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: AHA Perspectives
Dec 1, 2007
President
Gabrielle M. Spiegel (Johns Hopkins Univ.)
President-elect
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Harvard Univ.)
Vice President, Professional Division
David J. Weber (Southern Methodist Univ.)
Council
Position 1: Trudy H. Peterson (Consulting Archivist)
Position 2: Prasenjit Duara (Univ. of Chicago)
Division Representatives
Professional: Kristin L. Ahlberg (U. S. Dept. of State)
Research:
Source: Robert Townsend in Perspectives, the magazine of the AHA
Dec 1, 2007
The federal government is inviting comments (at www.hhs.gov/ohrp/documents/20071026.htm) on a draft policy on institutional review boards (IRBs). This is a rare opportunity for historians to comment about federal policies that could potentially have an intrusive impact on their work. Every historian who conducts oral history, or who advises students who use oral history methods, should respond to this request especially since previous
Source: Robert A. Schneider, editor of the American Historical Review, in Perspectives
Dec 1, 2007
Shortly before this article went to press we learned of the death of our friend and colleague, Roy Rosenzweig. As a vice president of the AHA's Research Division (which oversees the AHR), as a member of the editorial board, as a moving force in the founding of the History Cooperative, as a pioneer in the field of digital publishing, and as contributor and cherished adviser, Roy's influence on this journal has been immeasurable. There will be many tributes to Roy's contributions across the profes
Source: Barbara Weinstein in the AHA Perspectives
Dec 1, 2007
... Three principal forms of state intrusion into academic affairs have diminished or threaten to diminish academic freedom for historians and other scholars. The first is the denial of visas to scholars from abroad; the second is the withdrawal of government records and other documentation from public and scholarly scrutiny; the third is the campaign spearheaded by David Horowitz to have state legislatures pass what Horowitz calls the "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR).
Source: China Post
Dec 1, 2007
U.S. historian Richard Kagan has had a long love affair with Taiwan, having first stepped foot on the island in 1965 and staying here for two years to study at National Taiwan University. Now at the age of 69, he has published an English-language biography of former President Lee Teng-hui, recently released by a U.S. publisher.
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Kagan received a master's degree there in 1963, later earning a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvan
Source: Jeffrey B. Spur in the IraqCrisis newsletter
Dec 1, 2007
An expert in Iraqi manuscripts said that the Americans robbed a bunch of
manuscripts in April 2003, which included a Torah [written] in leather and
did not care about Iraqi warnings that Israel has been working to get them.--Reuters
This [story] is indeed an unfounded rumor, which may in part be sustained due to the demonstrable fact that the US army grabbed huge numbers of Iraqi archival materials from government ministries and other sources, and that oth
Source: APril D. DeConic in the NYT
Dec 1, 2007
Richard Leigh, a writer who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit over the novel “The Da Vinci Code,” died on Nov. 21 in London. He was 64.
The causes were related to a heart ailment, said an agent at the Jonathan Clowes Agency, which represents him.
Mr. Leigh was co-author of “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,” a work of speculative nonfiction that proposed that Jesus Christ fathered a child and that the bloodline continues to this day. A best seller on its release in 1982, t
Source: April D. DeConic in the NYT
Dec 1, 2007
[April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, is the author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.”]
AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and
Source: Salon
Nov 30, 2007
The thought of a daily shower would have filled the 17th century Frenchman
with fear. To splash away with abandon, to open your pores and leave your
body vulnerable to all that disease, would be practically asking to get
sick. In fact, our bathing habits would have disgusted him, much like his
habits disgust us: never washing his body with water or soap, for instance.
Or changing his linen shirt to get clean.
How cleanliness has changed in the West is the engrossing (and sometimes
Source: Robert McHenry at Britannica Blog
Nov 30, 2007
Jacques Barzun is 100 today. If you don’t know who he is, go here or here or here or all three.It was about 1988 or ’89, I think, when I attended my first meeting of the Britannica Board of Editors, on which Barzun long serv
Source: http://www.recordpub.com/
Nov 30, 2007
John Jameson said Thursday his ouster as chair of the Kent State University history department earlier this month and the means by which it was done disrupts the learning process and "rips asunder a pretty good history department."
KSU and Jerry Feezel, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, assert Jameson was removed from his post for violating written university policy by improperly granting academic study leave to a controversial KSU history professor.
Source: National Review Online
Nov 30, 2007
Few books are more authoritative that the volumes in the Oxford History of the United States—a series that includes masterpieces such as The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff (on the American Revolution) and Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson (on the Civil War).
The latest entry is just out: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe. He recently took a few questions from National Review Online’s John J. Miller.
Source: Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) at the University of Washington, Seattle
Nov 30, 2007
To assess the quality of doctoral education in U.S. social science programs, the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) at the University of Washington, Seattle surveyed recent social science PhDs, asking them about the application of their education in their subsequent careers. Respondents earned the PhD between June 1995 and July 1999 in anthropology, communication, geography, history, political science, or sociology and were surveyed in 2005 – 2006, yielding career a
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 30, 2007
Can an association urge its members to apply the principle of “do no harm” in research when there isn’t much agreement on what “harm” is? Is “doing less harm” a moral standard worthy of consideration or a cop out? Should scholars talk about their conduct during wartime in a general way without regard to the war taking place? Is the war in Iraq so terrible and is the conduct of the U.S. military so reprehensible that scholars should take a firm stand against any involvement?
Those we
Source: http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr
Nov 30, 2007
The Japanese military used sex slaves to satisfy disgruntled frontline soldiers during World War II and discourage military revolt, a Japanese historian claimed Friday.
Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a professor of modern Japanese history at Chuo University in Tokyo, made the remark at a forum here organized by the Association for Korean Modern and Contemporary History and Northeast Asian History Foundation.
The remark comes as criticism mounts over the Japanese government's f
Source: http://www.kois.go.kr
Nov 29, 2007
Over half the women taken to Imperial Japanese military camps for sexual service before and during World War II were Koreans, according to the latest findings from Japan.
The Japanese euphemistically referred to the sex slaves as ¡°ianfu¡± (comfort women).
Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a professor of modern Japanese history at Tokyo¡¯s Chuo University plans to reveal data indicating that 51.8% of the comfort women were Koreans at an international conference on comfort women held a
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2007
"Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and De Gaulle" (HarperCollins Publishers, 299 pages, $25.95), by Paul Johnson: Joan of Arc, the French farm girl who charged into battle, had little in common Queen Elizabeth I or the iconoclastic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. But they were all heroes, in Johnson's view.
Johnson, the hyper-prolific British historian, gives the trio and other famous heroes the same book-length treatment he did for historica
Source: Joe Kaufman at FrontpageMag.com
Nov 29, 2007
[Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of Americans Against Hate, the founder of CAIR Watch, and the spokesman for Terror-Free Oil Initiative.]
On Wednesday, November 21, 2007, the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a press conference at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) calling on FAU’s President and Board of Trustees to issue an apology concerning an incident where a girl was allegedly spit on by an FAU employee. CAIR, a group tied to extremist activity, used
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 29, 2007
A special panel of the American Anthropological Association — after spending more than a year studying the question of whether its ethical standards should bar ties to the military and intelligence agencies — issued a report Wednesday that recommended tighter scrutiny of such work, but explicitly affirmed the possibility that it could be conducted ethically in some cases.
“We do not oppose anthropologists engaging with the military, intelligence, defense of other institutions or org
Source: Prensa Latina
Nov 28, 2007
A documentary on the life and work of Havana City historian Eusebio Leal will be screened in Mexico City Thursday.
The film, produced by Mexican Alejandra Ochoam, had support from the Lam Culture House Center, and parallels a photo exhibition by Silvia Martinez entitled "Siguiendo los pasos de Eusebio" (Following Eusebio's Footsteps).
La Jornada daily states that Leal has tirelessly worked for over 30 years rescuing Havana, without selling or privatizing, and
