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: diverseeducation.com
Nov 22, 2006
Violence and lawlessness in Iraq is “dismantling” the country’s higher education system and creating a climate of terror on campuses, according to Iraqi professors who attended the Middle East Studies Association’s conference Sunday.
“The students are disappointed in America and they say it now openly, even on the television: ‘Bring back Saddam and we will apologize and he will restore order to the country,’” said Dr. Saad Jawad, professor of political science at Baghdad University.
Source: Charles Burress in the San Francisco Chronicle
Nov 22, 2006
The British writer who tried to steal the turkey from Thanksgiving might have bitten off more than he can chew.
The provocative claim that there was no turkey in the Pilgrims' first harvest feast in 1621 comes from a newly published history of Thanksgiving by British journalist and historian Godfrey Hodgson.
But devotees of holiday authenticity need not kiss the gobbler goodbye. Hodgson's claim is more tosh than truth, according to scholars and Pilgrim experts.
Source: Martha's Vinyard Times
Nov 22, 2006
"For me," says Nathaniel Philbrick, "Thanksgiving has always been the best, most fun family holiday."
Mr. Philbrick is a resident of Nantucket and the author of such acclaimed histories as "In the Heart of the Sea," the National Book Award-winning story of the whaleship Essex. His latest effort, "Mayflower," was released in May and immediately jumped to the New York Times bestseller list, where it spent more than four months. His life is settl
Source: NYT
Nov 22, 2006
Curtis Cate, an American biographer who chronicled the lives of several well-known European writers, among them Nietzsche, George Sand and André Malraux, died in Paris on Thursday. He was 82 and had lived in Paris for most of his life.
The cause was melanoma, his brother, Benjamin, said.
Mr. Cate’s most recent book, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” was published in the United States last year by the Overlook Press. Reviewing the biography in The New York Times Book Review, Willia
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 21, 2006
At Barnard College, Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist who is coming up for tenure, is under attack by some alumnae and pro-Israel groups for a book, published by the University of Chicago Press, that was critical of Israeli archaeology and its use in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At Wayne State University, similar groups are pushing the university not to hire Wadie Said for a faculty position in the law school. In that case, critics of Said are attacking him and his late fat
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Nov 21, 2006
Hey! We'll probably never know whether last month's discussions at National Review Online, Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Cliopatria, Phi Beta Cons, Altercation, and
Source: Daily Princetonian
Nov 20, 2006
Raised in a rural community in southeastern China and uneducated until his mid-teens, Ying-Shih Yu seems an unlikely recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences, informally referred to as the Nobel Prize for history.
Now a pioneer revered in both Englishand Chinese-speaking circles and professor of history and East Asian studies emeritus, Yu has come a long way. As he is fond of telling friends and colleagues, he is a self-taught scholar. He is the author of more
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 20, 2006
A Muslim organisation said yesterday that one of its founders had made a "grave mistake" when he sent money and letters of support to the historian David Irving, jailed this year in Austria for Holocaust denial.
Asghar Bukhari, a former chief executive of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as a civil liberties group, admitted sending a donation to help Irving fight a libel case in 2000.
Mr Bukhari said he now realised that Irvin
Source: Thomas Ricks in the WaPo
Nov 19, 2006
When Americans talk about the raging insurgency in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. That's one reason why the landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace, has been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years, with used copies selling on Amazon.com for $150. Indeed, "Algeria" has become almost a c
Source: Nathaniel Fick in the WaPo
Nov 19, 2006
The most impressive thing about Is Iraq Another Vietnam? (PublicAffairs, $24) is that Robert K. Brigham doesn't treat the title's question rhetorically. In this readable book, he emphasizes the military distinctions between the two conflicts: The United States does not have half a million troops in Iraq, many of them drafted; Iraq's insurgents lack the support of a sympathetic superpower and are unlikely to find a single galvanizing leader such as Ho Chi Minh; and while Vietnam began as an insur
Source: Jon Meacham in the WaPo
Nov 19, 2006
Forty-six autumns ago, in the final chapter of the 1960 presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy, who was running his brother Jack's operation, made it clear what his family's priorities were. As the distinguished political scientist James MacGregor Burns tells the story, Bobby spoke "brutally" to a group of New York Democrats: "I don't give a damn if the state and county organizations survive after November, and I don't give a damn if you survive." His sole interest -- the t
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 19, 2006
A LEADING British historian has sparked a row about free speech in America after an article criticising Israel prompted a backlash from Jewish groups and the cancellation of meetings where he was due to speak.
Tony Judt, a liberal Jew and former kibbutznik, was accused of calling for the destruction of Israel after he wrote an article in The New York Review of Books in 2003, and in The Sunday Times, arguing for the creation of a secular bi-national state of Jews and Palestinians.
Source: http://www.theledger.com/
Nov 18, 2006
With its celebration of bounty and goodwill, not to mention its endearing lack of commercialization, Thanksgiving may be the most beloved of American holidays.
But is the Thanksgiving Americans celebrate today mere myth-making, resting on ahistorical stereotypes?
Take the fabled turkey, for example. Did it even inhabit eastern Massachusetts in 1621? And the much-venerated Thanksgiving meal: Was it a bountiful celebration of fraternal cooperation or more a series of &quo
Source: Yahoo
Nov 17, 2006
Selecting the nation's best Thomas Jefferson impersonator came down to a coin toss — a Jefferson head nickel, of course.
Clay Jenkinson, a Dickinson State University scholar and host of a weekly radio show about Jefferson, was declared the winner Wednesday on "The Colbert Report," a satirical news show on the Comedy Central channel.
Jenkinson appeared with two other Jefferson impersonators, Bill Barker and Steven Edenbo.
Steve Colbert, the show's
Source: Mark Benjamin at Salon.com
Nov 17, 2006
In late 2005, three Washington insiders with foreign policy expertise were summoned to a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- a little-known event that may end up changing the course of the war in Iraq. The three men were working to help Rep. Frank Wolf, who wanted to create an independent panel to overhaul the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq, after a recent trip there left the Virginia Republican worried that the war was headed from bad to worse.
The three m
Source: FrontpageMag.com
Nov 16, 2006
Frontpage Interview's guest today is KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. With a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, he specializes in 20th century U.S. political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. He writes a blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, which offers comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case.
FP: KC Johnson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Johnson: Thank you for speaking with me.
FP: Kindly su
Source: Press Release-- Queen Mary, University of London
Nov 16, 2006
Dr Dan Todman, author of The Great War: Myth and Memory, impressed The Times Higher’s judges with his expert juggling of ‘an enormous body’ of sources.
He delves into literature, films, war comics and television programmes to present his compelling argument about how attitudes towards the First World War have changed.
Today, it may seem a cut-and-dried case: the war was a national disaster, ill-managed and horrifyingly futile. But Todman illustrates that such a view is
Source: News & Observer
Nov 16, 2006
John Hope Franklin, whose writings on the African-American experience changed the nation's understanding of its history, is one of two winners of a $1 million international award announced Wednesday by the Library of Congress.
The 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the study of humanity honors lifetime achievement in humanities and social sciences, fields that aren't covered by the Nobel Prize. Franklin, 91, a retired professor at Duke University, will split the $1 million prize with Yu Ying-sh
Source: Press Release-- Purdue
Nov 16, 2006
A Purdue University history professor has been named the state's top professor by the only national ranking specifically designed to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring.
Randy Roberts, a professor of American history who as been at Purdue for 18 years, will be recognized Thursday (Nov. 16) as the 2006 Indiana Professor of the Year. The annual award program, which takes place at noon at the Willard Intercontinental in Washington, D.C., is administered by the
Source: http://www.theday.com
Nov 16, 2006
Lisa Wilson, a professor of American history at Connecticut College, is featured as a commentator in the History Channel's original documentary, “Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower,” which will debut on the History Channel at 8 p.m. Sunday.
Wilson, who specializes in colonial British North America, comments on the domestic life of women and men in early New England. She was also interviewed about the mysterious death of the wife of the colony's first governor, Wil
