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 KC Johnson at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
May 3, 2006
This morning’s Chronicle features an opinion piece by William Chafe on conditions at Duke. I’m a great admirer of Chafe’s scholarship, which I’ve frequently used in my classes. So of all the signatures on the Group of 88’s statement, his disappointed me the most.
Many of Chafe’s current comments are common sense. He argues that based on the undisputed facts, the lacrosse team deserved “censure and disciplinary action”—which, of course, it received, in the form of a cancellation of t
Source: Martin Kramer at Sandbox (blog)
May 3, 2006
Last year, Rashid Khalidi came to Princeton to deliver a job talk. His aim: to win the newly-established Robert H. Niehaus '77 Professorship of Near Eastern Studies and Religion. He didn't get it. Last month, Princeton announced the appointment of Muhammad Qasim Zaman, a McGill-schooled specialist on Islam from Brown University.
But Khalidi, it turns out, has friends in Princeton's history department, and they began to push for his appointment there. People tell me that Jeremy Adelm
Source: Times Picayune
May 3, 2006
Best-selling Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley rips government leaders at all levels for their wan response to Hurricane Katrina -- with his most acidic prose reserved for Mayor Ray Nagin -- in an article that will hit New York City newsstands today in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.
Brinkley, who since Katrina has been outspoken in his criticism of Nagin in frequent appearances on national media outlets -- at one point calling his handling of the crisis "criminal&q
Source: Scotsman
May 3, 2006
A leading Scots historian yesterday criticised the keepers of Rosslyn Chapel for perpetuating "ludicrous" Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories. Dr. Louise Yeoman said guides and information boards at the chapel should portray the real history of the 15th-century building, rather than attempt to cash in on the popularity of fictional works, such as the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The author and academic said the medieval chapel in Midlothian was built by William Si
Source: Press Release -- John W. Kluge Center
May 2, 2006
Historian Robert V. Remini will discuss his recently published book, "The House: The History of the U.S. House of Representatives," at the Library of Congress at noon on Tuesday, May 9, in Room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.
The event, which is sponsored by the Library's John W. Kluge Center, is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.
Remini's single-volume history traces the development of the Hous
Source: Central Daily (Pennsylvania)
May 2, 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney honored Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis on Monday in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.Lewis, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, was celebrating his 90th birthday on the same day of a conference organized by the council on Islam and the West.
During a brief luncheon speech, Cheney said he first met Lewis more than 15 years ago, when he was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, after
Source: AHA Perspectives (May 2006)
May 1, 2006
Over the past few months, the National History Center has been gathering additional momentum, launching new programs while continuing older ones, thanks to two new developments. The first is the appointment of Miriam E. Hauss as administrative officer to manage the growing day-to-day work of the center. The second is the recruitment of Robert Berendt, an experienced consultant, to help draw up a strategic plan for the center, an essential step that has now been facilitated by grants from David R
Source: AHA Perspectives (May 2006)
May 1, 2006
Wherever historians gather, the conversation often turns to a discussion of why there seems to be such a distance between professional historians and the general public. For most historians working today, the relationship seemed to hit a nadir in the late 1990s with closed museum exhibits and rejected school curricula. As Ian Tyrrell, professor of history at the University of New South Wales, reminds us in his new book, Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890–1970 (Universit
Source: Richard Byrne in the Chronicle of Higher Education
May 1, 2006
Studying the early Christian writings found in Egypt over the past 110 years is painstaking, even frustrating work. The texts were written on brittle papyrus, often in tantalizing fragments, in Coptic — an Egyptian language rendered in Greek letters.
Until the 1980s, the scholars who worked on these writings formed a small circle in which almost everyone knew everyone else. Thanks in part to the success of a series of books written by the Princeton University professor of religion E
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 1, 2006
One of the many classes that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shares with the world through its pioneering OpenCourseWare initiative is “Visualizing Cultures,” an esteemed, interdisciplinary look at “how images have been used to shape the identity of peoples and cultures,” notably Japan. Among the hundreds of images displayed on the site are wood-block prints that Japan used as propaganda during the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war, which captions and other text on the site criticize for their
Source: Fouad Ajami in the WSJ
May 1, 2006
Bernard Lewis came to the New World in the nick of time. Fate--or, more appropriately, history--decreed his American journey and the direction it would take. The historian, who will turn 90 in a handful of days, had come to Princeton from London, at the age of 58, in 1974, to do the work of Orientalism which had gained him scholarly renown. But there would be no academic seclusion for him in the years after. The lands of Islam whose languages and cultures he knew with such intimacy would soon be
Source: NYT
May 1, 2006
Grady McWhiney, a historian who called his fellow Southerners "crackers" in influential books and articles, then explained that this was a compliment to the glorious Celtic heritage he said they shared, died on April 18 at his home in Abilene, Tex. He was 77.
Causes included cancer and heart and Alzheimer's diseases, Donald S. Frazier, president and chief executive officer of the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation, said.
"It's just a question of which one
Source: NYT
Apr 30, 2006
John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat and an unapologetically liberal member of the political and academic establishment he often needled in prolific writings for more than half a century, died Saturday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.
Mr. Galbraith lived in Cambridge and at an "unfarmed farm" near Newfane, Vt. His death was confirmed by his son J. Alan Galbraith.
Mr. Galbraith was one of the most widely read aut
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Apr 28, 2006
On 26 April, the long awaited history of the House of Representatives by Historian of the House Robert V. Remini was unveiled at an event at the Library of Congress. In attendance were author Remini, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, Secretary of the Smithsonian Lawrence Small, and President and CEO of HarperCollinsPublishers Jane Friedman. Also in attendance was former history teacher and now member of Congress John B.
Larson (D-CT) whose legislation (P.L. 106-99) served as the
Source: NYT (Excerpt)
Apr 27, 2006
An audit by the National Archives of more than 25,000 historical documents withdrawn from public access since 1999 found that more than a third did not contain sensitive information justifying classification, archives officials announced Wednesday.
Calling the exposure of the hidden effort to reclassify records a "turning-point moment," Allen Weinstein, the head of the National Archives, announced a new effort to set consistent standards for deciding what records should be
Source: Philip Weiss in the Nation
Apr 27, 2006
Intellectuals can only dream of having the impact that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have had this spring. Within hours of their publishing a critique of the Israel lobby in The London Review of Books for March 23, the article was zinging around the world, soon to show up on the front pages of newspapers and stir heated discussion on cable-TV shows. Virtually overnight, two balding professors in their 50s had become public intellectuals, ducking hundreds of e-mails, phone messages and challe
Source: NYT
Apr 27, 2006
In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Sean Wilentz, a distinguished historian and the director of the American Studies program at Princeton University, takes a serious look at the possibility that Mr. Bush may be the worst president in the nation's history.
What in the world took so long? Some of us have known since the moment he hopped behind the wheel that this reckless president was driving the nation headlong toward a cliff.
Source: David Brooks in his NYT column
Apr 27, 2006
... [In 1996] the liberal writer Michael Tomasky published "Left for Dead," which argued that the progressive movement was being ruined by multicultural identity politics. Democrats have lost the ability to talk to Americans collectively, Tomasky wrote, and seem to be a collection of aggrieved out-groups: feminists, blacks, gays and so on.
At the time, Bernstein and Tomasky were lonely voices on the left, and the multiculturalists struck back. For example, Martin Duberman
Source: Martin Kramer, at his blog, Sandbox
Apr 26, 2006
In February, I wrote that I would be shocked if Yale appointed Juan Cole to a professorship in the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Now that he's been declared a finalist, I see I'm not alone. The appointment has been the subject of three hard-hitting pieces in the
Source: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment
Apr 26, 2006
I've started a petition drive for college and university teachers to defend John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from baseless charges of anti-Semitism. I apologize for limiting the petition base this way, but others are welcome to create other petitions that anyone can sign. I feel it is time for teachers in higher education to stand up and be counted on this issue of the chilling of academic inquiry through character assassination. At a time when the use of congressional funding to universities t
