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: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) summary of article by Ms. Coontz appearing in the Fall Issue of Greater Good: The New American Family
Oct 26, 2007
Marriage and family life have "changed more in the last 30 years than in the previous 3,000," writes Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College. With change comes new challenges to overcome, but, she writes, "we cannot do so if we delude ourselves into thinking there has ever been a Golden Age when life was much better for all, or even most, families."
Society tends to "romanticize marriages of the past," writes
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Oct 26, 2007
On a cool, sun-flecked October morning, Stephen Greenblatt steps up to the podium in a classroom off Harvard Yard and launches into the day's lecture. With a few clicks on a notebook computer, the eminent Shakespearean scholar sets the image of a globe spinning on the screen behind him. It's earth, circa 1633, and across the face of it an imaginary English ship, the Revenge, sails from Ouidah, on the West African coast, to Barbados. In its hold is a cargo of African slaves, bound for the hellish
Source: http://pajamasmedia.com
Oct 25, 2007
I used to have a great deal of respect for the Chronicle of Higher Education. But on their recent gossipy blog, they advertise a recent hit-piece by one Robert Bateman of my Carnage and Culture, that is now appearing on the website Media Matters, funded if in part and indirectly by George Soros, under an apparently regular feature of Eric Alterman’s called Altercations. The piece is embarrassing and reminds me of playground name-calling in grade school.
Carnage and Culture has been out fo
Source: Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal
Oct 25, 2007
If the Red Sox win the World Series again, fans may have a kind of identity crisis, Bates College American culture and history professor Margaret Creighton said Wednesday.
So much of who the fans are - virtuous, stubborn loyalists even when their allegiance went unrewarded - is defined by decades of not winning.
"It's really quite jarring for Red Sox fans now to have to deal with success, and it might be repeated," said Creighton. "Once could be a fluke,
Source: NYT
Oct 25, 2007
Rudolph W. Giuliani’s approach to foreign policy shares with other Republican presidential candidates an aggressive posture toward terrorism, a commitment to strengthening the military and disdain for the United Nations.
But in developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers.
Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as
Source: Guardian
Oct 25, 2007
British forces are "ludicrously" overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan because politicians have clung for years to the imperial delusion that the UK is a world power, the historian Correlli Barnett said this afternoon.
Speaking at a seminar at Churchill College, Cambridge, on his 80th birthday, the distinguished historian said that after the first world war the British Empire and later the Commonwealth were only a façade of strength, but made the political establishment feel imp
Source: http://theithacan.org
Oct 25, 2007
Deborah Lipstadt, a historian and the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, will present “Holocaust Denial: A New Form of Anti-Semitism” at 7:15 p.m. today in the Klingenstein Lounge. Lipstadt will be speaking about her recent victory on trial with historian David Irving, who sued Lipstadt for libel after she called him a Holocaust denier. She will also discuss the issue of anti-Semitism and how individuals should address it. Contributing Writer S
Source: Daily Princetonian
Oct 25, 2007
In times of war, the last thing a soldier wants to do is befriend his enemy — unless it's his job.
Arno Mayer, an emeritus history professor, had to do just that during World War II, taking care of Nazi prisoners as if they were sick friends. For a year and a half during the war, Mayer was stationed at Fort Hunt, Va., where the U.S. Army brought some Nazi German scientists and generals for interrogation.
"I was to keep them happy because we were trying to e
Source: http://media.www.usforacle.com
Oct 24, 2007
Civil rights author and historian Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Petersburg. Last year, Arsenault published Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, a book from Oxford University Press about a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.
Oracle: What made you decide to write a book about the Freedom Rides of 1961?
Raymond Arsenault: The story of the Fr
Source: CWNews.com
Oct 24, 2007
An Italian historian has cast doubt on the stigmata attributed to Padre Pio.
In a new book, Sergio Luzzatto questions whether the beloved Capuchin, who was canonized by Pope John Paul II (bio - news) in 2002, actually exhibited the wounds of the crucified Christ on his hands, feet, and side. Luzzatto recounted the testimony of a pharmacist who claimed that he sold acid to Padre Pio, which the monk used to create the appearance of wounds. The pharmacist’s story has not been corrobora
Source: The Hindu
Oct 24, 2007
New Delhi (PTI): A book has triggered a row between Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) and Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), with the latter on Thursday alleging that attempts were being made to inject "saffronisation" into Sikhism.
DSGMC chief Paramjeet Singh Sarna threatened to take the matter to court as well as Akal Takht, the highest Sikh temporal body.
Sarna claimed that the book -- 'Sikh History' -- contains "distorted f
Source: Winfield Myers at the website of CampusWatch
Oct 24, 2007
A group of professors, mostly from the humanities and with a large contingent from Middle East studies, have formed the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University. They claim that"outside groups" are"seeking to influence what is taught and who can teach."It's the subject of this story in today's issue of Inside Higher Ed.But the professors aren't conc
Source: http://www.zmag.org
Oct 23, 2007
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush has asked Congress for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request brings this year's total to more than $196 billion, by far the highest amount since the 9/11 attacks. If the trend continues, war funding could top $1 trillion by the time Bush leaves office. By some measures, that amount would exceed the cost of the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
The record-high request comes as the drumbeat continues for opening a new war
Source: Historian Ralph Harrington at his blog
Oct 23, 2007
Of all the controversial passages in Nadia Abu El Haj's Facts on the Ground, few have been so chewed over and have provided such fuel for polarized debate as this one, from her chapter 9,"Archaeology and its aftermath", page 250:While by the early 1990s, virtually all archaeologists argued for the need to disentangle the goals of their professional practice from the quest for Jewish origins and objects that formed an earlier archaeological project, the fact that t
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Oct 23, 2007
Five years ago, our colleague, Chris Bray, published his blistering review of Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power,"Torturing History: A military historian abuses the past," Reason, April 2002. It's time, again, to buckle your seatbelts and pass the popcorn. LTC Bob Bateman's"Bateman on Hanson: An Altercation
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Oct 23, 2007
Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein recently announced the appointment of Terri Garner as the new director of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. From 2005 to the present, Ms. Garner has served as Executive Director of the Bangor Museum and Center for History. Garner will assume her duties on November 5, 2007.
Ms. Garner is currently finishing her Ph.D. in history at the University of Maine, Orono. She holds a M.A. in history from the Uni
Source: http://media.www.dailytargum.com
Oct 23, 2007
An Ivy League education, a list of literary accomplishments and a professorship all contribute to Keith Wailoo's impressive resume. Recently, the National Academy of Sciences decided to add another achievement.
Wailoo, a professor of history at the University, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine.
"I think I know why my work is important," Wailoo said. "It is significant because I'm a historian who deals with and writes about contemporary issues.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 23, 2007
The Queen was left lost for words after a TV historian collecting his CBE told her that she would be the subject of his new programme.
David Starkey, who was being honoured for services to history, reported that the Queen "asked 'Are you doing any more programmes?'
"I said 'Yes Ma'am. On you.'"
He went on to say that the Queen, who is perhaps more used to having subjects than being one, looked a "a bit blank" at the news.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Oct 23, 2007
"No one in the U.S. media ever talks about Zionofascism, and the campus groups who yoke the word 'fascism' to other religions and peoples are most often trying to divert attention from their own authoritarianism and approval of brutality," writes Juan Cole.
Cole writes at the outset of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a David Horowitz-led effort to challenge "what students are taught about the so-called War on Terror both in the classroom and on the quad."
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 23, 2007
Saying that they are fed up with “aggressive incursion of partisan politics into universities’ hiring and tenure practices,” five prominent academics have issued a call to “defend the university” and gathered dozens of backers in what they view as a new way to bolster academic freedom.
The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University has issued a statement and is asking professors and others to sign on.
“In recent
