Historians in the News Archive
This page includes, in addition to news about historians, news about political scientists, economists, law professors, and others who write about history. For a comprehensive list of historians' obituaries, go here.
SOURCE: Jon Stewart The Daily Show (8-17-09)
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| Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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| Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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SOURCE: Gazeta Wyborcza (8-21-09)
The declaration is an appeal to Europe to not forget, while celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the circumstances in which the continent was originally divided seventy years ago.
'We are aware, and this is a painful awareness, that without the German-started World War II neither the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe nor the division of Europe and Germany would have happened,' write the German intellectuals. Rather than identifying 1 September 1939 - the day of the German invasion of Poland - as the beginning of the tragedy, they point at 23 August 1939, when the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed in Moscow. In it, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union divided Central Europe between themselves. 'It was an ill-fated pact,' reads the declaration.
The declaration was initiated by Marianne Birthler, head of the Stasi Records Authority and the Foundation for Research into the DDR Dictatorship, and former DDR dissident, Wolfgang Templin. It was signed by nearly 140 persons, including, among others, ex-president of the Bundestag, Prof Rita Süssmuth, the first head of the Stasi Records Authority, Joachim Gauck, historians Arnulf Baring, Dieter Bingen and Heirinch Winkler, journalists and politicians.
The declaration is unprecedented. To avoid being accused of historical revisionism - diminishing German responsibility for WWII - Germans seldom speak about Russia's responsibility for the war. Politicians usually steer well clear of the subject in order not to damage relations with Moscow. Yet the declaration leaves no doubt about what communism meant for eastern Europe.
'In the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and part of Germany, all weakened by the war and Nazi rule, the Soviet Union introduced a new regime. That had disastrous consequences for society, the economy and culture, as well as for the masses of people who were persecuted or lost their lives because they stood in the communists' way,' reads the declaration.
Markus Meckel (SPD), one of the signatories, assures Gazeta that no one wants to whitewash Nazi Germany. 'But we need to remember that there was another totalitarianism which also committed crimes and left scars on central Europe's collective memory. People in the West have to finally acknowledge this,' says Mr Meckel.
Moreover, the German declaration comes at a time when a group of Russian historians, acting on the Kremlin's orders, is trying to defend the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. They are arguing that Stalin wanted to buy himself time to prepare for the war against Germany, that he was forced to sign the pact by the inflexible position of Poland which didn't want an alliance with Russia. Some have gone as far as to suggest that it is Poland that bears responsibility for the wear because it refused to meet Hitler's 'moderate' demands and surrender the 'Gdańsk corridor.'
Mr Meckel adds that the declaration is also an appeal to Russia to start an honest debate about the past. 'They should finally confront the vision of history of the Poles or the Balts,' says the SPD deputy. The signatories Gazeta has talked to hope that chancellor Angela Merkel speaks in a similar tone during the 1 September celebrations on Westerplatte, Gdańsk.
SOURCE: Ron Eisenman, a teacher at Rutland, Vermont's Rutland High School (8-21-09)
For teachers, the opportunity to immerse ourselves in one topic with the world's leading scholars is invaluable. This seminar's content was both broad in scope and expansive in detail. Even though most of the teachers can remember the Cold War firsthand, it has only been in the past 15 years that Western historians have had access to materials from former Communist bloc countries and China. These materials provide invaluable insight into the dynamics of the Cold War as seen through the eyes of the "other" side.
The new information about the Cold War is startling. As Michael Dobbs, the author of One Minute to Midnight, explained to us, on 10/27/62, known as "Black Saturday," we were closer to the brink of nuclear war than previously thought. Even after both President Kennedy and Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, committed themselves to peacefully resolving the conflict, factors outside their control almost pushed both leaders to nuclear catastrophe. As President Kennedy so colorfully opined, "There’s always some son of a bitch who doesn't get the message.” We now know that had President Kennedy followed the advice of his advisors and launched a preemptive attack on Soviet missiles in Cuba, Soviet nuclear missiles could have reached New York City. Moreover, a sizable number of tactical nuclear weapons, each one the equivalent of the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would have been shot at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay and at any invading U.S. forces.
The new documents also provide insight into the depth of the Soviet-Sino split, a situation that U.S policy makers didn't fully appreciate until the late 1960's when President Nixon began exploring the opening up of China. The documents portray North Korean leader Kim Il Sung as the prime instigator of the Korean War. The intrigue among Communist North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union during this time period is fascinating.
Perhaps most significantly, participants in this seminar learned that examination of new primary sources offers us, as historians, a richer and more complex understanding of the fears and motivations behind Soviet decision-making. One of the great lessons of the Cold War, according to Dr. Leffler, is the need to empathize with your opponent so that you can understand his actions. Obviously, understanding may not lead to agreement, but understanding does lead to better decision-making. One of the tragedies of the Cold War was its enormous social and economic costs. During the decades-long conflict, overwhelming fear on both sides caused each side to misinterpret each other's actions and miss opportunities to de-escalate the conflict.
This activity is the ideal kind of professional development for teachers. It was a great opportunity to recharge our intellectual batteries and learn from the nation’s best scholars. I look forward to sharing my new knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject with my students next year. One of my goals is to use many of the primary source document activities that were created this summer with my students. My students will also utilize the Cold War International History Project’s website, http://www.cwihp.org, for original research. This remarkable website contains the most recently released documents from all sides of the Cold War. The networking opportunities among teachers were equally important. During the week, all of us shared best practices in teaching and laid the foundation for future collaboration. I welcome the opportunity to share my resources with my colleagues at Rutland High School and other Vermont educators. For more information on this and other seminars, please visit the Gilder-Lehrman website: http://www.gilderlehrman.org/
SOURCE: NYT (8-18-09)
The cause was injuries suffered in a fall in his home, said a friend, the poet Frederick Seidel.
Mr. Poirier (pronounced to rhyme with “warrior”) was an old-fashioned man of letters — a writer, an editor, a publisher, a teacher — with a wide range of knowledge and interests. He was a busy reviewer for publications from The New York Review of Books to The London Review of Books, and his reviews could sting.
His own works were ambitious and forward-looking and idiosyncratic, addressing the teaching profession, the notion of style in American literature and the relationship between high and low culture. He wrote about Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens, but also George Balanchine and Bette Midler. He wrote admiringly of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Norman Mailer and the Beatles, finding in all of them a motivating sense of performance that made their otherwise disparate work comparably brilliant....
SOURCE: Tivy-Side Advertiser (8-17-09)
Dr Jenkins, who fomerly headed the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum and the Welsh Folk Museum at St Ffagan, was the author of more than 50 history books and was a leading expert in Welsh maritime history.
SOURCE: Robert Nedelkoff at The New Nixon (blog) (8-16-09)
Perlstein maintained that the 37th President’s legacy to the nation was “a notion that there are two kinds of Americans: one kind viewing themselves as “people of faith,” patriots, “nonshouters,” and viewing the other kind – “liberals,” “cosmopolitans,” “intellectuals” – as “un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens [Perlstein's emphasis].”
The book’s final paragraphs read:
Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements? It would be hard to argue they do not.
How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.
When Nixonland appeared, several reviewers criticized that penultimate statement, and said that Perlstein clearly was mistaken to think that the passions of that time still ran as strong.
But that was last year, and now that many of this month’s “town halls” about the proposed health-care legislation across the country have featured very heated rhetoric, not only at the meetings themselves, but among the crowds assembled outside the venues, Perlstein has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that makes it clear that he considers himself vindicated in his argument.
Now, anyone following the town hall meetings closely knows that many speakers at them have been as fervent about single-payer care and the proposed legislation’s failure to incorporate it, though not as visible in TV sound bites as the ones who have been waving pocket copies of the Constitution and arguing against the bill’s big-government tendencies.
But the leftist voices at the meetings count for nothing where Perlstein is concerned. What he sees is nothing less than the return of the right-wing fervor that swept through parts of America during the Kennedy years. And the op-ed’s title, though probably the work of a dependably liberal Post staffer, sums up its attitude toward the liberatarian and conservative voices at these gatherings: “In America, Crazy Is A Pre-Existing Condition.”
Yes, all the objections raised to the mammoth scope of the bill, and to the possibility that it marks the start of a path which will see Americans turn over as large a percentage of their income to the state as was the case in Sweden at the height of its cradle-to-grave system – or perhaps more – yes, all the worries raised by hard-working citizens, in Perlstein’s opinion, are on a par with the fears of almost 50 years ago that fluoride in drinking water would brainwash children into being Communists, or whatever members of the John Birch Society were supposed to have believed in those days.
(I have to admit that sometimes fluoride does worry me a bit. The other night I was gargling with that new Listerine “Whitening Formula,” or whatever it’s called, in which the active ingredient is sodium fluoride. On the back of the bottle I noticed an instruction not to drink or eat anything for 30 minutes after using it. If the idea is to keep fluoride out of my system, then why would it be in my drinking water? But then again, my dentist tells me there’s been an upsurge in cavities because kids don’t drink as much tap water as they once did. End of digression.)
In the op-ed, Perlstein states:
Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror — powerful elites — find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.
Why, of course, “crazy-making panic” is endemic only to conservative Americans, otherwise defined, in the world of the Post, as those people who still insist on regarding Sarah Palin as a political force even after her daughter’s former fiance has started dating Kathy Griffin. Those thousands upon thousands (or maybe millions upon millions) of words, many of them still online, which fretted about Guantanamo in the Bush years presaging internment camps for the young and disaffected in the United States? That was legitimate political discourse, nothing irrational about it.
(As is, presumably, the post at a left-leaning site I read the other day that compared the present political situation in America to that of Germany in about 1930. Anyone for Obama as the new Heinrich Bruening?)
Although, as I write, it will be several more hours before Perlstein’s piece appears in the antiquated ink-on-paper format, it has already stirred up several dozen responses from across the political spectrum. Matt Yglesias has one of the most thoughtful posts about it on the Left. He focuses on these remarks of Perlstein’s:
You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to “debunk” claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president’s program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn’t adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of “conservative claims” to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as “extremist” — out of bounds.
As opposed to the “in-bounds” rhetoric of the SDS and Black Panthers, which got substantial on-air attention. But let’s look at today’s situation. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when President Obama held his town hall meeting about health care this week, William Kostric, a self-described “free stater,” was spotted in the crowd by an MSNBC crew with a sign reading “Time To Water The Tree” (it referred to a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, which concludes “with the blood of patriots and tyrants”) – and a gun strapped to his leg, which he had a permit to carry.
It turned out that Kostric had not simply brought the weapon to provide a headache to Secret Service personnel who had to worry about any individuals who might not be carrying weapons simply to “make a statement.” He meant for the gun to attract media attention and stir curiosity about what he wanted – which turned out to be, presumably like all the “crazies” Perlstein describes, to get on TV.
And which program finally extended an invitation to appear? Was it Glenn Beck’s show, or Sean Hannity’s, or The O’Reilly Factor, or any of the other shows which, as every schoolperson in Santa Monica or Marin County knows, are diabolically constructed by “elites” to inflame the heartland? No, it was Hardball with Chris Matthews, a show which is not usually viewed as a hotbed for “crazies.”. I assume that Kostric chose Hardball because MSNBC was the channel that gave him visibility. (He also appeared on Alex Jones’s radio talk show, a venue more along the lines of his personal views, but certainly not the creation of any media “elite.” Indeed, Michael Savage, singled out as a rabble-rouser by Perlstein, has not had Kostric appear on his program.)
Perlstein doesn’t seem to realize that most of those who are concerned about the drawbacks of the health-care bill are voicing heartfelt and rational objections. They know that every citizen of the country already is shouldering a share of the national debt equivalent to nearly a fifth of a million dollars and they hope that there’s some way to keep it from going to a quarter of a million. They were not happy with the idea of a President doing his best Lyndon Johnson imitation and insisting that Congress pass over a thousand pages of slapped-together taxes and regulations before the end of last month, before it became clear that would not happen. (And compared to the versions of the health-care bill now in the works, even the most hastily drafted bills of LBJ’s Great Society look like they were penned by James Madison or George Mason.)
But that doesn’t matter to Perlstein; for him, “the tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America’s flora.” However, he’s not going unchallenged about this. One of the more impressive retorts so far has come from Stephen Bainbridge, a professor at UCLA’s law school. The professor sums up the op-ed as follows: “we lefties are rational, nice, kind people who are puzzled by conservative crazies. We’ve got no crazies on our side, of course. Just nice rational people like me.” Then Bainbridge lists some “rational” responses to perceived threats from the Right by left-wing organizations, starting with the Weathermen.
Bainbridge’s post got this prompt response from Perlstein, who says: “I hate the Weathermen. Read my book. So does everyone I know on the left.”
Well, it may be that everyone Rick knows on the Left deplores what the Weathermen, as a whole, became, or some of its actions. But individual former members of the Weathermen, whether or not they still think they were justified in what they did, certainly are not hated by many of his colleagues – indeed, quite the opposite, as Bill Ayers’s recent well-attended book tour demonstrates.
And, before I forget: does Perlstein mention Richard Nixon in his article? Yes, he does, classing RN as one of the “vultures” who exploited the fears sprouting from the “tree of crazy” – and, somehow, managed, by doing so, to secure a 49-state victory in 1972.
With a little help from 47,168,710 “crazies.” Count ‘em.
SOURCE: Historian Joshua Brown, illustrator, at his website, Life During Wartime (8-15-09)
SOURCE: LibraryJournal.com (8-3-09)
And could the administration of President Barack Obama make a significant change, appointing a public librarian like Carla Hayden, director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, who also would become the first woman and African-American in the job?
Rumors denied
Right now the changes are the stuff of rumors. Library Journal heard about the possibility of a Hayden appointment from one national library leader and also was told Billington, an expert on Russia, might be offered a position as cultural envoy to Russia...
...However, Enoch Pratt spokesman Roswell Encina told LJ there was no truth to the rumor and said Hayden would not be available for comment. Encina said LJ should help squelch the rumor.
Checking with ALA
Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Washington Office, said that she had not heard anything from LC about Billington retiring, but said it was a topic of periodic discussion in the library community, notably when there have been changes in presidential administrations.
Nor has Sheketoff heard anything about a potential Hayden appointment, though she observed that Hayden could be on an Obama short list, if there is one, given her ties to Chicago.
SOURCE: Michelle Finn writing at the website of H-Women (8-1-09)
Professor Morris’s book, like her play (and indeed her career), seeks to educate as wide an audience as possible about the nature and value of women’s studies while using humor to both expose and mitigate the sting of the backlash. Accepting her role as “a sort of international advocate for the women’s studies profession” (p. 142), Dr. Morris challenges the stereotype that feminist scholars are angry, humorless, hairy-legged feminazis by presenting herself as a “cheerful, upbeat, approachable soul with a friendly face” (p. 8). Rather than gripe about discrimination in academia or condemn those who perpetuate hatred toward her field, Dr. Morris sagaciously points out the relevance of a women’s studies degree to jobs in law, diplomacy, international development, HIV/AIDS education, counseling, psychology, and workplace management. She encourages skeptics to read her syllabi and attend her classes so that they may make more informed judgments about women’s studies courses. Facetiously recounting what were undoubtedly painful and disheartening experiences, Professor Morris invites her audience to consider the absurdity of the colleague who treated her like a student because he thought she was “too young and pretty to be a professor” (p. 81), or the student who felt that devoting 10 percent of an American history class to exploring women’s perspectives was “too much” women’s history (p. 65). Although generally buoyant and jovial in tone, Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor addresses serious problems, including sexism in academia, violence against women, and the unceasing backlash against feminism and women’s studies in both the academic community and the population at large. Based on her own and her students’ actual experiences, Dr. Morris’s examination of such concerns is as revealing as it is insightful.
Professor Morris structures her book around ten scenes from her play, devoting a chapter to each scene. This format works well with the chronological development of Dr. Morris’s story; however, wide-ranging chapter themes at times result in a lack of focus. Nevertheless, Dr. Morris’s anecdotal account of her experiences first as a student and later as a professor of women’s history is both engaging and illuminating. In chapter 1, “Scene One, 1973: My First Women’s Studies Class,” Professor Morris examines girlhood and the women’s studies profession. Acknowledging that she was fortunate in that she “came of age as a woman along with the women’s movement” (p. 15), Dr. Morris compares her early identification as a woman and corresponding interest in women’s studies with her students’ present-day unwillingness to consider themselves women, much less feminists. In chapter 2, “Scene Two, 1983: You’re Getting a Ph.D. in What?” Dr. Morris offers fellow women’s studies scholars some strategies with which to “countenance derision toward our work throughout long years of study” (p. 24). Her advice is to be constructive and persuasive rather than confrontational; to use verbal attacks as fodder for writing, research, and presentations; and to find motivation in the disrespect and contempt. Chapter 3, “Scene Three, 1986: Exams and Evaluations,” takes a similarly practical approach as the preceding chapter. Here Professor Morris shares a couple of her actual syllabi to demonstrate to her reader how to structure a successful women’s studies course, and to prove to skeptics that women’s studies classes are more than mere “ideological navel-gazing” (p. 38). Dr. Morris emphasizes the heavy academic loads and high standards expected of women’s studies scholars, often to the chagrin of students hoping for an easy A.
Chapter 4, “Scene Four, 1987: Can I Talk to You in Private?” is a painful reminder that scorn for women’s education--and indeed violence toward women--is not limited to groups like the Taliban militants in Afghanistan, but is “alive and well in America” (p. 57). From husbands who harass their wives about taking a night class in women’s history, to boyfriends who humiliate their girlfriends at the gym by flicking their arm fat, to male athletes who sing vulgar songs about female athletes, to sexually aggressive t-shirt slogans, to strangers who slip drugs into women’s drinks at parties, Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor identifies the myriad ways sexism rears its ugly head in America today. In and of itself an argument for the need for women’s studies courses, Professor Morris’s main concern in this chapter is coping with this sexism when it intrudes into the women’s studies classroom, as it is wont to do. Her advice is to maintain a boundary while creating a safe space where students can engage with the topic to whatever degree they feel is relevant to their lives and the world around them. “The professor is not a therapist,” she cautions (p. 59). This advice also holds true in chapter 5, “Scene Five, 1989: Do We Have to Have So Much Women’s History?” in which Professor Morris considers, among other issues, how male students handle the guilt and anger that is so often generated by course material on institutionalized sexism. In this chapter Dr. Morris astutely points out that, contrary to the misconceptions and stereotypes heaped upon women’s studies by ignorant critics, the actual “male bashing” is done by those friends and family members who would criticize a male student for his interest in taking a women’s studies course (p. 70). She is surprisingly understanding of the “cognitive dissonance” some students experience when encountering women’s perspectives in academia for the first time (p. 67), and happily reports that many of her initially hesitant male students ultimately become her biggest advocates.
The next three chapters can be thematically grouped as “Perils of the Profession.” Chapter 6, “Scene Six, 1990: Driving a U-Haul to Harvard,” provides an informal history of attitudes toward women in academia, including the nineteenth-century myth that education damaged women’s ovaries and the infamous campus rules and regulations that once governed female behavior in co-educational environments.[2] This history serves as a backdrop for Professor Morris’s more recent experiences as a woman in academia, facing the dual responsibilities of challenging the good-old-boy network while simultaneously needing to succeed (and therefore find approval) within this traditional academic climate. In chapter 7, “Scene Seven, 1992: Fear of the Word Woman,” Professor Morris reflects on the difficulties of a job market that can be especially brutal to scholars in fields like women’s studies, which many consider a special interest or supplemental discipline. This is perhaps the most depressing chapter for tender-footed women’s studies scholars as it points out the dearth of women's studies departments (courses usually fall within interdisciplinary programs) and, consequently, tenure-track teaching positions. Ever the helpful instructor, Professor Morris goes so far as to suggest a low-budget grocery list for the adjunct struggling to make ends meet on a tenuous shoestring salary. In chapter 8, “Scene Eight, 1993: Teaching Where Hell Freezes Over,” Professor Morris reminds her reader that in addition to being poor, women’s studies professors have to live and teach in places no sane or progressive-minded person would hope to so much as view on a map. (Although to be fair, this fate seems to await most aspiring historians and cannot be claimed solely by those specializing in women.)
Chapter 9, “Scene Nine, 1993: Women’s Studies Goes Global,” and chapter 10, “Scene Ten, 1995: Educating President Clinton,” speak to the practical applications of women’s studies and the field’s potential for opening minds and broadening perspectives. In chapter 9, Professor Morris relates how first-hand observations of women’s lives in places like India, Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco helped her students better appreciate the lessons of her women’s studies classes. In chapter 10, she tells of the time she persuaded President Clinton to watch the George Washington University women’s basketball team play their homecoming game.[3] Later that year, Mr. Clinton became the first president to call and congratulate the winning NCAA women’s team, a stride towards further recognition of women in sports in which Professor Morris rightfully feels she had a hand. Her conclusion, “Mainstreaming Women’s Studies in America,” notes some promising changes in attitudes towards women’s studies since 1993. Less suspicion and a greater level of acceptance suggest that “the subject of women in history has at last gone mainstream” (p. 144). Yet Dr. Morris cautions against complacency and asks her reader to consider: “What can you do to improve the climate for women’s studies?” As one has by now come to expect from Professor Morris, she also supplies some helpful suggestions.
Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor is an appropriate and effective response to the sexist backlash that haunts the field of women’s studies. One wonders, however, whether Professor Morris’s mission “to put a friendly face on women’s history” defers too much to the critics (p. 101). By some tragic Hellerian irony, does this struggle for acceptance undermine the progress of the women’s studies field by diverting energy and focus from more scholarly pursuits? As Professor Morris herself laments, “serious scholars of women’s history spend as much time defending their chosen field as they do pursuing important research.... Clearly there’s work to be done” (p. 8). Perhaps the most productive work involves disengaging from the backlash rhetoric to concentrate on developing new perspectives on women’s experiences. Nevertheless, Professor Morris’s frustrations and celebrations will no doubt resonate with other women’s studies scholars. Historians will value her book as a resource guide for teaching specific topics in women’s history--women in Western civilization, women and war, athletics and gender--and for its helpful advice on how to handle challenges of the profession. Ultimately, however, Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor works best as a primary source that documents, through its author’s account of her personal experiences as a feminist scholar, a particular stage in the evolution of the women’s studies profession.
Notes
[1]. Professor Morris specializes in women’s cultural and social history in the post-World War II era. Her books include: Lubavitcher Women in America: Identity and Activism in the Postwar Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), Eden Built By Eves: The Culture of Women’s Music Festivals (New York: Alyson Books, 1999), and Girl Reel (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2000).
[2]. For a more formal account of the history of women in higher education see Lynn D. Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Patricia Albjerg Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in Higher Education,” Signs, 3 (Summer 1978): 759-773; Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges from their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984); and Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
[3]. A version of this encounter appears in Rivka Solomon, That Takes Ovaries! (New York: Three Rivers, 2002).
SOURCE: Middle East Forum (8-15-09)
A newly formed"educational think tank," the International Council for Middle East Studies (ICMES), is poised to influence U.S. policy toward the Middle East in ways that could further harm American interests in the region. It will be led by Norton Mezvinsky, a radical anti-Zionist who recently retired after a 42-year-career teaching Middle East history at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). If Mezvinsky remains true to form, ICMES will advocate for holding U.S. policy hostage to the fallacy that Israel is always at fault for the region's troubles.
ICMES found a welcoming home at the International Law Institute (ILI) at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. And according to Mezvinsky, ICMES's goal will be to build cultural bridges and promote faculty and student exchanges between the United States and Middle Eastern countries.
An immediate question comes to mind: with whom will those bridges be built? That Mezvinsky's new organization is being parachuted into ILI, a group that according to its website"raises levels of professional competence and capacity in all nations so that professionals everywhere may achieve practical solutions to common problems in ways that suit their nations' own needs" is most disturbing. We should question how such a politicized individual as Mezvinsky could operate"practically" and decide what are the needs regarding Israelis and Palestinians when he has devoted his entire career to demonizing Israel.
For example, in 2002 Mezvinsky participated in a weeklong teaching institute for Connecticut middle and high school teachers on the Middle East. Among the myths he perpetrated on his students, as recorded by an attendee, was that:
Palestinians were pushed out of their homes due to the 'Absent-Present Laws' that stated that if people who owned the land weren't on it at a given time, the land was turned over to the JNF (Jewish National Fund); and Israel has created refugees, and has intensified oppression.
Jonathan Calt Harris later reported that Mezvinsky told the entire class of teachers that, contrary to historical fact,"'the well-armed and well-funded Israelis' fought the Palestinians in 1948, but did not mention that armies of five Arab countries first invaded the U.N.-sanctioned Jewish state."
Close observers bear witness to Mezvinsky's influence on his students. Rabbi Stephen Fuchs of Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford, a participant in the teaching institute, said that,"[Mezvinsky] has slanted the views of a whole generation of students about the Middle East. I am concerned that he has created a negative atmosphere toward Israel."
Mezvinsky endorses the infamous 1975 UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 that declared Zionism a form of racism. Furthermore, his biased views resemble the propaganda fed to eighth graders in Saudi Arabia, who are taught that,"the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value" and that, therefore, the killing of non-Jews does"not constitute murder according to the Jewish religion." Such blatant anti-Semitism has nothing on Mezvinsky's claim that Judaism teaches"the killing of innocent Arabs for revenge as a Jewish virtue."
He also places the sole onus for the Palestinian refugee problem on Israel while never acknowledging the estimated 750,000 Jewish refugees who were expelled from Arab lands. That many of those Arab refugees left under pressure from neighboring Arab countries to facilitate the destruction of their Jewish communities is yet another example of how the Arab-Israeli conflict has been taught at CCSU absent any effort to provide historical context or scholarly balance...
SOURCE: National Review Online (8-15-09)
As reported in the Guardian, Sheila Blair, a professor of Islamic and Asian art at Norma Jean Calderwood University, has acknowledged being among the experts consulted by Yale, and she “strongly urged” YUP to publish the images in the book. What's more, she has written a letter to the Times, explaining her reasoning: “To deny that such images were made is to distort the historical record and to bow to the biased view of some modern zealots who would deny that others at other times and places perceived and illustrated Muhammad in different ways.”
The Times has not yet published this letter, which contradicts its story. And on that score, it's worth noting that the Times' account was dubious even before we knew about Prof. Blair. As Roger reiterates, the book was thoroughly vetted before Yale's consultation with the experts, it passed with flying colors, and at least two prominent Muslims enthusiastically supported its publication with the images...
SOURCE: Islington Tribune (8-14-09)
He combined his day job as general editor of the Victoria County History (VCH) with his role as president of Islington Historical and Archaeological Society.
At VCH, before he retired in 1992, he wrote the history of every county in England, professionally, systematically and from original sources, on behalf of the Institute of History, based at the University of London...
...Prof Elrington was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1964 and of the Royal Historical Society in 1969.
He was made Professor of History at the University of London in 1992 and emeritus professor on retirement.
He marked his retirement with a “Hike for History” in 1996 – three long sweeps of sponsored walking (1,100 miles in all, and conducted at a cracking pace), which passed through all 39 historic English counties and resulted in publicity for VCH.
SOURCE: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment (8-15-09)
This article in Time says that the reporter's friends removed the benefit of the exercise they had done by going to Starbucks afterward and having a muffin. But he implies that they are doomed to do so. No blame is laid on corporate food for America's weight problems, even though that is among the main culprits.
Losing weight is hard, but can be done. The trick is to keep it off. In one study published just last year, a group of women dropped 10 percent of their body weight. But only about a quarter kept the weight off for the succeeding two years. What was special about that 25 percent?
They exercised vigorously about 5 hours a week, and they were careful about their diet, especially about eating very much fat.
Likewise of 3,000 weight loss subjects registered at the National Weight Loss Registry who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off at least 3 years, 90% of them report exercising an hour a day.
In other words: Time exercise article Epic Fail.
Look, exercise and calories are not that complicated. If a man gets on a treadmill for a little over an hour at a brisk pace, he should be using 600 calories. If he also eats sensibly, and if he does the exercise at least five times a week, he should lose a pound a week. Regular exercise and eating sensibly should allow him to take off 4 pounds in a month. That may seem a pittance for someone who has put on a lot of weight, but it is 48 pounds a year, which should suffice for most people.
It is true that aerobic exercise causes you to lose muscle as well as fat, and such exercise should be combined with weight lifting to replace the lost muscle. Muscle tissue uses more calories than other kinds, and so having more of it also helps keep the weight off.
Of course, diet is also key. When you're trying to lose weight, you can't be eating muffins at Starbucks. You may crave them more, as the article asserts, if you exercise vigorously. But you aren't doomed to give in to the craving. And, there are other things that would satisfy the craving. A Starbucks blueberry muffin is on the order of 400 calories, and many of the drinks are 200 to 400. So obviously eating and drinking there carelessly would more than wipe out an hour's hard exercise. But instead, you could have a tall non-fat capuccino for 100 calories and a biscotti for 160, coming in at 240 total, and preserving 360 of the exercise savings. If you were hard core about losing weight, you could just have the coffee of the day or a cafe Americano, which have hardly any calories at all, and some fruit. Or you could stop at a soup and sandwich place instead of Starbucks, and have a cup of lentil soup for 200 calories; that dish is high in protein, which is what your body is really craving after hard exercise, not muffins.
What the Time article neglects to note is that how many calories you take in at Starbucks only matters in the context of your total intake for the day. If you eat a lighter than usual lunch, then the 240 calories picked up at Starbucks might not matter very much. Especially if you are exercising about an hour a day.
Most people aren't good at translating their pangs into wise choices because they haven't educated themselves about processed foods served them by corporations and restaurants. The body also plays tricks. Sometimes you feel hungry when you are really just thirsty, and drinking some water would be enough.
When you talk about avoiding too much fat, it sounds puritanical and as though we are stuck with celery and raw broccoli. But avoiding fat is mostly a matter of reading the labels of the things we buy in the grocery store. The main problem facing Americans in particular with regard to the obesity epidemic is that our processed food sold to us by our corporations is typically unhealthy. I had my gall bladder out a few years ago and before the operation was put on a nonfat or very low fat diet. I thought, well I'll make myself some spaghetti with tomato sauce. So I went to the grocery store and checked the spaghetti noodles, and they were loaded with fat. Then I checked the pre-made tomato sauce and it was floating in fat. Now, I don't think wheat and tomatoes have a lot of fat in them naturally. It is being added by the corporations, just as high fructose corn syrup is being added, because fat, sugar and salt make food addictive for consumers, and they want to sell us as much food as they can.
I personally think that the Atkins low-carb diet works for a lot of people mainly because it makes them avoid processed carbohydrates like cereal and pasta that have had fat and sugar poured into them at some factory. It would certainly make them avoid the Starbucks muffins and (worse) scones.
Exercise also has many health and cognitive benefits, including in fighting cancer and Alzheimer's, quite apart from the weight issue. And, most people don't realize that if you don't do resistance training such as working with weights, after age 45 your muscles will turn to jelly. I was outraged when I discovered this datum at age 47, because no health care provider had ever warned me about it. Luckily, the deterioration of the muscles can be reversed with weight training. Running or playing tennis won't help with this loss of muscle mass, it has to be doing curls. Otherwise, muscles deteriorate and fat increases, which is easy since muscle tissue uses more calories than other kinds, and you have less of it as you age unless you work out.
The science on all this is perfectly clear. Vigorous exercise (both aerobic and resistance training) combined with a low-fat diet is what allows people to take weight off and keep it off. Time is shockingly wrong.
SOURCE: Winfield Myers writing at the website of Campus Watch (Conservative watchdog group run by historian Daniel Pipes) (8-14-09)
Why is Yale hiding behind the decision of anonymous"experts" to defend its decision to pull all illustrations of Muhammad from Jytte Klausen's forthcoming book, The Cartoons that Shook the World? What does it have to hide? Who was behind the decision?
Yesterday's New York Times reported Yale University Press's (YUP) decision to pull both the Danish cartoons of Muhammad along with all other illustrations of him slated to appear in Klausen's book, which examines—remarkably—the very controversy the 12 cartoons sparked in 2006, five months after their publication in the Danish newspaper Jylland- Posten in September, 2005.
The Times said that YUP and Yale University" consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous" that no illustrations should appear. It quotes John Donatich, YUP's director, as saying the experts recommendation to withdraw all images of Muhammad was"overwhelming and unanimous."
Not only is Yale withholding the identity of the experts from the public; it refused to share them with Klausen herself. According to the Times, Klausen was told she could read a summary of the experts' opinions"only if she signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from talking about them." She refused and called it a"gag order."
A Yale spokeswoman added that some experts wished originally to keep their identities secret, although some"subsequently agreed to be identified."
The American Association of University Professors issued a strong statement condemning YUP. The first line sums up their opinion of what Yale's actions, in effect, say about its commitment to academic freedom:"We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands." Inside Higher Ed, a web-based publication, today published a statement released by Yale--perhaps in response to the AAUP statement--defending its actions. Note the attempt to shift responsibility away from Yale and onto the backs of the experts:
As an institution deeply committed to free expression, we were inclined to publish the cartoons and other images as proposed. The original publication of the cartoons, however, was an occasion for violent incidents worldwide that resulted in over 200 deaths. Republication of them has repeatedly resulted in violent incidents, including as recently as 2008, some three years after their original publication and long after the images had been available on the Internet. These facts led us to consult extensively with experts in the intelligence, national security, law enforcement, and diplomatic fields, as well as leading scholars in Islamic studies and Middle East studies. All confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence, and nearly all advised that publishing other illustrations of the Prophet Muhammad in the context of this book about the Danish cartoon controversy raised similar risk. We recognize that inclusion of the cartoons would complement the book's text with a convenient visual reference for the reader, who otherwise would have to consult the Internet to view the images [emphasis added].
This statement smells of cowardice and compromise. We wanted to do the right thing, it claims, and publish the illustrations which, after all, are the subject of the book. But after we spoke to these experts (and you can't just ignore the advice of experts), we figured we'd skip out on our obligations to our author and readers and hide behind their advice, which we appreciate an awful lot.
It may also reveal an internal disagreement at Yale, with YUP personnel who favored inclusion of the illustrations overridden by higher administrators fearful of appearing insensitive to Muslims or being held responsible for any violence resulting from the publication of the cartoons.
If that's the case, let me invite anyone with access to the list to send it my way (myers@meforum.org). Confidentiality—and satisfaction—guaranteed.
SOURCE: Matthew Yglesias at his blog (8-11-09)
I cannot believe the Financial Times agreed to run this lead:
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world’s biggest and toughest job.
I really enjoyed The Pity of War and have spent years being amazed by how nutty Ferguson is as a columnist and pundit.
[HNN: Ferguson closes his column:"Six months in, Mr Obama still has the look of a lucky, two-term president. But that could change if voters become even more disenchanted with the legislative branch and start blaming the president for the looming fiscal train-wreck. The scariest possibility for Mr Obama is that the runaway deficit could leave him with the worst of both worlds: exploding debt and flat-lining growth. Even Felix the Cat’s luck ran out during the Depression. His creator Pat Sullivan drank himself to death in 1933, baffled that audiences now preferred mice like Mickey and Jerry. President Obama should take note."]
SOURCE: NYT (8-13-09)
In 2007, Dr. Kirby was one of two recipients of the Bancroft Prize, which is awarded annually by Columbia University to the authors of books “of exceptional merit” in American history, biography and diplomacy.
The Bancroft jurors cited Dr. Kirby’s 2006 book, “Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South” (North Carolina University Press), a passionate recounting of the history of human settlement. It discusses how the land sustained and shaped people’s lives but also how humans damaged the land.
Calling the book “elegantly conceived and beautifully written,” the jurors said that “although ‘Mockingbird Song’ is set in the South, it is about more than the South.”
“Kirby reflects profoundly on the relationships of Americans — and of humankind — to the natural world,” the jurors said.
Dr. Kirby, who in recent years was president of the Southern Historical Association, edited or wrote seven books. Before “Mockingbird Song,” he was best known for “Media-Made Dixie” (Louisiana State University Press, 1978), which traced the South’s role in the nation’s imagination. In movies, for example, he said, the South has been trapped by clichés of racists, graceful landed gentry, poverty, homespun rural values, stock-car racers and moonshiners.
“We need some new tropes,” Dr. Kirby told The New York Times in 1997. “I think what we’re doing is making Northern white folks feel good about themselves by telling the same story over and over again about the South.”
SOURCE: Telegraph.co.uk (8-13-09)
Earlier this year Dr David Starkey, the historian and Tudor specialist, caused a storm by accusing female authors of "feminising" British history.
However, rather than taking issue with Dr Starkey, she said: "I think in a way Starkey raised one or two valid points.
"Ninety per cent of the time these big biographies of male figures are done by men.
"I feel women should be less timid. I think perhaps women have done themselves down by not dipping their toes in the water.
"Women should try big male subjects rather than limiting themselves to wives and mistresses.
"Why don't they just be a bit bolder and have a go at male subjects themselves?"
SOURCE: Worldwide Faith News (8-12-09)
"Bill was a devoted supporter of the World Council of Churches and often accompanied his wife Jean to our New York office, where she was chief financial officer and later served as a loyal volunteer," said the Rev. Deborah DeWinter, Program Director for the United States, World Council of Churches. "Bill's knowledge of ecumenical history, his gracious kindness and his sense of humor made him an invaluable resource for us."
Bill and Jean Schmidt also staffed WCC exhibits and represented the WCC at the national meetings of many member communions, DeWinter said.
Schmidt is survived by Jean, with whom he celebrated 60 years of marriage in June.
The Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, said Schmidt's reputation as a scholar was widely known. "His clearly written and thoroughly researched biographies of Cavert and Leiper are major milestones in our understanding of ecumenism and how it evolved nationally and internationally," Kinnamon said.
Cavert was General Secretary of the Federal Council of Churches and the first General Secretary of the NCC when it formed in 1950. Leiper was a foreign affairs specialist for the World Council of Churches and the first head of the WCC's U.S. Office in New York.
World Council of Churches General Secretary, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia, recalled honoring Schmidt at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference for the WCC in Atlanta in 2004.
"Bill and Jean Schmidt assisted with registration and the publications table at that meeting and they presented an excellent image for the WCC -- efficient warmth with a constant readiness to help," Kobia said. "It's a gift to the WCC when volunteers have such a deep commitment and detailed knowledge of council programs, ministries and history. Our prayers are with Jean and Bill's many friends during this sad time."
William J. Schmidt, a Presbyterian, was retired professor of theology at St. Peter's College, Jersey City, N.J. He taught church history at New York Theological Seminary before becoming the first ordained Protestant scholar to teach theology at Jesuit St. Peter's. He was an officer of the North American Academy of Ecumenists.
Schmidt also taught at the University of the Philippines while on sabbatical, and studied at the University of London on a World Council of Churches scholarship.
He held a B.A. from North Central College, a B.D. from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary.
"Bill was both professorial and extremely pastoral," said Philip E. Jenks, a former member of the WCC U.S. Office staff and now NCC media specialist. "He'd take an interest in people that made them feel important. Whenever I saw him, he'd quote the title of a magazine article I had written years ago, just to show he had noticed it."
A poet as well as a scholarly writer, Schmidt added a tribute in verse to his biography of Cavert (Architect of Unity, Friendship Press,
1978). "I couldn't help but notice how closely the words suited Bill as well as Cavert - except that Cavert was 'small in stature' and Bill was over six-feet tall," said DeWinter.
SOURCE: St. Augustine Record (8-9-09)
He graduated from Old Dominion University and received his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Virginia. He was W.E. Smith professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where his specialties were the American South, rural and agricultural history, and environmental history. He was author or editor of seven books, including "Media-Made Dixie"; "Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960"; "Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society"; and "Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South," which won the Bancroft Prize in 2007. At his death, he was president of the Southern Historical Association. For some years he was editor of the series Studies in Rural Cultures at the University of North Carolina Press. He was a past president of the Agricultural History Society and a former Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Genoa in Italy. He also served on a number of editorial boards. He moved to St. Augustine in 2003.
SOURCE: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment (8-13-09)
The US military is supporting what I said. According to a poll it carried out among the Iraqis in its custody, some 36% percent of the 26,000 prisoners held by the US at the peak of the arrests said that they had never been inside a mosque, and 70 percent said that they were not regular mosque attenders. The Sunni and Shiite Iraqis in US detention centers got along fine and played soccer quite amicably with one another (why wouldn't they-- they were in agreement on the need to push the US military out of Iraq and were all paying the price together for their determination to do so). But all through this decade we were bombarded by the corporate media and the White House and Pentagon with with the message that the US was fighting religious forces in Iraq, specifically"Islamofascism," and that in fact it was the 'central front' in the war on 'Islamic terrorism.' In fact, the prisoners were mostly not religious. The US was fighting secular Iraqi nationalists and couldn't admit it for fear of looking like an occupier. Hence, its spokesmen lied about the guerrillas and made them out to be religious fanatics.
SOURCE: Sun Journal (8-11-09)
"Rivals," which examines how Lincoln put three of his opponents in the 1860 election in his Cabinet, was No. 14 on Amazon.com's bestseller list the Friday before Thanksgiving, no small feat for three-year-old nonfiction. (Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams from My Father" were No. 10 and No. 11 on that list, respectively.)
Goodwin spoke recently about her take on Obama and the lessons Lincoln offers him....
Q. The Civil War was a different time from this, and the context of a nation at war with itself seems different from the context of a nation politically divided but at war with Islamic radicalism overseas. Is Lincoln's experience relevant?
A. There's no question we're in a very different situation. At bottom, politics, leadership, is about human relations: how you can mobilize people to follow you, how you can bring a country together. Those things are universal.
Q. Do you see this as a Progressive era now?
A. I think it's a possibility. We could indeed be coming into one again.
Q. How would that manifest?
A. Government takes a greater responsibility for the health care of the country, to help alternative energy along in a deeper way, in national service. In each of these (Progressive) eras, it's not just what happens in the government, it's that people feel they want to be a part of what's happening in the country, that the citizens are active.
Q. What are you reading now?
A. I'm mostly reading Teddy Roosevelt now, because the next book I'm going to do is on Teddy Roosevelt and (William Howard) Taft and the muckraker journalists.
Q. Has Obama asked you to play any formal or informal role in the administration?
A. No. But I'd love to help out if I could.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (8-10-09)
Despite the inaccuracies, the show, starring Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyer as Henry VIII, had successfully recreated the drama and atmosphere of his court, said Dr Borman, the head of interpretation for Historic Royal Palaces.
Dr Borman, also the Heritage Education Trust chief executive, praised the show for having "undoubtedly stimulated interest in British history".
The Tudors, screened on BBC Two, has been heavily criticised by some historians for distorting history for dramatic effect.
Some have criticised the North American production, from US cable network, Showtime, that sold the rights to the BBC, in which characters in the time of Henry VIII wore costumes from the later Elizabethan era and travelled in Victorian carriages.
Dr Borman, who has studied the Tudors for "years", admitted to the Radio Times that it was historically inaccurate.
"I was determined to loathe the series, with its unfeasibly beautiful actors, dodgy costumes and improbable storylines, but found myself becoming strangely addicted," she said.
"I grew to appreciate The Tudors for its merits as a historical drama.
"Yes, the scriptwriters may have taken liberties with the facts, but they have also succeeded in re-creating the drama and atmosphere of Henry VIII's court, with its intrigues, scandals and betrayals."
One of the most vocal critics of the show has been historian David Starkey, who has described it as "gratuitously awful'' and riddled with errors and inaccuracies.
Dr Starkey, a specialist in the Tudor period, said previously that it was a disgrace the BBC had "squandered" public money on a historical drama which he claimed had been deliberately "dubbed down'' to appeal to an American audience.
SOURCE: AP (8-6-09)
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan and the U.S. special envoy to the country telephoned renowned Vietnam War historian Stanley Karnow on July 27 to discuss the two conflicts.
SOURCE: St. Augustine Record (8-9-09)
He graduated from Old Dominion University and received his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Virginia. He was W.E. Smith professor emeritus of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where his specialties were the American South, rural and agricultural history, and environmental history. He was author or editor of seven books, including "Media-Made Dixie"; "Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960"; "Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society"; and "Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South," which won the Bancroft Prize in 2007. At his death, he was president of the Southern Historical Association. For some years he was editor of the series Studies in Rural Cultures at the University of North Carolina Press. He was a past president of the Agricultural History Society and a former Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Genoa in Italy. He also served on a number of editorial boards. He moved to St. Augustine in 2003.
He is survived by a son, Matthew Kirby, of New York City; a daughter, Valerie Kirby, and her husband, Mark Bruhn; and two granddaughters, Ella and Sophie Bruhn, all of Fort Wayne, Ind.; two sisters, Susan Kirby, of Portsmouth, and Betsy Andrews of Midlothian, Va,; and by his companion of 17 years, Constance Pierce.
Following cremation, his remains will be interred in the family plot at West Point, Va. A memorial donation may be made to the Virginia Historical Society, P.O. Box 7311, Richmond, Va. 23221 or the Miami University Library, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056.
SOURCE: NYT (8-7-09)
Many people ask him questions about the Senate jail, which does not exist. And he spends a lot of time correcting rumors, like claims that tourists can still see pockmarks from the 1814 British attack on the Capitol. What they see is just corrosion, he says.
Mr. Baker, 69, will retire as the first Senate historian at the end of August, and Donald A. Ritchie, the associate historian, will take over his role. Mr. Baker has largely been responsible for shaping the mission and day-to-day operations of the Senate Historical Office. Congress established the office in the wake of the Watergate investigation, and began to emphasize the importance of record keeping after President Richard M. Nixon’s efforts to destroy official documents.
The historian has been responsible for educating schoolchildren and senators alike, often turning to 20 blue binders that hold nearly every kind of list imaginable, like tallies of senators who have been governors and records of senators who have written books while in office.
“He was all ready to go above and beyond the call of duty in providing his assistance,” Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, said in a statement about the aid Mr. Baker provided while Mr. Byrd was working on a four-volume history of the Senate for more than a decade. “Although he was responsible to 99 other senators, he was always there, ready and eager to help.”
Mr. Baker, who earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland, said senators often asked about the styles of previous leaders or sought information about procedural matters like filibusters.
“I can’t think of any leader in the last 30 or 40 years that has not had a lot of curiosity about where the Senate got where it is today,” he said....
SOURCE: Elaine Tyler May in the OAH Newsletter (8-10-09)
We also welcome Katha Kissman, who joins us as interim executive director. Katha brings to the OAH a rich and varied background and a wide range of experiences. She is a professional interim leader and consultant for non-profit organizations with more than twenty-five years of experience in the field. Her particular expertise is to join an organization at a time of transition and to provide a bridge to new permanent leadership.
Katha’s experience extends far beyond organizational leadership and administration. She has had a professional career as a singer, has set up programs in academic institutions in the Middle East, has written books, is a trained holistic healer, life coach, and a certified hypnosis therapist.
The best way to introduce Katha to the members is an interview in this column about her vast experience and unique background.
Elaine Tyler May: Before I heard about you, I had no idea that there was actually a professional niche for nonprofit interim leadership. How did you end up in this particular field?
Katha Kissman: When I stepped down as president and CEO of Leadership America, I decided that I wanted to be a consultant. At that time, there weren’t many consultants who offered interim services, and I thought it would give me an edge over my competition. I have developed a knack for organizational development and have an ability to size up the strengths and weaknesses of an organization rather quickly and I’m a good problem solver. I have found that I enjoy helping organizations bridge the gap until they find a new leader. Being an interim leader has allowed me to learn about so many different organizations and meet some fascinating people.
ETM: For which other organizations have you served as interim executive director, and what interests you specifically about working for the OAH?
KK: My two most recent experiences have been as interim development director for the National Crime Prevention Council (McGruff the Crime Dog) and interim executive director of the Linguistic Society of America. LSA is very similar to OAH in that it is also a learned society, serving its professional and academic members, and it also publishes a quarterly journal. I also look forward to learning more about American history and the diversity of involvement by OAH members in the field. Because I live in Washington, D.C., one of the most historic cities in our country, and have benefited from the rich cultural offerings of our museums and parks, it will be especially meaningful to support the mission of OAH. I’m also looking forward to being in Bloomington and on the Indiana University campus. What a charming place! And I have enjoyed meeting the staff--it looks like a great team!...
