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: Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek
Oct 30, 2006
When he died in 1848, John Jacob Astor was America's richest man, leaving a fortune of $20 million that had been earned mainly from real estate and fur trading. Despite his riches, Astor's business was mainly a one-man show. He employed only a handful of workers, most of them clerks. This was typical of his time, when the farmer, the craftsman, the small partnership and the independent merchant ruled the economy. Only fifty years later, almost everything had changed. Giant industrial enterprises
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Oct 28, 2006
A $1 million gift by a University of Pittsburgh professor, including his private collection on World War II, helped the school raise $1 billion and establish it as a leading source of information on the Good War.
The collection of military historian Donald M. Goldstein was appraised in February at $890,000, and he kicked in $110,000 to raise his gift to $1 million. But he told Pitt's board of trustees Friday, "It may be a billion dollars in terms of knowledge."
His
Source: NYT
Oct 28, 2006
For the last 18 months, Philip D. Zelikow has churned out confidential memorandums and proposals for his boss and close friend, Condoleezza Rice, that often depart sharply from the Bush administration’s current line.
One described the potential for Iraq to become a “catastrophic failure.” Another, among several that have come to light in recent weeks, was an early call for changes in a detention policy that many in the State Department believed was doing tremendous harm to the Unite
Source: David White in Campus Watch
Oct 27, 2006
[David White is a writer in Washington, D.C.]
Earlier this month, the folklore department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison sponsored an event billed as "9/11: Folklore and Fact."
Held in the university's social sciences building, two leaders in what is known as the "9/11 Truth"—Kevin Barrett and James Fetzer—came to discuss their notion that 9/11 resulted not from the actions of al Qaeda, but from a Bush Administration conspiracy. As Barrett ha
Source: Press Release -- Berkeley
Oct 26, 2006
Lawrence W. Levine, a highly influential history professor
for more than three decades at the University of California, Berkeley,
died on Monday (Oct. 23) of cancer at his home in Berkeley. He was 73.
Through his writings and teaching, colleagues said, Levine helped
transform cultural history in the United States into a vibrant and
accessible field of study. A champion of multiculturalism, Levine won
a MacArthur"genius" fellowship in 1983 for his intellectual curiosity
and scholarshi
Source: Iraqi Crisis (letter sent Sept. 23, 2006)
Oct 26, 2006
H. E. Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq
H. E. Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq
H. E. Hoshyar Zebari, Minister of Foreign Affairs
H. E. Dr. Asaad Al-Hashimi, Minister of Culture
Mufid Mohammad Jawad al-Jazairi, Chair of Cultural Committee, Iraqi Parliament
Maysoon al-Damluji, Member of the Iraqi Parliament
Your Excellencies:
We, the undersigned, would like to express our concern for the present and future state of
antiq
Source: Keli Senkevich in the California Aggie
Oct 26, 2006
... In his latest book, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Class, religious studies professor Keith David Watenpaugh explores the rise and formation of this Arab middle class and its relationship to modernity during the period from 1908 to 1946.
The role of the middle class in the Middle East is a new and relatively untouched field of study, and academics recognize Watenpaugh's research as an innovative contribution to the study of th
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2006
John V. Murra, a professor of anthropology who culled voluminous Spanish colonial archives for research that reshaped the image of the Incas and their vast South American empire, died on Oct. 16 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 90.
The death was confirmed by Blaine Friedlander, a spokesman for Cornell University, where Professor Murra taught from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.
“Before he came along, the image of the Incas was one of barbaric splendor,” said Frank
Source: Anthony Grafton in the New Yorker
Oct 23, 2006
... what does the academic agenda of the modern research-based university have to do with the other side of college life as we know it—with fraternity pledges, the choruses of “Gaudeamus igitur,” the stone façades of Victorian Gothic buildings? The mixed inheritance of the modern university is the subject of a new book with the somewhat oxymoronic title “Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University,” by William Clark, a historian who has spent his academic career at both American
Source: David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Oct 23, 2006
Fifty years ago today, thousands of students and workers took to the streets of Budapest to demand democratic reform. Among them was Charles Gati, who was then a young newspaper reporter.
Twelve days later, Soviet tanks rolled across Hungary, crushing what had become a broad popular revolt. Before the end of November, Mr. Gati, like tens of thousands of others, had fled the country.
Today Mr. Gati is a senior adjunct professor of European studies at the Johns Hopkins Un
Source: Mark Solomon at the website of Portside
Oct 22, 2006
"I continue to wish for discussion as to how the attititudes expressed in Herbert's awful acts might have been reflected in books like the centrally important American Negro Slave Revolts."
Source: Deseret News
Oct 22, 2006
Carlos Eire is really two people — one is an erudite professor of history and religion at Yale University, who teaches classes and writes scholarly books, and the other is a Cuban exile of 47 years ago.
This second Eire is a man with strong emotions, and he is responsible for writing "Waiting for Snow in Havana" three years ago, the story of Eire's childhood in Cuba and his escape to the United States at the age of 11.
Eire, who said he loves both
Source: Transcript from This Week (ABC News) with George Stephanopoulos
Oct 22, 2006
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)
(Off-camera) What was the last book you read?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (UNITED STATES)
I'm reading history of the English speaking peoples from 1990 on - 1900 on. It's a great book. [Editor: The book, History of the English-Speaking People
Source: Norman Stone in the Journal of Turkish Weekly
Oct 21, 2006
[Norman Stone (1941-) is a British historian of modern Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe. He is the author of ''Europe Transformed, 1878-1919.'' Stone was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Between 1984-1997, he served as professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Since 1997 Stone has worked at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. After 2005, he transferred to Koc University,Istanbul,Turkey and still continues to teach there.]
“The Armenian ‘genocide’ is an imperi
Source: Jenny Brown at lbo-talk, a forum for the discussion of economics, politics, and culture from a broad left perspective, sponsored by Left Business Observer
Oct 21, 2006
... In order to say
that Bettina is having 'false memory syndrome' you'd also have to claim that
she's lying that as an adult she spoke to her father about the abuse, and he
apologized--was sick with shame, actually, is the feeling you get from her
account. So it's not just false memory syndrome she'd be being accused of, it's
also a wholesale fabrication of her adult interaction with her father about it.
(She also said she got therapy after she remembered, not before, so these
s
Source: Susan Mansfield in scotsman.com
Oct 20, 2006
SIMON Schama breaks off a conversation about his new TV series to talk about kippers. "Scotland has almost all my favourite foods in the world. I'm so glad I don't live here because I would be incredibly fat. I'd eat four kippers for breakfast, and I'd eat shortbread every day all day long. And I'd drink vast amounts of whisky."
Then, I suggest, he begins to see why we Scots are dropping like flies from diet-related illnesses? "Yeah, but I hope you die happy!" he
Source: Press Release
Oct 20, 2006
[Michael Honey is a professor of labor and ethnic studies and American
history at the University of Washington, Tacoma. For information on Watada's
case, see www.thankyoult.org.]
The Bush Administration and Congress this week took the destruction of American
civil liberties to a new low, in the name of a war against terror. The Magna
Carta of 1215 established habeas corpus, the right to come before a court of
law to confront one's accusers and to be safe from arbitrary arrest, ind
Source: Anat Bereshkovsky at ynetnews.com
Oct 19, 2006
Many history and sociology professors and researchers with the common goal of showing “the other” less popular side of Zionism, earned the handle “post-Zionists” for their participation in Palestinian propaganda against government policies and efforts against Israel’s definition as a Jewish state.
These “post-Zionist” professors don’t hesitate to weave comments about Israel’s injustices against the Palestinians, the lack of equality for Israel’s Arab citizens, and democracy’s limita
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (Blog)
Oct 19, 2006
This letter went out from the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association over my signature as president of the Middle East Studies Association. Many thanks to all the colleagues who worked so hard on it:
October 19, 2006
His Excellency Christopher Kastryzk
Consul-General
Republic of Poland
233 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Fax: 646 237 2105
Your Excellency,
I am writing to you on behalf
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 19, 2006
Trustees all over the country have been receiving a book critical of Islam, with no cover note, leading some to worry about why they were receiving the packages.
The address on the packages referred to their trustee status.
The book is Islamic Imperialism: A History, published by Yale University Press. The author is Efraim Karsh, a professor at the University of London who is highly regarded in neoconservative circles, but who has been harshly criticized by many in Midd
