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: Southeast European Times
Sep 7, 2007
The latest book by Neagu Djuvara has caused a stir in Romania's academic world. In it, the 91-year-old historian maintains that the founders of Wallachia in the 13th and 14th centuries were not descendants of the Romanised Dacians, but were of Cuman origin.
"For two centuries, our historiography has been obsessed with continuity, permanence and immobility, a narrow and static vision," says the author in his book, Thocomoerius, the Black Ruler: a Voivode of Cuman Origin at
Source: David Brooks in the NYT
Sep 7, 2007
Few have thought about these matters [national health care] as long or as well as Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation. Butler grew up in Shrewsbury, England, got a doctorate in American economic history in Scotland and became a U.S. citizen in 1996. As a result, he’s acutely aware of what makes American civilization unique, and which policies fit the national character.
As you read his work, you quickly see what priorities the new social contract should embrace. It should offer
Source: David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin at FrontpageMag.com
Sep 7, 2007
Nestled in a redwood glade on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, the University of California at Santa Cruz is one of the most picturesque campuses in America. Its 15,000 students attend classes in 62 majors at 10 colleges, in an environment that would seem an ideal locale for the contemplative life. In the hard sciences, it can be said that Santa Cruz handsomely fulfills its academic expectations. Its physics program is ranked among the best in the country, while its Department of Astronomy and As
Source: Daniel Pipes at FrontpageMag.com
Sep 7, 2007
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, North America's foremost Islamist group, bills itself as a"civil rights organization," suggesting it maintains high standards of decency and morality. But, as I personally can attest, it fails abysmally to do so. Its seven-year-long campaign against me has included misappropriation, misrepresentation, misqu
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (blog)
Sep 7, 2007
The Committee on Academic Freedom (North America) of the Middle East Studies Association has written a letter protesting the cancellation of a talk by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt scheduled by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
CCGA maintains that the speakers, authors of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, needed to be balanced by an opposing viewpoint. But both have spoken there before without needing to be immediately contradicted by someone else. (Personally, I obje
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) (Click here for embedded links.)
Sep 7, 2007
As the American Psychological Association debates whether its members should be involved in so-called coercive interrogation, Alfred W. McCoy is trying to get psychologists to own up to their past.
Mr. McCoy, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Inter rogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Metropolitan Books, 2006). The book is a detailed indictment, brimming with outraged accusations — what one revie
Source: Martin Kramer in the Jerusalem Post
Sep 6, 2007
Juan Cole is busy promoting his new book Napoleon's Egypt, the hook being a comparison between Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt and George W. Bush in Iraq. This could make for an interesting exercise in the hands of a thoughtful and dispassionate historian. In Cole's hands, it just deteriorates into Bush-bashing, from which the American president emerges as a bigger deployer of terror than Napoleon.
One of Cole's angles is to emphasize the brutality of all occupations, which he highlight
Source: http://www.provincetownbanner.com
Sep 6, 2007
Historian, teacher, playwright and activist Howard Zinn’s landmark 1980 book, “The People’s History of the United States,” taught academia that history told only from the point of view of winners and conquerors isn’t real history at all. Zinn’s book gave voice to those in the margins and on the fringes and losing sides. These voices of rebellion, opposition and daring are heard even clearer in Zinn’s 2004 companion book, “Voices of a People's History of the United States,” and in a theatrical ev
Source: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail
Sep 6, 2007
THE furore over an official history of Queensland has spread to Parliament,
with the Opposition accusing the Premier of wasting taxpayers' money.
Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney joined a growing band of critics questioning
the legitimacy of the $900,000 taxpayer-funded book deal awarded to Griffith
University academic Ross Fitzgerald.
Dr Fitzgerald scored the plum job to write a new history of Queensland to
commemorate the state's sesquicentenary in 2009 without a public tender
Source: Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun
Sep 5, 2007
To the historian of Poland, the history of all Europe looks different. Ordinarily, Eastern Europe is thought to begin somewhere around Prague, with everything beyond relegated to mystery and backwardness. Half a century behind the Iron Curtain only deepened the traditional estrangement, making it seem natural to regard countries with very different identities as part of a monolithic Eastern Bloc. People who instinctively recognize the difference between the Germans and the Dutch feel no need to
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) (Click here for embedded links.)
Sep 5, 2007
Norman G. Finkelstein, the controversial political scientist who was denied tenure at DePaul University last spring, had planned to attempt to return to his office here on the campus this morning, even though he had been placed on administrative leave and his courses had been canceled. He had said that he was willing to be arrested if the university stopped him, and that he was even planning to begin a hunger strike.
None of that was necessary.
Mr. Finkelstein and the u
Source: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Education
Sep 5, 2007
In the cartoons, an astonished character will at times need to grab his eyeballs as they come flying out of his head. Something like that happened to me a few months ago while going through the fall catalog of Columbia University Press. Buried deep in its pages – well behind all the exciting, glamorous titles at the bleeding edge of scholarship – was the listing for Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy by Richard D. Kahlenberg. (It has just appe
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Sep 5, 2007
The academic year in the United States is opening with flare-ups of tensions over the Middle East, and specifically over scholars who write critically of Israel.
On Tuesday, the Middle East Studies Association released two letters protesting what the group considers to be serious violations of academic freedom. One concerns Norman Finkelstein, the DePaul University political scientist who was denied tenure in June and who has since been placed on a paid leave, with his classes calle
Source: http://www.roanoke.com
Sep 4, 2007
For nearly two years, tourism officials from Winchester to the
tip of Southwest Virginia have been working on a Wilderness Road driving
tour for visitors interested in the early migratory history of American
pioneers.
They have developed an illustrated brochure and an interactive Web site
focusing on the trail's 500 miles through Virginia and its museums,
festivals and historic buildings from Frederick County west through
Shenandoah, Rockbridge, Botetourt, Roanoke, Montgomery,
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/
Sep 4, 2007
Well-known Halifax historian Lou Collins died Saturday in hospital. He was 85.
Collins was a noted Halifax teacher, historian and leader. He served as an educator for more than 20 years at schools in Halifax and Windsor. He retired in 1983 as principal of Cornwallis Junior High School in Halifax.
"The name Lou Collins is synonymous with heritage preservation in Nova Scotia," Philip Pacey, president of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia, said.
A fou
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Sep 4, 2007
During its 8:30 a.m. segment this morning, our colleague, KC Johnson, appeared with Stuart Taylor, his co-author of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, on ABC-TV's"Good Morning, America". At that link, you can see the segment and/or read
Source: Asaf Romirowsky at FrontpageMag.com
Sep 4, 2007
[Asaf Romirowsky is a Campus Watch Associate Fellow for the Middle East Forum and the Manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.]
Middle East scholar Walid Phares in his recent book The War of Ideas: Jihad against Democracy outlines the ideological basis in which the jihadists use to perpetuate their anti Western agenda. Phares who was born and raised in Lebanon brings to the table his personal experience as a Middle Easterner as w
Source: Jacob Laksin at FrontpageMag.com
Sep 4, 2007
[Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine.]
It’s not every day that a book is discredited by the simple act of its publication. But that’s precisely what will happen with the release this week of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, an expanded version of the now-notorious London Review of Books essay by professors-turned-provocateurs John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard‘s Kennedy School of Government.
In the origi
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Sep 4, 2007
Facing allegations that he plagiarized sections of his doctoral dissertation in the 1980s, the president of the Southern Illinois University system announced Friday that the department that awarded his degree would evaluate the charges – a plan complicated by the fact that the department of educational administration and higher education is based at Southern Illinois’s Carbondale campus.
Southern Illinois’s student newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, reported that at the Friday press con
Source: Ascribe
Sep 4, 2007
Writing about 9/11 is not a textbook case for historians, says a Purdue University history expert.
"When students read about Pearl Harbor, World War II and the Cold War in their textbooks, it has always been clear what nations the United States was at odds with," says Randy Roberts, a professor of American history. "The war on terror is not so clear. Terrorism is associated with the Middle East, but historians do not want to use broad brushstrokes to condemn the
