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: Deborah Lipstadt & Michael J. Broyde in an op ed in the NYT
Oct 11, 2007
[Michael J. Broyde is a professor of law and Deborah E. Lipstadt a professor of Jewish studies at Emory University. Ms. Lipstadt was sued by David Irving for libel after writing that he was a Holocaust denier. She won after a long fight in British courts.]
THANKS to the Internet, universal access to the printed word and economic globalization, the 21st century is expected to be shaped by the free exchange of ideas. But casting a shadow over this optimistic prediction is the emerging
Source: Mark Bauerlein in the Des Moines Register
Oct 10, 2007
What does "diversity" mean at the University of Iowa?
Its nondiscrimination statement provides a roll call of categories: "The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination ... on the basis of race, national origin, color, creed, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or associational preference." The listing is customary - except for the final entry. Most people haven't heard of "associational preference," an
Source: Tim Rutten in the LAT
Oct 10, 2007
The social historian and essayist Garry Wills is one of our most lucid public intellectuals, and no one working today writes more clearly or with greater authority on the intersection of religion and public life.
"Head and Heart: American Christianities" is a major contribution to the national debate over separation of church and state and ought to be read by anyone perplexed by the current interplay of religion and politics.
If you've wondered whether Sen. Jo
Source: Jim Sleeper at tpmcafe (blog)
Oct 10, 2007
A former editor at the New York Times Book Review who read my remonstrance here about its war-hawkish bent referred me to something I'd missed: In July, Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus took to the literary section of The New Republic to pen his second elegy to American conservatism in those pages. His meditation on the allure and dangers for writers of
Source: Press Release--Western Michigan University
Oct 10, 2007
A symposium and dinner in late October will honor longtime Western Michigan University historian Dr. Ernst Breisach, professor emeritus of history and distinguished faculty scholar.
Breisach also will be a guest speaker at the Saturday, Oct. 27, event, along with Dr. David E. Barclay, the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies in the Kalamazoo College Department of History. The "Exploring History/Writing History" symposium begins at 1 p.m. in The Li
Source: Connecticut Daily Campus
Oct 10, 2007
"Hello? Can you hear me?" said Samuel Kassow, as he took the podium in the softly-lit auditorium.
Kassow, a professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, gave his lecture, "A Historian in the Ghetto: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archives," Tuesday in the Konover Auditorium at the Dodd Center. The lecture, which was part of the Ivry lecture series, focused on the collection and recording efforts of the Oyneg Shabes resistance group in the Warsaw
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Oct 10, 2007
To give a sense of the history of trees in America, Harvey Green points to a picture of his property as it was in the mid-19th century, in an old copy of Frederic Kidder's History of New Ipswich, 1736-1852. The land belonged to Benjamin Hoar, and the Hoar house, as Mr. Green gleefully calls it, sits across a road from two tall maples, the only big trees in the picture. The hills around the house roll into the horizon. Early settlers shaved them down to the rocky soil to make way for grazing shee
Source: Detroit Free Press
Oct 9, 2007
Amid a backdrop of tensions at Wayne State University over the Middle East, historian Daniel Pipes said Islam needs to reform and called for Israel to get tough with Palestinian extremists.
Pipes, who was repeatedly interrupted by protesters, spoke Monday in measured tones at the university in front of a crowd of about 120. Sponsored by pro-Israeli groups, his trip to Michigan included a scheduled talk Monday night at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
"So lo
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
Oct 9, 2007
June Torbati,"Law prof. borrows text for book," Yale Daily News, 4 October, exposes plagiarism in Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres' ninth book, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. Columbia Law School Professor Michael Dorf suggests that it isn't a plagiarism scandal so much as a ghost-writing scandal, an
Source: Press Release--Rutgers
Oct 8, 2007
Keith Wailoo, Martin Luther King Professor of History at Rutgers University, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, one of four learned academies that advise the government on scientific matters. Wailoo, a historian of health and medicine, has helped shape new understandings of disease, politics and culture in America. He is the seventh Rutgers professor and the second historian from Rutgers to be elected to the institute.
Wailoo is a member of Rutgers’ Institute for Health, Health C
Source: Suzan Mazur at her blog (Click here for embedded links)
Oct 8, 2007
Much has been written about the CIA cocaine operation at Mena, Arkansas during Bill and Hillary Clinton’s watch as governor and first lady of that state in the 1980s. So I wondered why Carl Bernstein left it out of his book on Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge, when the argument put forth by Clinton biographer Roger Morris in his book, Partners in Power, was a particularly compelling one about the CIA operation taking place.
I decided to ask Bernstein formally for an explanation ab
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
Oct 8, 2007
Smithsonian's"37 under 36: America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences," October, features four young American historians: UC, Santa Barbara's Reza Aslan, who interprets Islam in a modern and western world; USC's Daniela Bleichmar, who studies old botanical d
Source: Matthew Yglesias at his blog in the Atlantic Monthly
Oct 8, 2007
A little glance back at the 2002-vintage thoughts of Bernard Lewis, every conservative's favorite Middle East expert. Speaking before the invasion of Iraq, he notes that"Parallels to the Iraq quandary can be found by looking at post-World War II Germany and Japan" which were turned into successful liberal democracies. And then:
I am particularly optimistic that the same can be done in Iraq, which has many positive features upon which it can build. For example, of all the oil-
Source: Spiegel
Oct 8, 2007
Israeli historian Saul Friedländer -- winner of the 2007 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to be presented this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair -- spoke to SPIEGEL about the importance of victims' accounts in researching the Holocaust and the failure of efforts in Germany to draw a line under the issue.
SPIEGEL: Professor Friedländer, in contrast to other accounts of the history of the Holocaust, in your book "Nazi Germany and the Jews, the Years of Extermination," you
Source: Eagle-Tribune
Oct 8, 2007
A University of Pittsburgh historian has discovered one of the strangest and most compelling documents ever related to the 18th-century slave trade - and it has a Salem connection so strong that experts at the Peabody Essex Museum are buzzing.
The petition was uncovered by Marcus Rediker, 55, while researching his fifth book, "The Slave Ship: A Human History." It is a bloodcurdling satire, until now lost to history. Written by Scottish doctor, radical, Encyclopaedia Britan
Source: Winfield Myers at the website of Campus Watch, the organization founded by Daniel Pipes
Oct 8, 2007
Howard Zinn, the radical historian who wrote that"objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable," remained true to his word when he claimed recently that the organization StandWithUs is"an offshoot of Campus Watch."The objective truth is that StandWithUs has no relation whatsoever to Campus Watch--a empirical fact Zinn might easily have discovered ha
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) summary of article by Rauchway in the New Republic
Oct 8, 2007
For all their successes, American universities "have the same problem now as in the 19th century," writes Eric Rauchway, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis. The problem, he says in a brief history of state universities, is insufficient financial support from federal and state governments.
Congress opened debate on research universities in 1857, says Mr. Rauchway, with the
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Oct 8, 2007
U.S. military officials tell The New York Times that anthropologists assigned to combat units in Afghanistan are helping to ease tensions with the local population and reduce the use of lethal force. But that success is likely to bring the long-simmering debate over the relationship between anthropologists and the U.S. government to a full boil....
Anthropologists who favor such cooperation cite the upside of the encounters. Montgomery McFate, a cultural anthropologist who works as
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Oct 8, 2007
When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran addressed faculty members and students at Columbia University last month, he invited everyone present to visit Iran and to engage the faculty members and students at its 400 universities. He failed to mention that Iran's academics refrain from accepting invitations to attend conferences abroad, for fear of being arrested and accused of belonging to networks recruited to bring about regime change in their country. Indeed, Iran's own minister of intellige
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed
Oct 8, 2007
Faculty members identify as liberals and vote Democratic in far greater proportions than found in the American public at large. That finding by itself won’t shock many, but the national study released Saturday at a Harvard University symposium may be notable both for its methodology and other, more surprising findings.
The 72-page study — “The Social and Political Views of American Professors” — was produced with the goal of moving analysis of the political views of faculty members
