reputable historians, severely misrepresents key historical facts, and contains at least twenty-one passages that use language from other books without appropriate attribution.
The book, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roose
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Sep 1, 2006
How did you become interested in Hatshepsut?
I live right near the Metropolitan Museum in New York—it's only two blocks away—and they have long owned an enormous collection of materials from Hatshepsut's reign. They have a Hatshepsut gallery, and I was familiar with this gallery and vaguely familiar with her because of that. But like so many people, my view of her was still the popular one: that she was this incredible shrew, she was just a power-mad virago who also had this torrid
Source: Press Release -- Historians Against the War
Sep 1, 2006
As the violence in Iraq and across the Middle East intensifies, with the accompanying attack on civil liberties here at home, the need for an informed public debate is vitally important. As historians, concerned scholars, students, and activists, we are acutely aware that the transformations now occurring have far-reaching implications for our current lives and for future generations.
With mid-term elections scheduled for November, we have the opportunity to focus campus attention
Source: Journal of American History
Sep 1, 2006
There are generally two momentous occasions in a European academic's career: when the professor accepts an appointment at a university and when she or he retires from that appointment. On those occasions the professor's colleagues, students, administrators, relatives, and friends, from home and abroad, gather to celebrate a professional life. The honoree gives a formal lecture. On the first occasion the honoree reflects on the state of the field and projects what the professor hopes to contribut
