Roundup: Talking About History

May 12, 2004

Is There Such a Thing as Hindu Fundamentalism?

Martin E. Marty, in his weekly newsletter, Sightings (May 10, 2004):On December 27, 1986 Arthur Hertzberg, Yvonne Haddad, and I were asked by the American Historical Association (AHA) to lead a plenary session on militant fundamentalisms in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  That was the first time I dealt with the subject.  Later, a six-year study for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences would prepare me for a topic that remains too relevant, even

May 10, 2004

Why is Clark -- of Lewis & Clark -- Neglected?

Landon Y. Jones, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers) (May 10, 2004): My friend Bud Clark is a direct descendant of William Clark, the explorer. During the current bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition -- May 14 is the 200th anniversary of the departure of the explorers up the Missouri River -- Bud has been enacting the part of his famous ancestor. Not long ago he was at a publi

May 8, 2004

The "Boche Bastards" Are Haunting France

Charles Bremner, in the London Times (May 5, 2004):A new book has exposed the shameful abuse of the 'Boche bastards', Charles Bremner in Paris writes. ALMOST six decades after liberation from the Nazis, France is being confronted with a shameful and neglected legacy of the war: the cruel treatment of about 200,000 French children who were fathered by German soldiers.Accounts by 15 of the so-called "Boche bastards", published this

May 8, 2004

Washington DC Is Running Out of Room for Memorials and Monuments

Steven Knipp, in the South China Morning Post (May 6, 2004):All nations are proud of their triumphs. But few countries have both the space and the money to build so many monuments to their leaders, and their accomplishments, as do the Americans. From the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, to Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the American landscape is awash with monuments and memorials, statues and shrines, to the great and the good.

May 7, 2004

Mexican-Americans Seek Their Place in History

Diane Smith, in the Star-Telegram (May 5, 2004): Henry Martinez trudged up a slope to his ancestors' resting place, balancing himself with a cane as he carried a Braum's paper bag filled with his family's history.This place -- El Camposanto de Cemento

May 7, 2004

Jefferson Lecture: Harvard Poet Says History Is Not Essential to a Liberal Education

Kelly Field, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 7, 2004): A humanities education should focus on language, literature, and the arts, not on history and philosophy, said the Harvard University professor Helen Vendler, who delivered the annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Thursday night. "The arts are too profound and too far-reaching to be left out of our children's patrimony," said

May 7, 2004

Kansas: Every 50 Years, It Makes History

Matthew Polly, in Slate (May 6, 2004): This is the year of anniversaries for Kansas and Topeka. Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court's decision in Brownv. Board of Education of Topeka began the end of legal segregation. One hundred and fifty years ago, the Kansas Territory was established, and Topeka became the free-state capital battling against pro-slavery LeCompton. Two hundred years ago, Lewis and Clark made their way through the area. And this yea

May 6, 2004

Rebecca Solnit: So Much for the Belief that Indians Are Vanishing

Rebecca Solnit, in www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute (May 6, 2004): The law of unexpected consequences prevails so frequently that perhaps it should not be so unexpected. For example, Laura Bush's attempt early last year to hold a symposium on"Poetry and the American Voice" while her husband was planning to saturation-bomb Baghdad so appalled poet, publisher and symposium invitee Sam Hamill that

May 5, 2004

Jonathan Harris: Why Are Academics Misrepresenting Reform of Title VI?

 Jonathan Calt Harris, in National Review (May 5, 2004):"Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the International Advisory Board to mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher education's specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction."

May 4, 2004

Using the Web to Rewrite the History of the "Deerfield Massacre"

Lynne Spichiger, Director of Website Exhibits, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum, in a piece written expressly for HNN (April 29, 2004): In the pre-dawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of 240 French and Native allies launched a daring, surprise, three-hour raid on the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts. By the end of the attack, 112 Deerfield men, women, and children were taken captive on a 300-mile forced march to Canada in brutal w

May 4, 2004

Peter Balakian: Writing About the Armenian Massacre

Peter Balakian, professor of English and the humanities at Colgate University, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 4, 2004): On a recent book tour for The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, I was asked by an eminent Armenian psychiatrist how I was able to write about massacre, deportation, rape, and torture without becoming depressed or even incapacitated. He told

April 30, 2004

Interview with Francis Fukuyama

An interview with Francis Fukuyama conducted by Ezzat Ibrahim, in Al-Ahram (April 29-May 5, 2004):You support the "preventive war" doctrine as a way to defend US national interests, but at the same time you believe ideological hostility to multilateralism within the US is a problem. Is there an inconsistency here? It is impossible to rule out the occasional need for pre

April 30, 2004

The Right-Wing Group Behind the Super Patriotic Japanese Textbook that Whitewashes History

David McNeill, in the South China Morning Post (April 23, 2004): The rain beat down last week on a forest of umbrellas filing through the modern, neon-lit streets of central Tokyo, but the message coming from inside the cavernous Kudan Kaikan Hall was an oddly old-fashioned one, reminiscent of 19th-century jingoism."Why are we teaching our children to hate Japan?" thundered one speaker."America, China and Britain don't teach their kids to hat

April 29, 2004

Innovation: Is Ours a Creative Age?

Leon Gettler, in the Australian Age (April 30, 2004): The big music companies are in deep trouble. According to figures this month, the latest US music sales of CDs, legal downloads and DVDs have been the best for a while but it's not enough to offset the sales slump that's battered the industry over the past few years. Dollars from world sales of recorded music fell by 10.9 per cent in the first half of last year. During the same period in

April 29, 2004

Michael Lind: Neocons Should Hesitate Before Embracing Winston Churchill

Michael Lind, in the Spectator (April 24, 2004): Soon after the installation by the Republican-majority Supreme Court of George the Second of the House of Bush, the American people learned that they had a new Founding Father: Winston Churchill. President George W. Bush let it be known that he had placed a bust of the British state

April 26, 2004

A Thousand-Plus Years of Anti-Muslim Feeling in France

Alain Ruscio, in Le Monde Diplomatique (March 2004):Many French people dislike and resent Frances Maghrebi residents and indeed Muslims in general. Why? Those who know a little history are likely to date the antipathy from the first French colonial conquests in 1830; men who did their national service in the 1950s will tell you it began in 1954 with the start of the war in Algeria. Young Maghrebis from underpri

April 24, 2004

Timbuktu's Archival Treasures Document a Flourishing Literate Past

Lila Azam Zanganeh, in the NYT (April 24, 2004):In popular imagination, the word Timbuktu is a trip of three syllables to the ends of the earth. Today this West African city is a slumbering and decrepit citadel at the southern edge of the Sahara, in Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet it is here that some of the most astonishing developments in African intellectual hist

April 23, 2004

The San Francisco Earthquake

Carl Nolte, in the San Francisco Chronicle (April 18, 2004):Today is the 98th anniversary of the earthquake and fire that destroyed San Francisco, a time to tell old stories about what writer Will Irwin called "The City That Was," a magical San Francisco that probably never existed except in memory. The old San Francisco, Irwin wrote, was "the gayest, most lighthearted, most pleasure-loving city on the western continent ... a city o

April 23, 2004

Rwanda's History Too Controversial to Teach

William Wallis, in the London Financial Times (April 17, 2004):Forgive thy neighbour How does a country recover from genocide? A decade after the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans, the government is concentrating on justice for the Tutsi victims. But many Hutus suffered too and the latest measures are struggling to bridge the deadly ethnic divide... Rwanda's history is considered too sensitive to be taught in schools, although teachers are confronted ev

April 22, 2004

Troy: Yes, It Existed (But as for the Rest of Homer's Story ... )

Rodney Chester, in the Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia) (April 17, 2004):Homer may have used poetic licence when he wrote his tale of the Trojan horse, and the war that razed an ancient city. Rodney Chester reports IT HAS love, betrayal, great warriors, brilliant cunning. It is the story of the Trojan Wars and as Troy expert Dr Eric Cline, of George Washington University in the United States says, there is a reason the story continues to fasci