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: Harvard Crimson
Jan 28, 2006
Forced to resign his post, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said on Friday night that he will step down on June 30 at the end of four turbulent years in which he quickly lost favor with many Faculty members and, ultimately, his boss.
The dean was fired by University President Lawrence H. Summers, according to four people close to the central administration. Kirby’s announcement, between semesters at the College, leaves the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in limbo as the school con
Source: Announcement from Dr. Horensia Calvo, director of the Tulane Latin American Library
Jan 27, 2006
Distinguished scholar and emeritus professor of Latin American History, Richard E. Greenleaf, has given $500,000 to The Latin American Library at Tulane University. The Richard E. Greenleaf Fellowship will provide short-term visits each year for scholars from any country in Latin America to conduct research at The Latin American Library. In addition, the Richard E. Greenleaf Endowment Fund will support restoration or replacement of materials from The Latin American Library’s holdings damaged b
Source: New Republic
Jan 26, 2006
... When Eugene Genovese appeared on the scene in the early 1960s, scholarly interest in the Civil War--even amid its centennial--seemed at low ebb, the interpretive literature was still dominated by the "consensus perspective" that had emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, and our understanding of African American slavery was only beginning to detach itself from the hold of Southern apologists. With The Political Economy of Slavery (1965), and then with The World the Slaveholders Made (1969
Source: Connection Newspaper (VA)
Jan 26, 2006
The biggest defeat of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life was when he tried to speak in the Chicago suburbs of Kenilworth and Cicero in 1966 and '67, said author James Loewen. King was never allowed to speak in Kenilworth, and he and his marchers were met by such violent animosity at the border of Cicero that they never made it into town, in spite of the 2,000 police escorting them.
What these two towns had in common, said Loewen, was that they were "sundown towns."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 26, 2006
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a provision of the USA Patriot Act that was used to deny a visa to at least one prominent foreign scholar, Tariq Ramadan. The provision allowed the federal government to bar him, the ACLU asserts, solely because the Bush administration disapproved of his political views.
In August 2004, Mr. Ramadan, an influential professor of Islamic studies and philosophy whose home is in Geneva, Switzerland, was informed
Source: EJP
Jan 25, 2006
French historian and genocide specialist Yves Ternon tells the European Jewish Press why over 400 historians are demanding the removal of anti-revisionist laws.EJP: Over 400 historians have signed a petition demanding the removal of four “historical laws”. One of these texts, voted on February 2005, includes a controversial article on the “positive aspect of colonialism”, but the other three prohibit genocide denial and discrimination. Why would historians want these anti-re
Source: NYT
Jan 24, 2006
Joan Maynard, who shepherded the preservation of the remnants of Weeksville, a once-thriving 19th-century community of free blacks in Brooklyn that had faded from maps and memory, died on Sunday at her home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She was 77.
Her death was confirmed by Pamela Green, her successor as executive director of the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History.
The story of Weeksville's discovery and preservation sounds like a f
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Forum: 'Becoming' a Nazi to study Nazis?
Jan 24, 2006
I post again to thank those scholars who have taken the time to comment on my work, whether in agreement or disagreement. One of my primary aims was to engender debate, and I've clearly done that, even though I did not anticipate the debate would begin until the publication of my research (probably in about a year). Yet I continue to be surprised by the reactions of those commentators who have not grasped that carrying on research in a post-modern, post-structural mode means bending the rules of
Source: Daniel Pipes in the NY Sun
Jan 24, 2006
William Blum, a Washington, D.C. writer, responded delightedly last Thursday on learning that Osama bin Laden had cited his book in an audiotape. Blum called the mention of Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower "almost as good as being an Oprah book," a reference to the popular American television host whose endorsement routinely makes a book a bestseller.
Asked if he was queasy about bin Laden's urging listeners to read his book, Blum replied: "I'm not
Source: NYT
Jan 23, 2006
When President Bush met with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in the Oval Office this month, the talk turned to Ms. Merkel's childhood under Communism, then wandered to the subject of Mr. Bush's latest bedtime reading: "Mao: The Unknown Story," an 814-page biography that presents the Chinese dictator as another Hitler or Stalin.
Participants in the meeting say Mr. Bush spoke glowingly of the book, a 10-year project by Jung Chang, the author of the hugely successful memo
Source: CBC News
Jan 23, 2006
The union representing professors and lecturers at the University of Prince Edward Island has condemned a part-time teacher's offer of a B-minus grade to students who agreed to stay away from his lectures.
David Weale said he made the offer because the class is too big and some students aren't interested in being there.
About 20 students, out of a class of about 100, accepted the guaranteed 70 per cent mark to drop out of the class.
Weale is a retired pr
Source: AP--Washington Times
Jan 23, 2006
At the end of a quarter-century spent chronicling the civil rights movement, Taylor Branch is admittedly relieved. But his voluminous research into Martin Luther King and his contemporaries has not diminished his opinion of King's historical stature.
Far from it.
Mr. Branch, in his third and final volume of a narrative history of the civil rights movement, titled "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68," argues that King deserves to stand alongside
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 23, 2006
The discredited right-wing historian David Irving was arrested in Austria last year for denying the Holocaust and faces trial next month. From his Viennese prison, he gives his first interview to German author and academic Malte Herwig, who asks if arrogance is at the heart of Irving's desire for outrage - or something more sinister As darkness descends upon the thick walls of Vienna's ancient Josefstadt courthouse, the adjacent prison compound comes to life. Shouts and crie
Source: Wa Po
Jan 21, 2006
Twenty-four hours after Osama bin Laden told the world that the American people should read the work of a little-known Washington historian, William Blum was still adjusting.
Blum, who at 72 is accustomed to laboring in relative left-wing obscurity, checked his emotions and pronounced himself shocked and, well, pleased.
"This is almost as good as being an Oprah book," he said yesterday between telephone calls from the world media and bites of a bagel. "
Source: Judy Stoffman in the Toronto Star
Jan 21, 2006
At an age when many people are basking in Florida retirement, Lita-Rose Betcherman can't stop writing.
Her fourth book of history, Court Lady and Country Wife: Two Noble Sisters in Seventeenth-Century England, has recently been published by Harper Collins in Canada, Morrow in the U.S., and Wiley in the U.K. to good reviews. British biographer Jane Dunn, author of Elizabeth & Mary, called it "popular history at its best."
Two more books she is not ready to
Source: Irish Times
Jan 21, 2006
Noam Chomsky's eighth-floor office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is sparse, cheaply furnished and gloomy, lightened only a little by a few giant plants and some pictures tacked to the walls, writes Denis Staunton.
The most prominent picture is a large black-and-white photograph of Bertrand Russell that stands on top of a filing cabinet just inside the door. Below it is a quotation from the British philosopher's autobiography: "Three passions, simple but ove
Source: Christopher Reed in the Guardian
Jan 20, 2006
The awesome view of the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains in California, rearing up the eastern side with the contrast of the Alabama foothills below, kept nagging at the mind of the western film historian Dave Holland, who has died aged 70.
Eventually he realised he had seen the same formations on film, and more than once. One rock he noticed was in Gene Autry's cowboy classic Boots and Saddles (1937); it also marked the spot where the chase began in How the West Was Won (1962)
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 20, 2006
PROFESSOR PHILIP GRIERSON, who died on January 15 aged 95, was a medieval historian, a leading numismatist, and a symbol of continuity at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was a resident fellow for 70 years.
Grierson's teaching career was that of a general historian of medieval Europe, in particular the Carolingian Empire, though it was as a numismatist and expert on medieval coinage that he was most renowned. He held chairs in the subject at Cambridge and at Brussels
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Jan 20, 2006
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Louis Galambos to the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics at the John W. Kluge Center, effective 1 January 2006. Galambos, a professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University, is the fourth recipient of the honor.
The holder of the Maguire Chair conducts research on ethical issues associated with American history. Research may include the conduct of politics and government at all levels of American life
Source: Frontpagemag.com
Jan 20, 2006
On November 9, 2005, Professor Joan Wallach Scott appeared as a witness before the Select Committee on Academic Freedom of the Pennyslvania House of Representatives. The committee was created by House Resolution HR 177, sponsored by Representative Gibson Armstrong.
Joan Wallach Scott is a distinguished member of the academic profession as it is currently constituted. She holds a tenured chair – itself an honorific – in History at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Studies, one of the
