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: Hunter College
Mar 30, 2006
The James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism awarded by Hunter College has been given this year to, among others, Juan Cole.
This is the first year the award has gone to a blogger.
Cole runs the blog, Informed Comment.
Source: NYT
Mar 30, 2006
Denis Twitchett, a scholar of imperial China best known for his role in conceiving and creating "The Cambridge History of China," a monumental 15-volume study widely regarded as the most comprehensive history of China in the English language, died on Feb. 24 in Cambridge, England. He was 80.
His death was announced by Princeton University, where he retired in 1994 as Gordon Wu Professor of Chinese Studies, the first academic to be appointed to that chair. His landmar
Source: Eric Weiner in Huffington Post
Mar 29, 2006
Kudos to the good people at the New York Historical Society for looking beyond the past sins of plagiarism committed by Doris Kearns Goodwin and bestowing on the prolific celebrity historian a prestigious award and $50,000 prize in honor of her recent biography of Abe Lincoln, "Team of Rivals."
On Wednesday the society announced that it was naming Goodwin "American History Laureate" and was giving her its inaugural book prize, which apparently carries a price tag
Source: The Washington Post
Mar 29, 2006
NEW YORK -- After she left the convent, Karen Armstrong called herself an atheist. "I used to hate religion," she says. "I loathed it in my angry days."
Seventeen books later, she is recognized as one of the great religious historians, and she has reconsidered her label.She regards herself to be deeply religious but with no denomination. "Sometimes I call myself a freelance," she says in her melodious English accent. "I c
Source: u.texas.edu
Mar 29, 2006
The looting of the Iraqi National Museum in April of 2003 provoked a world outcry at the loss of artifacts regarded as part of humanity's shared cultural patrimony. But though the losses were unprecedented in scale, the museum looting was hardly the first time that Iraqi heirlooms had been plundered or put to political uses. From the beginning of archaeology as a modern science in the nineteenth century, Europeans excavated and appropriated Iraqi antiquities as relics of the birth of Western civ
Source: Scott McLemee in Inside Higher Ed
Mar 29, 2006
... Garry Wills takes a skeptical look at WWJD in the opening pages of his new book, What Jesus Meant, published by Viking. He takes it as a variety of spiritual kitsch — an aspect of the fundamentalist and Republican counterculture, cemtered around suburban mega-churches offering a premium on individual salvation.
In any case, says Wills, the question is misleading and perhaps dangerous. The gospels aren’t a record of exemplary moments; the actions of Jesus are not meant as a templ
Source: NYT
Mar 29, 2006
The New-York Historical Society has named Doris Kearns Goodwin its American history laureate and will present her with its inaugural $50,000 Book Prize for American history for "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" (Simon & Schuster), a biography of the president and his cabinet. The prize, to be awarded annually, will be bestowed on May 5 at the society’s annual "Weekend With History," a two-day program of informal conversations and presentations.
Source: AScribe
Mar 28, 2006
LEWISTON, Maine, March 28 (AScribe Newswire) -- Four honorary degree recipients will speak at the 140th commencement at Bates on May 28. They are Shakespearean scholar and cultural critic Marjorie Garber, AIDS researcher David Ho, historian David McCullough and choreographer Mark Morris. The 10 a.m. commencement ceremony takes place on the historic quad in front of Coram Library. A writer of acclaimed, best-selling histories and distinctive narrator for television and film,
Source: Charles Krauthammer
Mar 28, 2006
It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq war, nearing the end of its first year, as "a virtually unqualified success." He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them.
And thus did Francis F
Source: Press Release -- Purdue News Service
Mar 27, 2006
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., March 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- A Purdue University history team is assisting Simulex Inc., a Purdue Research Park company, in developing a computer simulation that will help America better understand what matters to citizens living in Baghdad.
"History is more relevant today than many people think," says Stacy Holden, an assistant professor of history who studies the Middle East. "Learning history is more than just memorizing dates and facts for a test.
Source: History Today
Mar 27, 2006
Bryan Ward Perkins has been announced as the 2005/6 winner of the Hessell-Tiltman History Prize. His book, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation, looks at how and why successive generations have understood the fall of the Roman Empire and why this particular period in history is still significant today. For many years the fall of Rome has been attributed to hostile and vicious barbarian invasions but more contemporary views propose that there was a largely peaceful transition into German
Source: Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed
Mar 27, 2006
When “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” first appeared on the Web site of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government this month, the paper’s title page featured the globe and Harvard seal that make up the Kennedy School’s logo, and that routinely appear on papers posted there. If you download the paper now, however, you won’t find the logo on the PDF. The Kennedy school — with the authors’ permission — took the logo off, a sign of just how sensitive this paper has become.
Source: Michael Wilson in the NYT
Mar 27, 2006
new book about a dark chapter in Hawaiian history, when thousands of people with leprosy were forced to live on a remote outcropping of the island of Molokai, has upset some former patients of the settlement and raised delicate questions about how much deference should be paid to them.
"The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai," by John Tayman, has garnered critical praise. But complaints by former patients and people close to them about how the book
Source: Nation
Mar 26, 2006
In the early 1980s The Nation invited the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who died February 28, to join a panel. Professor Schlesinger declined the invitation, saying he would have to be "a monumental masochist" to lend himself to a proceeding sponsored by The Nation, a magazine that had been attacking him in its pages for the past thirty years.
In his 1949 book The Vital Center, Schlesinger had described The Nation (along with The New Republic) as "a fellow
Source: Nation
Mar 26, 2006
Among the more unremarked achievements of the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is how little enmity he inspired. Excluding the ideologically obsessed sourpuss Norman Podhoretz and the young philistine Jonah Goldberg, nary a disparaging word has been heard about this most combative of liberal lions since his recent death. This is surprising because, leaving aside politics, for the balance of his remarkable sixty-plus years as a historian, journalist, pundit, film critic, presidential adviser and marat
Source: NYT
Mar 25, 2006
Laura Claridge's "Emily Post and the Rise of Practical Feminism," to be published by Random House, has won the $30,000 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award in the 2006 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards for exceptional nonfiction. Announced yesterday by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation, the accolades included the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize to Megan Marshall for "The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism"
Source: Emory Wheel
Mar 24, 2006
Criminal battery charges against former Emory School of Law professor David Garrow were dropped in a settlement two weeks ago, ending the nearly four-year legal battle surrounding the Pulitzer Prize winner.
A law school staff member accused Garrow of grabbing her wrists, pushing and verbally abusing her in September 2002.
The staff member, Gloria Mann, decided to drop the criminal charges for undisclosed reasons, according to Jeff Brickman, Garrow's attorney for the cr
Source: Robin Wilson in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 24, 2006
When Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote her first scholarly article 30 years ago — an examination of funeral sermons for women in Colonial America — she never expected that a line from the opening paragraph would become a rallying cry for feminists.
You've seen the slogan on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and coffee mugs: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." It has been adopted as the official maxim of a raunchy, comic feminist group and used on the best-selling products of One
Source: David Horowitz at frontpagemag.com
Mar 24, 2006
As I have proceeded with the tedious and unrewarding project of replying to the critical reviews of professors profiled in the pages of my book, I find myself wondering whether there has ever been a cohort of intellectuals so socially privileged and occupationally secure and so utterly dishonest. Why not respond, for example, to a portrait you don’t like by showing in the conduct of your critique that the image in the book does not reflect you at all? Why not manifest the disposition of a schola
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 24, 2006
Q. Is it constitutional to censure a president?
A. It's not in line with the spirit of the Constitution. ... It's not within the article and section [Article II, Section 4] that lays out a procedure for dealing with presidential high crimes and misdemeanors. ... However, the Senate can pass any resolution it chooses to. ... They can pass a resolution on National Peanut Butter Day, and I suppose they could pass a resolution proclaiming their dissatisfaction with the president. ... T
