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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.

America’s own Downton Abbey: Five history lessons based on the series by Katherine Howe

Historian Martin Kramer to head Israel's first liberal-arts college

Claude-Anne Lopez Dies at 92; Told of Franklin’s Private Life

John C. Reilly Jr., Navy historian and author

Klemens von Klemperer Dies at 96; Wrote of Nazi Era

Ravitch on Rhee

Beschloss now tweeting history

Tzvi Yavetz, prize-winning Israeli historian of Rome, dies at 88

What 'Lincoln' misses and another Civil War film gets right

Refugee and historian von Klemperer, who wrote about Nazi regime, dies at Mass. home at age 96

Is Diane Ravitch the Cassandra of school reform?

UPDATE: Joyce Appleby backing petition to disarm the filibuster

Yehuda Elkana, Israeli historian and critic of the "Holocaust industry," has died at age 78

Gerda Lerner, Pioneering Feminist and Historian, Dies at 92

America’s own Downton Abbey: Five history lessons based on the series by Katherine Howe

SOURCE: Cornell Universty Tumblr (1-14-13)

With the American premier of Downton Abbey, season three, here are five history lessons based on the popular television series provided by Katherine Howe, author and lecturer of American studies at Cornell University. The paperback of Howe’s novel, “The House of Velvet and Glass,” takes place in the same time period and will be released on Jan. 29 by Hyperion/Voice.

The real women behind Cora, Countess of Grantham and her mother, Martha Levinson

Many Gilded Age American families, long on wealth and short on pedigree, attempted to match their daughters with wealthy European aristocrats. One of the most notorious of these matches was the one brokered by Alva Vanderbilt, a socially ambitious belle from Mobile, Ala., who had married into a New York City railroad fortune, for her beautiful only daughter Consuelo. Consuelo was forced to marry Charles Spencer-Churchill, the ninth Duke of Marlborough in 1895, though both were in love with other people, and the New York girl reportedly wept throughout the wedding ceremony. Consuelo had been secretly engaged to another man, and Alva kept her daughter from eloping by locking her in her room. Upon the occasion of the marriage, the Duke was given $2.5 million in railroad stock - the equivalent of about $67 million today. Whereas Cora, Countess of Grantham and her husband Robert, Earl of Grantham, eventually come to love each other, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough separated in 1906, eventually divorcing in 1921....

Posted on: Monday, January 14, 2013 - 19:37

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Historian Martin Kramer to head Israel's first liberal-arts college

SOURCE: HNN Staff (1-14-13)

Middle Eastern historian Martin Kramer, author of various works on the Middle East and Islam -- including The Islamism Debate (1997), The Jewish Discovery of Islam (1999), and Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) -- has been officially named president-designate of Shalom College in Jerusalem, Israel's first degree-granting liberal arts college.

The college will teach a core curriculum based on key texts in Western and Jewish history.

Shalem College will begin its first semester in October.

From Mr. Kramer's blog:

All the credit for this remarkable achievement goes to my colleagues—I myself have remained “on deck” for these past four years (this year, as a visiting professor in America), while they have done the painstaking work of gaining accreditation, raising funds, finding a campus (a beautiful building in Kiryat Moriah, pictured), recruiting faculty, and much more. The leader of this monumental effort has been Dr. Daniel Polisar, the most indefatigable man I have ever known. With wisdom and grit, and a steady sense of purpose, he has forged ahead through crises and tribulations to this day—his day.

Posted on: Monday, January 14, 2013 - 15:03

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Claude-Anne Lopez Dies at 92; Told of Franklin’s Private Life

SOURCE: NYT (1-9-13)

He was a postmaster-inventor-diplomat-founding father — just another American revolutionary. She was two centuries younger but plenty worldly as well, with a blend of verve and pragmatism that had helped her escape Nazi-occupied Belgium by taxicab. Their first meetings were hardly memorable.

“I must admit that your words of wisdom left me cold,” Claude-Anne Lopez would write many years later. “But I had no choice: it was your papers or nothing.”

It was academia in the 1950s, and she was a woman in a man’s world. She took what she could get: a job transcribing the 30,000 documents that constitute the Papers of Benjamin Franklin at Yale University. She started as a transcriber at 65 cents an hour. She would become an authority — and an admirer....

Posted on: Monday, January 14, 2013 - 13:47

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John C. Reilly Jr., Navy historian and author

SOURCE: WaPo (1-12-13)

John C. Reilly Jr., 79, a Navy historian and author who retired in 2001 as director of the Naval Historical Center’s ship history branch, died Dec. 17 at his home in Fairfax County.

He had Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Anna Reilly.

Mr. Reilly joined the Naval Historical Center in the mid-1960s and became branch head in the mid-1980s.

During his time at the center, he was the author or co-writer of several books, including “United States Navy Destroyers of World War II in Action” (1985)....

Posted on: Monday, January 14, 2013 - 12:34

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Klemens von Klemperer Dies at 96; Wrote of Nazi Era

SOURCE: NYT (1-8-13)

Klemens von Klemperer, a refugee from Nazi Germany who wrote what is widely considered the seminal history of the movement among the country’s conservative elite to overthrow Hitler, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Easthampton, Mass. He was 96.

His death was confirmed by his son, James.

Dr. von Klemperer, an emeritus professor of history at Smith College, was one of a generation of refugee historians who helped lay the groundwork for modern German and European studies in the United States, a group that also included Hajo Holborn, Fritz Stern and Peter Gay.

A privileged child who came from a family of German bankers and industrialists, he had taken a leading role in demonstrations against Hitler as a student in Vienna before fleeing to the United States in 1938....

Posted on: Friday, January 11, 2013 - 12:08

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Ravitch on Rhee

SOURCE: WaPo (1-9-13)

The PBS show “Frontline” on Tuesday night aired John Merrow’s documentary on school reformer Michelle Rhee, which focused on the 3 1/2 years she was chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. There is sure to be a variety of opinions on what it said and what it didn’t say.

Here is the reaction of education historian Diane Ravitch, who has become the preeminent voice in the growing opposition to Rhee’s style of school reform. This appeared on Ravitch’s blog.

By Diane Ravitch

I was invited by Frontline to offer reactions to the documentary about Michelle Rhee. I was disappointed that the documentary did not mention that Rhee is now working on behalf of a far-right agenda of privatization; that Washington Teachers Union President George Parker now works for StudentsFirst; that Rhee’s “miraculous gains” as a teacher in Baltimore have been discredited....

Posted on: Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 10:44

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Beschloss now tweeting history

SOURCE: PBS (Click for video) (12-7-12)

How does modern technology allow us to engage in conversations about the past? Gwen Ifill talks to presidential historian Michael Beschloss about how the Twitter-verse has opened up new ways to view history in the digital age.

* * * * *

GWEN IFILL: NewsHour regular Michael Beschloss has written eight books and countless commentaries on the American presidency, but recently he's discovered a new way to engage a different audience, taking us back through the nation's contemporary history in 140 characters or less.

Michael joins us now.

Michael, what is with the 140-character chunks? When did you start doling out history this way?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, presidential historian: It is an antidote to all these long books I write.

It actually was during one of the debates right here in the studio we were watching, as you remember.

And Christina, our Christina Bellantoni, saw me looking at a search engine through Twitter comments on the two candidates. And she said, well, why don't you just go on Twitter yourself?

And I said, essentially, I hadn't really thought of that. Why don't I try?

GWEN IFILL: So, as you started to post things you found along the way, I want to -- before we show some of them, how do you come across these things that you find that you have been putting up?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, I'm not only generally interested in presidential history, but, for years, I have been fascinated in what images can evoke.

You could see one picture, it asks a lot of questions, and I hope gets people curious about other larger issues that relate to it.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let's show the viewers what we are talking about.

This first picture I want to show here shows in the foreground the very familiar Lyndon Baines Johnson, but...

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And that is not his third finger up there.

GWEN IFILL: And that is not his -- that is his index figure in the air.

And if you see behind him, however, there is John F. Kennedy. They were not really very close, but there he is kind of reaching over to grab him. What is going on here and when was this taken?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: That was taken just before the election of 1960.

But you look at it and it looks like sort of an icon of the 1960s, Johnson aggressively getting into the Vietnam War maybe and Kennedy sort of trying to restrain him. That is why that picture particularly touches a nerve.

But what actually happened was a couple days before the election, Kennedy came to Amarillo for a rally with Johnson. Kennedy began speaking, was at the airport, and Republican pilots began turning on their jet engines to drown out Kennedy.

Johnson was furious. So you can see him going, turn those engines off. You know, that is exactly what is going on.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: And this is 1960, before they were even serving together.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely.

GWEN IFILL: So, perhaps they were even friendlier at the time.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Indeed.

GWEN IFILL: I'm curious about what people thought about it when they saw it.

But let me show you another one. The next picture, which I was fascinated by, there is Richard Nixon. And someone appears to be pouring a beer over his head?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Yes, I put this out without telling what it was. And I said, what do all you think it is?

And one person wrote, it's Nixon celebrating his pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974.

(LAUGHTER)

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It wasn't.

This is Nixon actually at the Angel Stadium 1979. Angels won the division title. Bobby Grich, the second baseman, came over and poured champagne on Nixon's head. And it is novel because that is not exactly a scene that you normally see with Nixon. Some of the others who wrote in said, is this just Dick Nixon partying hard?

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: But what is interesting about it is, it goes completely against what we think of when we see -- even if we think of him partying hard, it is not quite that way.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Against type. And that is why an image like this is so arresting.

And you get not micro. Nixon, it turns out, was absolutely delighted to have this done, because, five years after Watergate or so, he was trying to pull himself back. He was enough of a politician to know that a picture in the newspapers of him celebrating that victory with the champagne on his head was worth an awful lot.

GWEN IFILL: I believe that was beer.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: I don't know if they make champagne in cans.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No, well, it was champagne of bottled beers.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: Exactly.

Now, this is the picture that first caught my attention of your tweeting, as I was going through my timeline, which is...

GWEN IFILL: It's very puzzling.

There is Bill Clinton clearly on the left, and in the center is George H.W. Bush. And next to him, he is shaking hands with George Wallace, the famous segregationist governor of Alaska. And I just couldn't -- I turned it upside-down trying to figure out where could this have happened where these three men were together.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, it is sort of like the Kennedy and Johnson. A lot of people said, is this Photoshop-ed? It couldn't be possible that this picture exists.

And a lot of the people who tweeted about this to me said, this must have been Photoshop-ed, too, because, first of all, George Wallace is a figure out of the '60s, and Clinton and Bush '80s and 90s. So that doesn't fit. Plus, he was one of the worse segregationists in American history, so why would Bush and Clinton be sitting at a picnic with him eating lobster?

And the other thing is that they didn't really sort of see it in terms of Bush and Clinton being at a picnic years before they ran against each other. Why would they have been so friendly? Plus, Bill Clinton looks as if he is about 12 years old.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: Plus, Bill Clinton later went on to defeat George H.W. Bush. And then their famous relationship came around to now they refer to each other as father and son.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Yes. Now they are very friendly. But at the time of this image, George H.W. Bush was vice president, gave a picnic for American governors. Clinton was a governor. George Wallace was too. And by then, Wallace had recanted and apologized for a lot of his segregationist positions.

GWEN IFILL: So this was in Maine, in Kennebunkport.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It was in Maine. Lobster, and Wallace is drinking some Mountain Dew, if you look closely.

(LAUGHTER)

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Culturally appropriate.

GWEN IFILL: And another thing in that picture that we were looking at, there is a blonde woman sitting next to George Wallace. Who is that?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Wallace is sitting 1983 with his third wife. This was Lisa.

During the '68 Wallace campaign, there were two singers. One was Mona. One was Lisa. So he finally married her.

GWEN IFILL: And the famous wife that we all knew about, Lurleen Wallace, was by that time dead.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Indeed. She had succeeded Wallace as governor. There was a one-term limit or four-year limit, so that Wallace could continue to try to pull the strings. And she died in the middle of her term.

GWEN IFILL: Fascinating.

So, as you look back as you come across these images, and you come across some audio occasionally that you post and other things, do you get -- take any heart at all from the kind of reactions you are getting from people who suddenly have discovered this through you on Twitter?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I love it, because what I'm trying to do is get people interested in history and get them to think about some of the larger issues.

And these picture do this.

And the other thing is, you and I have talked about this. We're living this an age in which imagery in presidential politics has become all the more important. So people have become pretty good at deciphering what they are seeing in a picture. And, oftentimes, there is an awful lot of meaning packed in there. And I hear from it -- from people about this on Twitter.

GWEN IFILL: So, are you spending all of your days now scrolling for the next interesting thing to get a reaction?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I am not spending all my days, my book publisher, please note.

(LAUGHTER)

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: But it is an interesting sideline.

And since I'm not likely to write a book about political pictures, it is interesting for me to do.

GWEN IFILL: Michael Beschloss, thanks a lot for opening that window for us.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: My pleasure, Gwen.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, online, history buffs are tweeting on behalf of George Washington, Paul Revere, and other historical figures. You can read about it on the Rundown.

Posted on: Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - 01:22

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Tzvi Yavetz, prize-winning Israeli historian of Rome, dies at 88

SOURCE: Israel National News (1-8-13)

Israel Prize winner and historian Tzvi Yavetz passed away Tuesday at the age of 88. Yavetz specialized in the history of ancient Rome. He was among the founders of Tel Aviv University....

Posted on: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:57

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What 'Lincoln' misses and another Civil War film gets right

SOURCE: CNN.com (1-8-13)

(CNN) -- He used the N-word and told racist jokes. He once said African-Americans were inferior to whites. He proposed ending slavery by shipping willing slaves back to Africa.

Meet Abraham Lincoln, "The Great Emancipator" who "freed" the slaves.

That's not the version of Lincoln we get from Steven Spielberg's movie "Lincoln." But there's another film that fills in the historical gaps left by Spielberg and challenges conventional wisdom about Lincoln and the Civil War.

"The Abolitionists" is a PBS American Experience film premièring Tuesday that focuses on the intertwined lives of five abolitionist leaders. These men and women arguably did as much -- maybe even more -- than Lincoln to end slavery, yet few contemporary Americans recognize their names....

Posted on: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:56

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Refugee and historian von Klemperer, who wrote about Nazi regime, dies at Mass. home at age 96

SOURCE: WaPo (1-7-13)

BOSTON — Klemens Wilhelm von Klemperer, a German refugee who wrote extensively about the rise and fall of the Nazi regime has died in Massachusetts. He was 96.

Von Klemperer was an emeritus professor of history at Smith College in Northampton. His Dec. 23 death of natural causes at his home in Easthampton was confirmed Monday by his son, James von Klemperer.

Klemens von Klemperer wrote numerous books and articles related to German and central European history, including “German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945.”...

Posted on: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:51

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Is Diane Ravitch the Cassandra of school reform?

SOURCE: Mark Naison for the History News Network (1-8-13)

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book, White Boy: A Memoir, was published in the spring of 2002.

In the spring and summer of 1965, as U.S. policymakers debated whether to send large numbers of U.S. ground troops to Vietnam to ensure that the South Vietnamese government not collapse, a longtime Washington insider named George Ball issued a fierce warning that the policy being recommended would be disastrous. Declaring that the conflict in Vietnam was a “civil war among Asians,” not a front of a global struggle against communism, Ball warned that sending U.S. ground troops lead would lead to national humiliation no matter how large the force sent or the technological advantage it possessed because it would cement the character of the war, from the Vietnamese side, as a struggle against a foreign invader. Ball’s advice needless to say, was disregarded, and the result was exactly as he predicted -- a humiliating defeat for the U.S. which extracted a terrifying toll in deaths and ecological damage on the Vietnamese people

In our time, a bipartisan initiative of equal import, though less immediately destructive consequences, a movement to revitalize public education in the U.S. and eliminate racial and economic gaps in educational performance, has prompted an equally momentous dissent from a Washington insider, this time in the person of a education scholar, Dr. Diane Ravitch. An undersecretary of education in the first Bush administration and an initial supporter of landmark “ No Child Left Behind” legislation, Ravitch became convinced that the fundamental assumption that undergirded bipartisan "Education Reform," that the “achievement gap” between black and Latino students on the one hand and white and Asian students on the other was caused by “bad teachers” and recalcitrant teachers unions rather than entrenched poverty, would lead to policy recommendations that would demoralize teachers, destabilize the nation’s public school system, profession, encourage privatization and profiteering and, in the long run, increase performance gaps between racial and economic groups.

As with George Ball before her, Dr. Ravitch’s recommendations were systematically ignored not only by second Bush administration, but also its successor under Barack Obama. And as with George Ball, her warnings are proving to be eerily prophetic. All over the nation, policies are being implemented which are leading to demoralization of teachers, to closing of schools which honorably served communities for generations, to the marginalization of special needs and ELL students, to testing scandals in high needs schools and districts, and to an uncontrolled proliferation of tests that has put profits in the pockets of test companies, while pushing aside science, history and the arts, and making a growing number of students hate going to school.

The question is not whether these policies -- an odd mixture of privatization, universal testing, and teacher/school accountability based on student test scores -- will be effective in reducing the impact of poverty on educational performance. The question is how much damage will be done before a critical portion of the public, the media, and the nation’s political leadership realizes how counterproductive these policies are.

If Vietnam is any precedent, such a “national wake-up call” on educational policy could be quite long in coming, and the damage inflicted immense. And as with Vietnam, only massive protest and civil disobedience will be able to stop the policy in its tracks.

Posted on: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 19:33

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UPDATE: Joyce Appleby backing petition to disarm the filibuster

SOURCE: ()

Joyce Appleby, emeritus professor of history at UCLA and author of "The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism," is circulating the petition posted below among historians who support filibuster reform. (This is the second time she has championed filibuster reform. The first time was in January 2011 when she circulated this petition.) She asks historians who wish to sign the petition to contact her at this email address: appleby@history.ucla.edu.

We, the undersigned, American historians, political scientists, and legal scholars call upon our senators to restore majority rule to the United States Senate by revising the rules that now require the concurrence of 60 members before legislation be can be brought to the floor for debate.

Signatories (UPDATED: 1/18/13)

Catherin Allgar, University of California, Riverside
Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University
Terry H. Anderson, Texas A&M University
Joyce Appleby, UCLA
Andrew Apter, UCLA
Stephen Aron, UCLA

Howard Robert Baker, II, Georgia State University
Peter Baldwin, UCLA
James M. Banner, independent scholar
Lois Banner, University of Southern California
Christopher Bates, California Polytechnic State University, Pomona
Randoph Baxter, California State University, Fullerton
Thomas Bender, New York University
Iryne Black, Newport Beach, California
Timothy Black, Newport Beach, California
Ruth Bloch, UCLA
John Porter Bloom, independent scholar
Christopher Boyer, University of Illinois, Chicago
T.H. Breen, Northwestern University
Roger D. Bridges, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
Judith Brown, Wesleyan University
Elizabeth Smith Brownstein, independent scholar

Mark Cammack, Southwestern Law School
Ann Caylor, independent scholar
John R. Chavez, Southern Methodist University
Aimee Lee Cheek, independent scholar
William Cheek, San Diego State University
Robert Cherny, San Francisco State University
Thomas Clark, California State University, Sacramento
Catherine Clinton, Queens University, Belfast
Lizabeth Cohan, Harvard University
Mary F. Corey, UCLA
Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University
Thomas R. Cox, San Diego State University
Daniel Czitrom, Mount Holyoke College

John D’Emilio, University of Illinois, Chicago
Matthew Dennis, University of Oregon
Toby L. Ditz, Johns Hopkins University
Michael B. Dorff, Southwestern School of Law
James Drake, Metropolitan State College of Denver
Thomas Dublin, SUNY, Binghamton
Ellen Carol DuBois, UCLA
David DuFault, San Diego State University

Ron Eller, University of Kentucky
Jeffrey Engel, Southern Methodist University

Philip Flemion, San Diego State University
Robert L. Frame, Normandale Community College
Peter Frederick, Wabash University

James Gelvin, UCLA
Mark T. Gilderhue, Texas Christian University
Philip Gleason, University of Notre Dame
Michael Green, College of Southern Nevada
Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State, University
Warren S. Grimes, Southwestern Law School
James Grossman, American Historical Society
Isabelle Gunning, Southwestern Law School

David H. Hall, Harvard University
Katy Harriger, Wake Forest University
Senator Gary Hart, independent scholar
Thomas S. Hines, UCLA
Peter Hoffenberg, University of Hawaii
David Hollinger, University of California, Berkeley
Darryl Holter, University of Southern California
Kirk Arden Hoppe, University of Illinois, Chicago
Daniel Howe, UCLA
John R. Huff, independent scholar

Sanford M. Jacoby, UCLA
Calvin Jillson, Southern Methodist University
Nicole Jordan, Harvard University

Kenneth Karst, UCLA Law School
Gregory L. Kaster, Gustavus Adolphus College
Herbert Kaufman, Yale Universitiy
Morgan Kousser, California Institute of Technology
John H. Kulczycki, University of Illinois, Chicago

Roger Lane, Haverford College
Jackson Lears, Rutgers University
Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School
Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School
Carol W. Lewis,   University of Connecticut
John Lithgow, Los Angeles
Peter Loewenberg, UCLA
Anne Lombard, California State University, San Marcos
Ralph E. Luker, Morehouse College

Pauline Maier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
John Majewski, University of California, Santa Barbara
Valerie Matsumoto, UCLA
Theresa M. McBride, College of Holy Cross
Muriel McClendon, UCLA
Arthur McEvoy, Southwestern Law School
Jonathan McLeod, San Diego Mesa College
Anne Mellor, UCLA
Ronald Mellor, UCLA
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Georgetown Law School, University of California, Irvine
Stephen Mihm, University of Georgia
Karen Miller, Oakland University
Norma Claire Moruzzi, University of Illinois, Chicago
Patrick Murray, Valley Forge Military College

Aden Nichols, independent scholar
David Nord, Indiana University
Fred Notehelfer, UCLA

Peter Onuf, University of Virginia

Joseph A. Palermo, California State University, Sacramento
Michael Perlmer, University of Illinois, Chicago
Cynthia Poe, independent scholar

Jack Rakove, Stanford University
Gowri Ramachandran, Southwestern Law School
Bennett Ramberg, foreign policy consultant
Rosalind Remer, independent scholar
David RePass, University of Connecticut
Andrew Robertson, City University of New York Graduate Center
Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and City University of New York Graduate Center
Alan Rogers, Boston College
Steven Ross, University of Southern California
Philip Rubio, North Carolina A&T State University
Teofilo Ruiz, UCLA

David Warren Sabean, UCLA
Crystal R. Sanders, Pennsylvania State University
Kevin M. Schultz, University of Illinois, Chicago
Ronald C. Schurin, University of Connecticut
Carole Shammas, University of Southern California
Linn Shapiro, independent scholar
Cynthia Shelton, UCLA
Richard Shenkman, History News Network
Shanti Singham, Williams College
Herbert Sloan, Barnard College, Columbia University
Melvin Small, Wayne State University
Billy G. Smith, Montana State University
Charles Smith, University of Arizona
Julia Clancy Smith, University of Arizona
Jonathan Soffer, New York University Polytechnic Institute
Paul Spagnote, Boston College
Bruce M. Stave,   University of Connecticut
Francis H. Stites, San Diego State University
Jess Stoddard, San Diego State University
J. Kelly Strader, Southwestern Law School

Glen Edward Taul, Campbellsville University
Morton T. Tenzer,   University of Connecticut
David Thelen, Indiana University

Laurel Ulrich, Harvard University
Albion M. Urdank, UCLA

Gregory Vanderbilt, independent scholar
Charles Venator,   University of Connecticut

Steven Weisenburger, Southern Methodist University
Robert Westman, University of California, San Diego
John K. White, Catholic University
Norton Wise, UCLA
Laura Wittern-Keller, University of Albany
Peter H. Wood, Duke University
Nan Woodruff, Pennsylvania State University
Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Tulane University

Mary Yeager, UCLA

Thomas Zoumaras, Truman State University
Roger T. Zeimet, Troy University
Michael Zuckert, University of Notre Dame

Related Links

Joyce Appleby, "Disarm the Filibuster" (January 2013)

Joyce Appleby, "The Urgency of a Senate Rule Change" (January 2011)

HNN Google Question: "What Killed the Talking Filibuster?"

Posted on: Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 17:46

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Yehuda Elkana, Israeli historian and critic of the "Holocaust industry," has died at age 78

SOURCE: Vancouver Sun (12-29-12)

Elkana was a survivor of Auschwitz, so when, in 1988, he published an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on “The Need to Forget”, few could question his credentials.

He recalled that he had been transported to Auschwitz as a boy of 10 and, after the camp was liberated, spent some time in a Russian “liberation camp”, where he encountered Germans, Austrians, Croats, Ukrainians, Hungarians and Russians, as well as fellow Jews. Later he concluded that “there was not much difference in the conduct of many of the people I encountered ... It was clear to me that what happened in Germany could happen anywhere and to any people.”

Moving to Israel after the war, Elkana experienced profound unease with the way in which the Holocaust was being manipulated by governments of Right and Left to craft an atavistic Jewish national identity. He became convinced that the motives behind Israel’s uncompromising approach to the Palestinians was “a profound existential 'angst’ fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust and the readiness to believe that the whole world is against us, and that we are the eternal victim”.

In a later interview he observed that parties on the Right of Israeli politics had used trips to Auschwitz to impart the lesson to young people that “this is what happens when Jews are not strong”, thereby justifying a repressive approach to the Palestinians. In this belief he saw the “paradoxical victory of Hitler”, whose appeal to the German people had also been based on the central idea of victimhood....

Posted on: Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 12:50

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Gerda Lerner, Pioneering Feminist and Historian, Dies at 92

SOURCE: NYT (1-4-12)

Gerda Lerner, a scholar and author who helped make the study of women and their lives a legitimate subject for historians and spearheaded the creation of the first graduate program in women’s history in the United States, died on Wednesday in Madison, Wis. She was 92.

Her death, at an assisted living facility, was confirmed by Steve J. Stern, a history professor and friend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Ms. Lerner had taught many years.

In the mid-1960s, armed with a doctorate in history from Columbia University and a dissertation on two abolitionist sisters from South Carolina, Ms. Lerner entered an academic world in which women’s history scarcely existed. The number of historians interested in the subject, she told The New York Times in 1973, “could have fit into a telephone booth.”...

Posted on: Thursday, January 3, 2013 - 16:10

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