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: Inside Higher Ed (12-8-10)
The German critic Walter Benjamin once gave a set of satirical pointers about how to write fat books -- for example, by making the same point repeatedly, giving numerous examples of the same thing, and writing a long introduction to outline the project, then reminding the reader of the plan as often as possible. Whether or not they are aware of doing so, many academic authors seem to follow his advice closely. Samuel Moyn's The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, published by Harvard University Press, is a remarkable exception. Its survey of the legacy of ideas later claimed as cornerstones of the politics of human rights is both dense and lucid; its challenging reassessment of recent history is made in a little over two hundred pages. It's almost as if the book were written with the thought that people might want to read it.
After writing a review of The Last Utopia, I interviewed the author by e-mail; a transcript follows. Moyn is a professor of history at Columbia University and the editor of Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Q: Describing your book as"a critique of the politics of human rights" has occasionally gotten me puzzled looks. After all, what's to criticize about human rights? How do you describe or explain your project in The Last Utopia?
A: As a historical project, The Last Utopia mainly tries to sort out when"international human rights" -- whether as a set of concepts or a collection of movements -- came about. I conclude: pretty recently. They are slightly older as a set of concepts than as a collection of movements, but in both senses they came to prominence in the 1970s, not before....
SOURCE: New Statesman (11-30-10)
In this week's London Review of Books, the first four letters are devoted to discussing Richard J Evans's damning review of the American historian Timothy Snyder's recent book, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. In one of the missives, the distinguished historian of Poland, Norman Davies, writes that Evans's review had treated Snyder as"an egregious interloper fit only to be chased from the parish", whilst in another letter a leading historian of the eastern European Jewry, Anthony Polonsky, argues that"Evans attacks Snyder for overemphasising the sufferings of the Poles at the hands of both Stalin and Hitler, but Snyder's figures for Polish casualties are lower than those usually cited, and they reflect the most recent research."
In his review of Snyder's book published in the 4 November issue of the LRB, Evans berated Snyder for his focus on the geographical area (Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Western Russia) that gives the book its title, Bloodlands:"By focusing exclusively on what he calls the 'bloodlands', Snyder also demeans, trivialises or ignores the suffering of the many other Europeans who were unfortunate enough to fall into Nazi hands." Evans went on in his review to list Snyder's apparent omissions from his account of Nazi and Soviet mass extermination, and accused him of writing with a geographical and historical myopia:"The fundamental reason ... for the book's failure to give an adequate account of the genesis of the Final Solution, is that Snyder isn't seriously interested in explaining anything. What he really wants to do is to tell us about the sufferings of the people who lived in the area he knows most about."
SOURCE: WaPo (12-8-10)
Inside, Ellen Evans, a 20-year-old English major, was doing just that, standing among sleeping bags and clothes strewn on the floor of an "occupied" auditorium. Along with tens of thousands of other British students who have undergone a political awakening in recent months, she has cast aside a life of carefree pub crawls to join what many here are calling the most widespread university demonstrations here since the Vietnam War....
"A lot of students feel this overwhelming sense of disillusionment," said Sylvia Ellis, associate professor of history at Northumbria University. "This is the first time that many of them have come face to face with the fact that politicians will let them down."
Now, the student opposition - including building occupations at Cambridge, Manchester University, Birmingham University and scores of others - has generated the seven-month-old coalition's most serious political challenge. The Liberal Democrats are bitterly split, with one block set to vote against the measure. In an olive branch to students, the government agreed Wednesday to offer more flexible student loan terms....
SOURCE: Washington Examiner (12-8-10)
"He is certainly straining to prove that he is tough," said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. "But there is a real threat to the White House now in that it is officially open season on the administration from the left and the right....
"The key risk in all of this for Obama is that he is not a naturally tough character. Scott Sandage, a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, said Obama's short stint in the Senate didn't give him a killer instinct for legislative wrangling.
"It often seems like when Obama recedes, he is trusting the process to drive itself -- and it just doesn't work that way," Sandage said.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (12-7-10)
The pressure of the gaokao has been blamed for a lack of creativity in China by some critics. Xu Jilin, a professor of history at East China Normal University, whose son is at a Shanghai middle school, wrote in October that "this rigid examination system has created an exam-oriented education from the kindergarten, a destruction of talent and waste of youth."
He added that he felt that 80 per cent of his son's studies had not helped him learn something new, but had prepared him for tests. "Doing exercises every day is like practising gymnastics, repeating the same moves every day, dozens or hundreds of times in order to make sure that absolutely no errors are made during the exam."...
SOURCE: CNN.com (12-7-10)
Foner is a history professor at Columbia University and has written many acclaimed books on the Civil War period, including"Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men."...
How different is today's GOP party from the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln?
It could not be more different. Lincoln in 1860 did not receive a single vote in most of the southern states. His Republican party was the party of opposition to the expansion of slavery and later of emancipation, and a strong federal government protecting the civil and political rights of black Americans. Today the party's center of gravity is in the South, it opposes most federal initiatives (except defense) and is the inheritor of Richard Nixon's"southern strategy" aimed almost exclusively at white voters....
SOURCE: Palm Beach Post (12-6-10)
He is survived by his partner of 30 years, Fred L. Eckel, a niece and two nephews.
Born in East Liberty, Ohio, Curl received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Ohio State University, where he studied American history.
He moved to Boca Raton in 1964 to teach history at FAU, where he was one of 60 original faculty members, and remained there until his retirement in 2004....
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle (12-6-10)
For years, Kiehn knew about "A Trip Down Market Street," a 12-minute silent film, shot in San Francisco from a cable car. The Library of Congress dated the film to 1905, but Kiehn suspected otherwise. Studying weather reports, vehicle registration records and show-biz trade publications, he discovered that "Market Street" was in fact shot four days before the great earthquake of April 18, 1906.
Suddenly, the film took on a haunting poignancy: We now look at the San Francisco newsboys, the carriage jockeys and the women in elaborate hats, and know that many will soon be dead....
SOURCE: Focus Taiwan (12-3-10)
Chinese scholars are known to have been copying Chiang's diaries at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and, according to a professor of history at National Chengchi University, Liu Wei-kai, if China has organized a "group effort, " it could publish what its scholars have handcopied from the U.S. ahead of Taiwan.
Without coordination over this matter, Liu said Taiwan may lose its advantage in the research of modern Chinese history, Liu said. "If mainland China wins over the right to interpret history, Taiwan may be further marginalized," he said.
Huang Ke-wu, director of the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica, agreed, saying if the research community here cannot have an easy access to the historical materials, "how can we fight an academic warfare?"
He urged the government to get the Chiang house in order and publish the late president's diaries quickly, so that local students will be able to use the historical data more conveniently....
SOURCE: WaPo (12-4-10)
That was the lesson of the showdown Thursday between Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and the rest of the House of Representatives. Rangel's colleagues voted overwhelmingly to censure him for ethics violations - a punishment that included a public scolding in the House chamber.
But Rangel didn't cooperate. The rebuke would only work if he felt ashamed.
And he didn't....
"If you show shame, or show an honest contriteness, that's likely to appear in a campaign commercial against you," said KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College in New York. "The fact is that there's really no incentive to admit to any wrongdoing in this kind of environment."...
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed (12-6-10)
He was working on his dissertation, "Opposition, Incorporated: On the Homosexualization of Post-War American Art," when in 1989 the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, called off an exhibit of sexually explicit work by Robert Mapplethorpe, amid calls from many conservative lawmakers to punish the National Endowment for the Arts for awarding a grant to the show. Since then, no major American art museum has attempted a show focused on gay sexuality -- until one that just opened, co-curated by Katz....
The new exhibit, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," is at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. The exhibit's guide says that the work "considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art -- especially abstraction -- were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment." The periods covered range from the era when sexuality could only be hinted at to a more open society. The reviews have been strong, with The Washington Post calling it "one of the best thematic exhibitions in years," with "powerful art."
The new exhibit, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," is at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. The exhibit's guide says that the work "considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art -- especially abstraction -- were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment." The periods covered range from the era when sexuality could only be hinted at to a more open society. The reviews have been strong, with The Washington Post calling it "one of the best thematic exhibitions in years," with "powerful art."
But last week, the Smithsonian removed one controversial work -- amid calls from some Republicans to have the show shut down, raising the question of how much has changed since 1989.
Katz is furious about the removal of the work, a video with metaphors about the experience of having AIDS. And he sees similarities between now and 1989. "Once again, they are going after the homos, and especially homos with AIDS," he said. "It was an old habit that was hard to let go of. It's raw politics in America." But Katz -- who is this year beginning a doctoral program in visual studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo -- sees progress as well. In an interview from London, where he was participating in a conference at the Tate Modern when the piece was removed, he discussed what he sees as the significance of "Hide/Seek" to art history and scholarship....
SOURCE: NYT (12-4-10)
This research, which has only recently become possible, thanks to a new generation of powerful digital tools and databases, represents one of the many ways that technology is transforming the study of literature, philosophy and other humanistic fields that haven’t necessarily embraced large-scale quantitative analysis.
Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs, the two historians of science at George Mason University who have created the project, have so far charted how frequently more than two dozen words — among them “God,” “love,” “work,” “science” and “industrial” — appear in British book titles from the French Revolution in 1789 to the beginning of World War I in 1914. To Mr. Cohen, the sharply jagged lines that dance across his graphs can be used to test some of the most deeply entrenched beliefs about the Victorians, like their faith in progress and science: “We can finally and truly test these and other fundamental claims that have been at the heart of Victorian studies for generations.”...
SOURCE: Citizen Times (12-1-10)
Citizen Times: Mr. Pipes, you head various organizations concerning the Middle East and Islam, and are one of the best known American writers on these subjects. How did this all begin for you?
Daniel Pipes: I am a historian of Islam with a special interest in the role of Islam in public life. I received my Ph.D. in 1978, just as Ayatollah Khomeini appeared. For the first time in modern history, Islam had a large and obvious role in Western public life. What had been in the 1970s an abstract interest turned very practical. Islamic matters subsequently became very topical. That prompted me to transit from medieval history to current events. While I cover many other topics besides Islam, Islam remains central to my interests. I have a perspective I hope is useful to understand the role of Islam in politics.
Citizen Times: And what is that perspective?
Daniel Pipes: That Islam is deeply important to the public lives of Muslims. That Islam is a religion of laws, and those laws are quite permanent and universal. That they are not the same everywhere at all times, but the basics are consistent. That there are times of greater emphasis and times of lesser emphasis but Muslims always come back to these laws. Now, of course, is a time of greater emphasis. Islamic laws have far greater power than they had when I entered this field over forty years ago. How does one understand this change; how do Muslims view it, and how does the West respond to it? – these are some of the questions that I focus on.
Citizen Times: You emphasize the difference between Islam and Islamism. Why?
Daniel Pipes: It is a mistake to see all of Islam as Islamism. Islamism is a trend within Islam, at the moment a very powerful one. People who have just arrived at the topic often think Islamism is all of Islam. As someone who followed Islamic issues forty years ago, when Islamism barely existed, I have a different perspective. Further, plenty of Muslims hate Islamism. So, it is a mistake to equate Muslims with Islamists, to assume that all Muslims agree on applying Islamic law to become strong and rich or to achieve social justice.
Citizen Times: What does Islamism mean to you? Is it just a very traditional way of Islam or the terrorist way like Al-Qaeda does or the political Islam way like the Muslim Brotherhood?
Daniel Pipes: The Muslim Brotherhood is the most important Islamist organization. Hassan al-Banna in Egypt modernized Islamic ideas in the 1920s and adapted them to how we now live. He and others turned traditional Islam into an ideology. The 1920s was a period when totalitarianism looked like the way of the future in Germany, Russia, and especially in Italy. Banna took basic totalitarian ideas and applied them to Islam. He inserted Islamic content into a totalitarian structure. Islamism is modern, just like fascism and communism are modern.
Al-Qaeda comes out of a quite different tradition, the Wahhabi one, originating in Arabia.
Citizen Times: Why do Islam and totalitarianism combine so successfully?
Daniel Pipes: For some decades the combination wasn't that successful. It eventually prevailed thanks to much work by many Islamists over a long time – plus a felt need for this outlook. The great challenge to Muslims in the modern period is to explain what went wrong: Why are Muslims, who believe they should be the wealthiest and most powerful people, in fact the least wealthy and least powerful? What went wrong? Especially from the 1970s forward, Islamism has provided a widely convincing answer to that question: If you want to be successful, comes the reply, then apply Islamic law. Live by the law. Spread the law.
Citizen Times: But this is a quite similar view to the Jewish one. And Jews are not at all dangerous to the world …
Daniel Pipes: Islam and Judaism are similar in that both are based on laws, unlike Christianity. But Jewish law as understood the last 2,000 years is limited to private law. In contrast, Islamic law is both private and public. There is no Jewish law about warfare; but there is an Islamic law of warfare.
Citizen Times: Is Islam a religion?
Daniel Pipes: Yes, Islam is a monotheistic religion like Judaism and Christianity. Islamism is a radical utopian ideology like fascism and communism.
Citizen Times: We defeated fascism and communism through wars. Is there a chance to defeat Islamism and just have Islam the religion?
Daniel Pipes: Yes. World War II ended fascism as a world force; it's not been a serious phenomenon since then. The Cold War effectively ended communism. The Islamist challenge must be defeated in similar fashion. 1945 resulted from blood and steel; 1991 resulted from complex factors, but it was in its final stages not violent. These are the endpoints, total violence and almost no violence. The way to victory against Islamism will surely fall somewhere in between.
Citizen Times: What does this mean practically? Do we have to fight wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran to bring them democracy and finally stop Islamism?
Daniel Pipes: In principle, yes to democracy, but at this time, go slow, slow, slow because, ironically, democracy at present strengthens Islamism. I agreed with George W. Bush's change in policy in 2003 to focus on building democracy but warned then of the need to proceed cautiously. He wasn't careful and therefore created new problems.
Defeating Islamism requires the use of every means from bombers to radios, from fighting a hot war to fighting a cultural war. We should use economics, diplomacy, and all else. Wars are not just fought on the literal battlefield anymore but often are principally about ideas. There is too much focus on violence, especially terrorist violence. People tend to reduce the problem to a"war on terror." Of course, terrorism is part of it, but not the whole of it.
Citizen Times: Is terror not necessary to promote Islamism?
Daniel Pipes: Not at all. The record shows that Islamists succeed more with non-violent means than violent ones. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Islamist organizations in the West have greater success than Khomeini or Al-Qaeda. They achieve more by working through the political system, the schools, the media, and the law courts than do their counterparts by blowing things up. How can killing people get you to the top when you are as weak as the Islamists are? In contrast, it is not hard to see how working the system gets you to the top. I watch with fascination and horror as that process takes place in the West, and most rapidly in the United Kingdom. Turkey and the United Kingdom are particularly significant countries to watch.
Assuming Iranians do not acquire or explode atomic weapons, Turkey is the greater long-term threat, say in 20, 30 years. Iran will not be such a long-term problem because Iranians resist Islamism. Turkey is the greatest problem going forward because Islamists are working through the system there and doing it right. Note: There is no terrorism coming out of Turkey.
Citizen Times: But how can we win this war of ideas in our countries? We show our free life every day to the Muslim communities, but they seem to get more and more distant.
Daniel Pipes: Two steps are necessary to win this war. First, non-Muslims must use the many means at their disposal. Second, Muslims must offer an alternative to Islamism. One needs an Adenauer, one needs a Yeltzin, who will offer something better. These are not perfect analogies, but they give an idea what I mean. It is not enough to defeat the totalitarian regime; someone has to offer an alternative vision. That's where reform Muslims play a crucial role. They are just beginning this work and it's going to be a long time before they have a full program to offer. It is critical that they get help and encouragement from non-Muslims.
Citizen Times: You disagree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who opposes the Muslim reformers, because she thinks, they mix up everything and make things even worse?
Daniel Pipes: I respect her very much, but I also disagree with her on this point. We need a policy to move Islam in our direction. Denouncing Islamism is not enough; we need a program to defeat it, a mechanism to take us to victory. Anti-Islam critics like Ayaan Hirsi Ali do not offer such a program.
All religions, including Islam, have histories, meaning that they change over time. I saw this in my own career, for Islamism was almost nonexistent when I entered the field of Islamic studies in the late 1960s. Today it dominates. If Islamism can rise, it can also fall. In contrast, Hirsi Ali sees Islam as always static and unchanging.
Citizen Times: She would say her program is education: education about the secular state and humanistic values. Isn't that a program?
Daniel Pipes: Two points: First, she's partially restating what I am saying about reform Islam. Teaching Muslims humanism ultimately means reforming Islam. By the way, that was the situation that prevailed in the Muslim"liberal age" of 1800-1940.
Second, the Islamist idea is so powerful that Western secular education does not succeed. We see this in Europe, where state schools teach secularism but largely fail to convince Muslim students who believe they possess a superior idea, indeed a superior civilization. You can't fight Islamism with secular, humanist ideas coming out of Europe. Only something from within Islam can defeat it; ideas coming from Muslims must argue with other ideas coming from Muslims. It is an internal Muslim civil war, except the one side hasn't deployed any troops yet, giving it a lopsided quality.
Citizen Times: This means, Geert Wilders is wrong in saying Islam is unchangeable?
Daniel Pipes: Yes. I consider him a heroic figure and have written that he is the most important politician in Europe. He and I are in the same trench. We are fighting the same enemies. But we have a different understanding of the future of Islam. I don't see that he has a feasible program within a context of a liberal democracy. One cannot, and I do not want to, throw away all that we have achieved to deal with the Islamists. I wish to deal with them consistent with who we are.
Muslims have the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else. They just don't have special rights. I want them to be regular citizens, not worse or better off. We have legislatures because things change. You can't have laws that continue forever. I am perfectly willing to adapt to Muslims and Islam in a reasonable fashion. I am not willing, however, fundamentally to change who we are. When Muslims come to the West, they have to accept Western ways. They can request reasonable accommodation within the existing system; they can't change the system itself. Islamists are trying to change the system. We must push back and say no, absolutely not.
Citizen Times: Muslims in Europe are more criminal than the indigenous populations, less employed, and more dependent on the welfare state.
Daniel Pipes: Pathologies abound among Muslims in Europe: poverty, unemployment, violent crime, drug trafficking, and so forth. Yes, Muslims are partly responsible for this set of problems but, frankly, it also results partly from actions by indigenous Europeans. Europeans are often unwilling to accept, employ, and deal with Muslims as equals. Günter Wallraff, a German reporter, pretended to be a Turk in 1985 and thereby demonstrated the troubles a Gastarbeiter faced. I would not want to be looking for a job in Germany, then or now, with the name Mohammed.
Citizen Times: Concerning getting a job with a Muslim name: Did Germans always reject those people out of xenophobia, or did they reject them because of all the problems connected to Muslim employees?
Daniel Pipes: Both: The situation results from bias and from behavior by Muslims.
By way of contrast, note the United States, where social pathologies barely exist among Muslims. The U.S. has problems with extremists and terrorists, to be sure, but no general"Muslim problem" exists there. No areas of Muslim geographic concentration have developed, with just one or two exceptions, and those are not particularly problematic. Americans more readily accept Muslims and employ them. Further, the lesser welfare system in the United States makes Muslims less dependent on government hand-outs and more entrepreneurial. The combination of bias and welfare explains much about the predicament of Muslims in Europe.
Citizen Times: The American journalist Christopher Caldwell wrote a book titled On the Revolution in Europe in which he argues that Muslim immigration will change Europe from its roots.
Daniel Pipes: I agree and believe Europe faces major problems and bleak options. I see either of two likely difficult futures for Europe. One is summarized by the word Eurabia, meaning an extrapolation of the trends of the last 55 years: more Muslims, more Islam, more Islamic law, and more Islamization, as symbolized by the Mosque of Notre Dame in Paris. The other future involves resistance to Islamization, as represented by your brand new political party, Die Freiheit.
Actually, the latter trend is growing faster. If you draw a graph of Muslims and Islam since 1955, it goes steadily up. But if you draw a graph of anti-Islam since 1990 it ascends faster. Everywhere you look there is a growth in anti-Islamic feelings.
I worry in both cases. I don't like Eurabia, and I fear that anti-Islamic sentiments will lead to populism, fascism, civil insurrection, and violence. The widespread reluctance by leaders to take up this topic only makes matters worse.
Citizen Times: So is this anti-Islamic movement just a new form of fascism or xenophobia, or is there really a danger in Islam?
Daniel Pipes: Reality inspires anti-Islamic sentiments, but I worry about them. I hope very much that Europeans will act responsibly. Right now, one finds a reluctance to deal with political parties critical of Islam. There is a political crisis over this in Sweden right now. When Jörg Haider was prime minister, Austria was treated like Rhodesia. I did not care for Haider, but there needs to be an acknowledgement of the fears he represented.
The more that legacy parties ignore such fears, the more extreme their expression might become. The old parties have a responsibility to acknowledge this set of issues and incorporate them, legitimize them so they do not become radicalized. The Netherlands is probably the key country because it is furthest along in this process. What is Geert Wilders going to do? What will the response to him be? This is an important precedent for all Europe.
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed (12-1-10)
Underlying the legal dispute is the debate over what happened to the Armenians during World War I. Among most scholars of genocide, there is a wide consensus that the deaths (some say up to 1.5 million of them) constituted a genocide. A minority of scholars (and many Turkish-American groups) disagree -- and some of those who differ have been called "deniers." The material that was removed from the Minnesota website was a list of "unreliable websites" for research on genocide -- including the website of the Turkish Coalition of America.
The Minnesota lawsuit follows a retraction (under legal pressure) by the Southern Poverty Law Center of statements it made about a retired University of Massachusetts professor who has written books that cast doubt on the view that the Armenians suffered a genocide. David Saltzman, a lawyer involved in the suit against Minnesota and the one against the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an interview Tuesday night that "the prospect of further litigation is great."...
SOURCE: PR Newswire (12-1-10)
To our knowledge, Professor Lewy has never sought to deny or minimize the deaths of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey; nor has he sought to minimize the Ottoman regime's grievous wartime miscalculations or indifference to human misery in a conflict earmarked by widespread civilian suffering on all sides. What he has argued in his book, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, and elsewhere is that the present historical record does not substantiate a premeditated plan by the Ottoman regime to destroy because of ethnicity, religion, or nationality, as opposed to deport for political-military reasons, the Armenian population. In this view, he is joined by such distinguished scholars as Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University. As additional troves of archival information come to light, Professor Lewy advocates greater study of this contentious subject.
We deeply regret our errors and offer our sincerest apologies to Professor Lewy.
Professor Lewy adds the following comment:
"The SPLC has made important contributions to the rule of law and the struggle against bigotry. Thus I took no pleasure in commencing legal action against it. But the stakes, both for my reputation as a scholar and for the free and unhindered discussion of controversial topics, were compelling. It must be possible to defend views that contradict conventional wisdom without being called the agent of a foreign government."
SOURCE: Press Release (12-1-10)
The deadline for receiving submissions for the 2010 prize is 31 December 2010. The Society expects to announce the winning candidate in the spring of 2011. For further information on this prize, please contact the Whitehill Prize Committee, c/o Linda Smith Rhoads, Meserve Hall, Second Floor, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115.
SOURCE: NYT (12-1-10)
That is because his sons — three trained as lawyers, one as an architect — have moved away and built their careers in larger Texas cities, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio....
Faced with an economic and social decline, shrinking synagogue membership and the eventual end of cemetery oversight, struggling Jewish communities like Laredo, Sumter, S.C., and Marion, Ind., are turning to a philanthropic matchmaker for help: David Sarnat, the developer of the Jewish Community Legacy Project, helps them find organizations in places with thriving Jewish populations that can take over cemetery maintenance and transfer or sell synagogues, religious scrolls and other assets when their members have moved away or died....
According to Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, most Jews in the United States have migrated from small communities to large cities: he estimates that 85 percent of the country’s 5.2 million Jews live in 20 metropolitan areas, primarily on the East and West Coasts and in Sun Belt states....
The process of dismantling a community, experts say, is fraught with potential tensions involving both purse and heartstrings. Mark A. Raider, a professor of modern Jewish history at the University of Cincinnati, cited disagreements over disposition of material assets....
SOURCE: Adirondack Almanack (12-1-10)
Welsh served the Adirondack Museum for over two decades, first as a Curator and then as Director. Just two months after her ascension to the top spot in February 2007, the museum unveiled its ill-fated and sometimes controversial plan to build a museum extension in Lake Placid. Those plans were later abandoned, and the former Adirondack Church of the Nazarene that had been located on the site was demolished....
