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: Ralph Luker at HNN's Cliopatria (blog)
Nov 10, 2006
Recipients of the National Humanities Medal this morning in the Oval Office at the White House include: Fouad Ajami, the Middle Eastern Studies scholar, Washington, DC; James Buchanan, an economist, Fairfax, VA; Nickolas Davatzes, president and ceo emeritus of A&E Entertainment, Wilton, CT; Robert Fagles, translator and classicist, Princeton, NJ; The Hoover Institution (John Raisian, Senior Fellow and Director of Hoove
Source: Jeffrey R. Young in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 10, 2006
Historians are great at telling stories, but they're lousy at pictures, asserts Edward L. Ayers, a history professor and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia.
While other disciplines have found ways to represent complex phenomena using illustrations that overlay many types of information, Mr. Ayers says, history has for the most part focused on written narratives, linear stories that set forth an overriding argument. But since
Source: David Horowitz at FrontPageMag.com
Nov 10, 2006
Bettina Aptheker is a well-known American radical who in the 1960s was a leader of the campus Left, and now, like so many of her peers, is a tenured activist on the faculty of a major university. Her father, Herbert Aptheker, was the Communist Party’s most prominent Cold War intellectual and, as the Party’s “leading theoretician,” a noted enforcer of its orthodoxy. The author of a notorious tract justifying the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Aptheker earned academic
Source: Jennifer Howard writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 10, 2006
An oral historian sits down with a survivor of Hurricane Katrina to hear a first-person account of the storm. Is their encounter a conversation about a historical event, or is that historian performing research on a human subject?
The scholar will have one answer. It may not jibe with the verdict of his or her college's institutional review board, whose mandate is to make sure that research involving humans stays within ethical bounds, regardless of the topic. Over the past decade,
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Nov 10, 2006
To the Editor:
I read with personal interest Christopher Phelps's "Herbert Aptheker: the Contradictions of History"; (The Chronicle Review, October 6). I was a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1963 when Herb Aptheker was invited to speak at the student union. Alerted that Aptheker was a Communist, and spurred to action by a Raleigh TV journalist named Jesse Helms, the
Source: The Record--The Independent Newspaper at Harvard Law School
Nov 9, 2006
On Thursday, November 2, the American Constitution Society hosted a debate between Professor Mark Tushnet and historian Saul Cornell over the challenges and possibilities for progressive gun control policy.
Tushnet joined the Harvard Law School faculty this year as William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law after spending twenty-five years teaching at the Georgetown University Law Center. Cornell, an Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University and Director of the Second A
Source: Jerusalem Post
Nov 8, 2006
[The writer teaches political science at Ben-Gurion University. ]
Alan Dershowitz, Harvard's Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, has decided to attack me personally, thinking that if he undermines my reputation he can save his own. Paradoxically, he manages to prove one thing in his op-ed - that he is a consistent man.
As in his book The Case for Israel, here too, he relentlessly passes fiction for fact.
Despite Dershowitz's claims, I never compared Israe
Source: Jerusalem Post
Nov 8, 2006
It's ironic that those who shout loudest about freedom of speech for themselves and their friends are often the first to try to silence those with whom they disagree.
A case in point is Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, who has defamed so many people, as well as the nation of Israel. He also recently defamed me by saying that I had tried to prevent the publication of Norman Finkelstein's latest anti-Zionist screed, Beyond Chutzpah. In fact, as I specifically wrote in my lett
Source: Announcement--George Mason University
Nov 8, 2006
Larry Levine's death is keenly felt by so many. A group of GMU colleagues have scheduled an East Coast memorial service for Larry, to take place from 4:30-6:30, Saturday, December 16th, in the Atrium of Hazel Hall at the Arlington campus of George Mason University,
3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA. A reception will follow. The service is open to all; Cornelia Levine and possibly other members of the Levine family will attend.
We have set up a website with more informatio
Source: Rick Perlstein in In These Times
Nov 7, 2006
[Rick Perlstein is the author of Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Beserk, 1965-1972, which will be published next year.]
Journalistic compilations are a crucial part of America’s literary, intellectual and political heritage. They enjoyed a golden age in ’60s and ’70s trade publishing: Gazing over the library of books I am using to write my own history of the years 1965 to 1972, I see collections by Joan Didion, Garry Wills, Jack Newfield, Steven V. Roberts, Jonat
Source: Wayne State student newspaper
Nov 6, 2006
Howard Zinn told an audience that the state of our nation lies somewhere between democracy and totalitarianism.
Beginning with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Zinn has been a tireless activist as well as a voice of dissent for over 40 years. Last night at Cobo Hall, the Cranbrook Peace Foundation honored the historian, author and lifelong peace activist.
Zinn, the author of the classic best-selling book “A People’s History of the United
Source: US News & World Report
Nov 5, 2006
Lou Gehrig was the first, and gave his name to a disease. Michael J. Fox is the latest, and gave his endorsement to politicians pushing research into his Parkinson's. Sick celebrities have become more than fodder for supermarket tabloids. They have helped shape modern medicine and how we view our own health, argues Barron Lerner, a physician and historian at Columbia University, in his new book, When Illness Goes Public (Johns Hopkins University Press). "Celebrities influence fashion, and c
Source: delawareonline.com
Nov 5, 2006
Newark-based prolific historian and biographer Stanley Weintraub has published his latest book, "11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944" (Free Press, $25).
Weintraub has written more than 50 books on subjects ranging from George Bernard Shaw to the Victorian era to 20th-century military history. His books include "Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce," "Long Day's Journey Into War" and "A Stillness Heard Round the W
Source: Charlotte.com
Nov 5, 2006
William Powell wanted to write a book about North Carolina in the fifth grade.
Rich material surrounded him.
Stories from his community in Statesville. Family stories like those his grandmother told about living through the Civil War.
Powell listened. And took notes.
That first book didn't work out, but Powell kept trying.
Now, at 87, Powell is known as the dean of N.C. historians and is getting ready for his first book tour. It to
Source: Economist
Nov 4, 2006
EVER since "Salisbury: Victorian Titan" won its then 36-year-old author the Wolfson history prize in 1999, Andrew Roberts has been seen as one of the most eminent young British historians. So it is no surprise that, in his tenth book, he turns to Winston Churchill for inspiration. Mr Roberts limits his range to countries where English is the first language: America, Britain and its former dominions, core countries which he sees as "the last, best hope of Mankind", the source
Source: Journal of Multimedia Historys About "White Boy: A Memoir" Black Studies and Research in African American History
Nov 3, 2006
Historian Mark Naison is Professor of
African and African-American Studies and Director of the Urban
Studies Program at Fordham University. He is the author of White
Boy: A Memoir (Temple University Press, 2002), Communists in Harlem
During the Depression (University of Illinois Press, 1983),
co-author of The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1940-1984
(Rutgers University Press, 1986), and the author of several
articles on African-Americ
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Nov 3, 2006
Each year, the National Coalition for History nominates individuals for the Paul Peck Presidential Awards. Two awards are presented -- one for "Service to the Presidency" and the other for "Portrayal of the Presidency." This year, our nominee won in the "Portrayal" category -- Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
During a black-tie event held at the newly restored Patent Office Building that houses the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Sc
Source: Economist
Nov 2, 2006
SO IS it to be 1967 or 1948? For watchers of the Middle East this question is shorthand for two different ways to think about the origins of, and solutions to, the long conflict between Israel and the Arabs of Palestine. In the eyes of the 1967 crowd, Israel was entitled to the borders it had before its abrupt expansion in the six-day war of that year. To make peace, the trick is therefore to create circumstances in which Israel will give up most or all of that land and allow an independent Pale
Source: brynmawr.edu/news
Nov 2, 2006
Most writers who treat environmental issues, says environmental historian Ellen Stroud, tend to focus on either cities or wilderness, but not both. “And many environmentalists who focus on natural areas,” she says, “sort of wish cities away. But we need to be thinking about how cities can function well in relation to nature.”
Stroud's position — Assistant Professor of Growth and Structure of Cities and Environmental Studies on the Alderfer Fund — is a new one at the college. Stroud
Source: lawweekly.org
Nov 2, 2006
Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who permanently joined the law faculty this semester, emphasizes special relationships with mentors and colleagues as key in her education, professional life and advice to current students.
Brown-Nagin knew early in her academic career that she aspired to become a professor, but she has taken a relatively scenic route toward that goal, which has augmented her strength as a teacher and scholar. Her path began with five years spent moving between Duke and
