This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 26, 2008
Mary Beard, a professor in classics at Cambridge, says in her blog that it is time to ditch the Olympic torch:
I don’t quite understand how we have forgotten that the “Olympic Torch” ceremony was invented by Hitler and his chums.
If ever there was an “invented tradition” well worth stamping out, it is this ridiculous, Fascist-inspired waste of money – which sends a Bunsen Burner around the world at tremendous cost for several months before the Games, manned (and womanned)
Source: Vancouver Sun
Mar 26, 2008
Without a radical shift in thinking about first nations archaeology, B.C. is in danger of losing what is left of its ancient heritage and sparking heated conflict with natives, according to PhD candidate Michael Klassen.
Virtually all of the first nations' 9,000-year-old footprint in southwestern B.C. has been eradicated by development, Klassen said.
Most of it has been destroyed lot by lot, because each property taken alone may not register as scientifically significant.
Source: AP
Mar 26, 2008
A prestigious South Korean university under fire for hiring a professor who lied about her credentials contends in a federal lawsuit that Yale caused a national uproar by wrongly confirming she had earned a degree there, then falsely denying it had done so.
Dongguk University is seeking more than $50 million in damages, saying Yale's actions "severely tarnished" its stellar reputation, sparked a criminal probe, cost employees their jobs and led to a decline in donations, g
Source: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
Mar 26, 2008
From the inception of this public website, we imagined that it would have a companion forum for the exchange of ideas among persons with a professional interest in U.S. strategy and foreign policy. We call that companion MESHNet. MESHNet is a members-only message board, ideal for hosting open and structured discussions. We plan to develop MESHNet as a place where established and budding experts can express views among their peers, and where we can quickly congregate to enlighten and update one a
Source: Peter Dimock, at the Columbia University Press Blog
Mar 26, 2008
First published in English in 2006, Jörg Friedrich’s The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 is now available in paperback.
Upon publication of the hardcover edition of the book, Peter Dimock, the editor of The Fire, wrote the following essay discussing the book’s importance, its relevance to contemporary events, and how we think about the conduct of modern warfare:
Sometimes an editor can feel in his bones when the prose on the page of a manuscript he is hol
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 26, 2008
Researchers who use the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress are up in arms over rumors that it is about to be shut down to make way for exhibition space. They have begun a grass-roots campaign to urge concerned scholars to write protest letters to their representatives in Congress and to James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress.
Some have even set up a Web site, Save the European Reading Room at the LC!, to encourage people to take action.
The conster
Source: Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 24, 2008
Historian Wilson Jeremiah Moses called Mary Lefkowitz "an obscure drudge in the academic backwaters of a classics department." Africana-studies professor Anthony Martin, her colleague and chief combatant at Wellesley College, dubbed her a "national leader of the Jewish onslaught against Afrocentrism in general, and me in particular." Khalid Muhammad, formerly of the Nation of Islam, railed against her in 1997 as "Left-o-witch," a "hook-nosed, lox-eating, bagel-
Source: Roman Modrowski in the blog: http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com
Mar 23, 2008
[Roman Modrowski is an assistant sports editor for the Chicago Sun-Times. He was a beat writer for the Bulls and Notre Dame football. He also covered prep sports.
Roman is a native of East Chicago, Ind., and a graduate of Purdue University Calumet.]
There have been so many analyses, fantasies and theories devoted to the assassination of John F.
Kennedy that anything purporting itself as a fresh perspective runs the risk of suffocation. Anything less than a smoking gun
Source: Deseret News
Mar 23, 2008
Gordon Wood, a professor of history at Brown University in Providence, R.I., is a legendary figure in his field of early American history. He has written many books about the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers.
His newest book is "The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History."
In 21 varied and provocative essays, Wood considers how history has changed over the years in the hands of both popular and academic historians. As a professor w
Source: Nicholas Kristof in the NYT Book Review
Mar 23, 2008
The first large-scale scientific test of family planning took place in Khanna, India, beginning in the early 1950s. Backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers asked 8,000 villagers how often they had sex, whether they wanted to conceive and the details of the women’s menstrual cycles. The researchers met the villagers monthly and provided contraceptives, while closely monitoring another group that was given no contraceptives. After five years, the w
Source: Slate
Mar 21, 2008
When Hillary Clinton recently floated the idea of choosing Barack Obama as her running mate, she won political points without being taken seriously (especially by Obama). The primary season has turned into the kind of slog and slugfest that makes opponents more opposed to each other, not less. But humor me, for a moment, and imagine that the kind of reconciliation that would allow them to be running mates is possible. Not to mention the best outcome for the party.
But which should i
Source: Salon
Mar 20, 2008
Among the many unintended and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began five years ago this week was the wholesale looting of Iraq's museums and archaeological sites. Iraq has been called the cradle of civilization. Starting with the Sumerian civilization, which more than 5,000 years ago produced what may be the world's first examples of writing and math, the area centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and known as Mesopotamia has been home to a succession of culture
Source: Letter to the Editor of the NYT
Mar 20, 2008
To the Editor:
Re “Obama Urges U.S. to Grapple With Race Issue” (front page, March 19):
I taught American history for 40 years and the history of African-Americans from the Civil War to the 1990s at the City University of New York. I think Barack Obama’s speech on race and politics on Tuesday is one of the most, if not the most, impressive and intelligent speeches made by a politician in our history.
It was indeed transcendent. It went far beyond the issue
Source: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH blog)
Mar 20, 2008
In November 2002, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked a number of scholars this question: “What will the world be like five years after a war with Iraq?” To mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, MESH asked all of the respondents to revisit their predictions. This week, MESH is posting the responses it has received.
John L. Esposito is University Professor and Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. In 20
Source: Newsweek
Mar 19, 2008
Edward J. Blum, a historian of race and religion at San Diego State University and author of "W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet" and "Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898," suggests that while some Americans may be understandably offended by Wright's divisive remarks, those remarks are part of a long and storied tradition among African-American church leaders who have forged Christian ideologies and rhetoric to condemn racial disc
Source: The Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
Mar 19, 2008
Glenn Williams likes to live dangerously. He had us all in the same frame of mind at our February meeting when he told us that his book, The Year of the Hangman, George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois was taking on some formidable opponents. Some historians pronounced this 1779 venture into northern New York "a well executed military failure." Other scholars called it ethnic cleansing and claimed it drove the Indians still further into the British camp. Still others claimed
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Mar 19, 2008
For the best part of two centuries, United States relations with China have been built on trade.
But as to the future, "there are no guarantees here at all," said Craig Canning, a historian at the College of William and Mary.
U.S.-China trade began in 1784, when the ship Empress of China set sail from New York, bound for Canton -- now Guangzhou -- with a cargo of fur and ginseng, prized in Asia for its healing properties.
"It turned a handsom
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Ed
Mar 19, 2008
Harvard University Press has just issued a book promulgating a JFK assassination conspiracy theory.
Let’s put that sentence on the chalkboard and underscore the anthropologically interesting aspects of the situation, shall we? Harvard University Press has just issued a book promulgating a JFK assassination conspiracy theory.
Within the continuum of any given culture, there is what the structuralists used to call the combinatoire – the underlying grid of distinctio
Source: Exchange in the New Republic
Mar 18, 2008
HBO's seven-part miniseries John Adams, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about America's second president, premiered this weekend. The New Republic asked historian John Patrick Diggins and author Steven Waldman to critique the series. Waldman kicked off the discussion with his thoughts on Parts 1 and 2. Here is Diggins's response:
Steven,
There are many memorable scenes in the first two episodes of John Adams. Capturing the feelings of a child watching
Source: Providence Journal
Mar 18, 2008
The State of Rhode Island, backed by briefs from more than 50 organizations and public health experts, filed legal papers yesterday urging the state Supreme Court to reject an appeal by three corporations seeking to overturn a jury’s verdict two years ago that found their lead-based paints created a nuisance by poisoning children throughout the state....
Most of the evidence came in testimony by David Rosner, a professor of history and public health at Columbia University, who co-wr
