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: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 11, 2006
Editor: David Horowitz Response below. Many faculty leaders have worried that this week’s hearings by a Pennsylvania legislative committee would turn into just the kind of professorial inquisition that they have feared the “Academic Bill of Rights” might set off.
But as hearings ended in Philadelphia Tuesday, critics of the Academic Bill of Rights were saying that they had scored key points. David Horowitz, the conservative activist who has led the push for the hearings
Source: Dan Cohen Blog
Jan 11, 2006
George Mason University's Dan Cohen has used a Syllabus Finder search engine he created to track the most popular syllabi in the country over the last three years. There have been half a million searches. And the most popular syllabus?
#1 - U.S. History to 1870 (Eric Mayer, Victor Valley College, total of 6104 points).
Click on the Source link above to see the rest of the syllabi on the Top 10 list.
Source: Baltimore Sun
Jan 11, 2006
Plaques that separately list local blacks and whites who served in World War II will stay in the county courthouse, but a new sign explaining the history of segregation will be added to help put the display in context.
The Taylor County Commission voted 5-0 Tuesday to keep the historical plaques, while adding the new sign and a third plaque that would list everyone from the county who served in the war. The original display dates from December 1944, and i
Source: Reuters
Jan 11, 2006
More than 60 years ago, a group of Czech and Slovak exiles parachuted into their Nazi-occupied homeland and assassinated SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, the man known as the "Butcher of Prague."
For the first time since the end of the World War Two, a German museum is offering a close look at "Operation Anthropoid," the codename for the only successful assassination of a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.Michal Burian of the Mili
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 11, 2006
At the AHA meeting Saturday, historians joked about the phrase “chilly climate,” but their barbs about holding on to their winter coats reflected disappointment about what many said was a backlash against efforts to recruit female and minority professors.
History has made more progress than many other disciplines, and many graduate programs have a relatively even mix of men and women — and more minority students than are in many other disciplines. But a series of studies have found
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Education
Jan 11, 2006
For the military historian, war is by no means a blessing. Sure it may produce source material for a new book, but it also probably means that people will attempt to put your research (which may or may not be relevant) into the framework of a current war. It means demands on your time that probably won’t advance your standing among historians. Of course, a war may also make your research more relevant than ever before, as Linn has found.
When historians gathered this weekend in Phil
Source: NYT
Jan 11, 2006
The opinion is more than 50 years old, and it is not even binding precedent. But just minutes into the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., it took center stage and seemed to lay the groundwork for the questions he will face concerning his views on the limits of presidential power.
The 1952 opinion, a concurrence by Justice Robert H. Jackson, rejected President Harry S. Truman's assertion that he had the constitutional power to seize the nation's steel
Source: WSJ
Jan 10, 2006
In the course of an editorial about congressional opposition to the administration's eavesdropping program, the WSJ recommends that what congress really should be doing is renaming the FBI building.
J. Edgar Hoover, the editorial states, was the worst public servant in US history. Quoting from the editorial:
Eternal vigilance, it's been rightly said, is the price of liberty. But Americans are not well served by politicians in Washington who keep
Source: Boston Globe
Jan 10, 2006
In the first such collaboration of its kind, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is announcing today that it will host a conference jointly sponsored by the National Archives and all 12 presidential libraries.
Among those set to participate in ''Vietnam and the Presidency" March 10-11 are two former secretaries of state, Henry A. Kissinger and Alexander M. Haig Jr., Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, TV journalist Dan Rather, and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Fra
Source: BBC News
Jan 10, 2006
The Austrian birthplace of Adolf Hitler is fighting to contain an outcry over pictures that apparently show local football fans making a Nazi salute. One of the pictures shows teenage fans of Braunau football team offering a straight-armed, open-handed salute at a notorious former concentration camp.
Braunau's mayor said the fan club had not denied publishing the photos on its website - and nor had it apologised. Nazi activity of any kind can lead to a ja
Source: cronaca.com
Jan 10, 2006
Hawaiian groups entangled in a dispute over native artifacts obtained from a museum and then buried have agreed to try to settle the case outside of court, one of the groups said Monday.
The director of a group dedicated to the proper treatment of ancestral remains has been in jail since Dec. 27 for refusing to tell a federal judge the exact location of the 83 artifacts from the Bishop Museum. . .
Source: Hartford Courant
Jan 10, 2006
Yale Divinity School historian Kenneth P. Minkema wants people to see the warm, fuzzy side of Edwards, the side that wandered through fields and sat on the pristine banks of the Hudson; the side that pondered an "appearance of divine glory, in almost everything."
To that end, Minkema and three more of Edwards' greatest admirers have already spent a good portion of their adult lives bringing the theologian/philosopher/"Renaissance man" to the masses through print.
Source: NPR
Jan 10, 2006
If the current bird-flu outbreak becomes a pandemic, fear could turn to panic. Experts say whether that happens will probably depend on how honest governments are with the public.
In the flu pandemic of 1918, there was enough panic that society began to disintegrate in some cities, says historian John Barry, author of The Great Influenza. "Close blood relatives were so frightened that they would not feed a family where people were starving to death," h
Source: The Guardian (London)
Jan 10, 2006
A 16th-century synagogue has been uncovered in the city of Porto, northern Portugal, after builders tore down walls in a building in the city's historic centre.The synagogue, built when Jews could be burned at the stake for worshipping, was hidden behind a false wall in a four-storey building on a side street in what was once Porto's Jewish quarter.
The synagogue was discovered by a Catholic priest, Father Jardim Moreira, who was in charge of turning the buildin
Source: The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand)
Jan 10, 2006
Right beside Molly Malones pub on Taranaki St a cleared building site reveals the fragments of the big, thriving Te Aro pa which existed for most of the 19th century.
The discovery of three ponga huts, or whare, and an apparent cannonball on one of Wellington's busiest streets has stunned local Maori -- and the developers.Since last month's find, an archaeological team has pored over the site and people from all over Wellington have taken interest. There have al
Source: New York Times
Jan 10, 2006
A vertical column of 10 glyphic words, uncovered last year in ruins in Guatemala, is unreadable even by the most expert scholars, but they know what it means - that Maya writing is older than they once thought.
Archaeologists reported last week that the script sample, discovered at San Bartolo, in northeastern Guatemala, is clear evidence that the Maya were writing more than 2,300 years ago. This is a few centuries earlier than previous well-dated Maya writing and 600 years before t
Source: National Geographic News
Jan 9, 2006
A new study of prehistoric cemeteries in North America is adding weight to the theory that the development of agriculture helped fuel baby booms around the world. According to the theory, populations swell when societies shift from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on the more sedentary routine of farming.
Staying put allows women to have more babies, and a farming economy provides more food to support the growing population, explained Jean
Source: History Today
Jan 9, 2006
A new project has been launched to discover the most famous cultural treasures of the nation. Organised by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Icons - a portrait of England asks the public to nominate their favourite symbols of the country’s culture. The DCMS has released a list of 12 icons and the public votes will add a dozen symbols every three months. The current list includes Stonehenge, Henry VIII’s portrait by Hans Holbein, the King James Bible, the SS Empire
Source: cronaca.com
Jan 9, 2006
More than 60 years ago, a group of Czech and Slovak exiles parachuted into their Nazi-occupied homeland and assassinated SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, the man known as the "Butcher of Prague".
For the first time since the end of the World War Two, a German museum is offering a close look at "Operation Anthropoid", the codename for the only successful assassination of a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.Michal Buria
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Jan 9, 2006
A planned American Civil War Center in downtown Richmond won a $1 million boost from Congress recently, but it also took some flak.
Critics of "pork-barrel" spending have shelled the Civil War Center, along with numerous other projects nationally, that were included in a $453 billion defense-spending bill for fiscal 2006.
While the $1 million appropriation is only a tiny fraction of the overall annual defense bill, it has become part of a perennial debate over
