Historians in the News

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.

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• SOURCE: World Religion News
  1-26-15
  

  From his perch in Saudi Arabia, Princeton’s Mark Cohen says Jews and Muslims should remember they used to get along

  "The political situation today is so dismal that historical periods when Jews and Muslims got along much better than they do today seem irrelevant."

• 
• SOURCE: The Durham News
  1-26-15
  

  Duke honors historian John Hope Franklin with year-long series of events

  Duke University will hold events during the next year paying tribute to preeminent historian John Hope Franklin, who would have turned 100 years old this January.

• 
• SOURCE: Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
  1-27-15 (accessed)
  

  What New Left History Gave Us

  The New Left historians’ withering critiques of liberalism have proven enormously influential. But do they hold up in our more conservative age?

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  1-26-15
  

  Marcus Borg, Liberal Christian Scholar, Dies at 72

  Professor Borg was among a group of scholars, known as the Jesus Seminar, who set out to discern which of Jesus’ acts and utterances could be confirmed as historically true, and which were merely myths.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  1-23-15
  

  Richard Hofstadter’s insights into the "paranoid style in American politics” lauded in the NYT

  Hofstadter never abandoned his liberal views. But his fear of the mob qualified him as a conservative by temperament.

• 
• 1-23-15
  

  NYT History Book Reviews: Who Got Noticed this Week?

  by Erik Moshe

  This week: Heather Cox Richardson, Richard Bernstein, and Jan Jarboe Russell.

• 
• SOURCE: Out History
  1-23-15 (accessed)
  

  Researchers have discovered a previously unknown 149-page manuscript defending homosexuality.

  Jonathan Ned Katz, co-director of OutHistory.org, the website on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history. analyses the document, which provides insights into gay life in the 1920s and 1930s.

• 
• SOURCE: Historia
  1-23-15 (accessed)
  

  What Counts as Historical Evidence? The Fracas over John Stauffer’s Black Confederates

  by Megan Kate Nelson

  This latest fracas brings up interesting questions about the uses (and misuses) of evidence in Civil War history, and about what actually constitutes “evidence” — and who gets to analyze it.

• 
• SOURCE: Commentary
  1-20-15
  

  Israeli journalist-turned-biographer, Shabtai Teveth, is remembered for his attack on the New Historians

  by Martin Kramer

  He passed away in November 2014, a dozen years after a stroke silenced his pen. 

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Gazette
  1-20-15
  

  Harvard’s Drew Faust says the Civil War marked the start of large-scale industrial war, not WW I

  In England, Faust delivered the prestigious Sir Robert Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge’s historic Senate House.

• 
• SOURCE: Daniel Pipes Blog
  1-20-15
  

  Daniel Pipes says he was mistaken about no-go zones

  by Daniel Pipes

  But he insists there are places where police in Europe allow Muslims to get away with crime

• 
• SOURCE: AHA
  1-20-15
  

  Department chairs' newest headache? In Virginia they have to bare their financial souls

  by American Historical Association

  A new law passed with good intentions could force department chairs at Virginia universities to fill out an 18 page form!

• 
• SOURCE: edwired
  1-19-15
  

  Historian warns that the more people go to community colleges, the less money universities will have for higher level courses

  by Mills Kelly

  George Mason University's Mills Kelly:    "It’s not that difficult to imagine a circumstance ten years hence in which we have lost a big chunk of that general education revenue to our area community colleges."

• 
• SOURCE: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
  1-20-15
  

  How a historian discovered a priceless Indian artifact in a trunk

  Timothy Tackett, now history professor emeritus at UC Irvine, was in Watsonville helping his mother Jean pack up things for a move to Washington state when he looked in the bottom of a trunk.

• 
• SOURCE: The Bangor Daily News
  1-20-15
  

  York professor explores potential ties between Salem witch trials, early raid on Maine town

  Professor Emerson Baker believes an Indian attack was a key trigger for the Salem, Massachusetts, witch hunts.

• 
• SOURCE: Salon
  1-20-15
  

  What obits overlooked in Lincoln scholar Harry Jaffa: His obsessive homophobia

  Right-wing leader Harry Jaffa received glowing eulogies last week. But his vile homophobia must also be remembered.

• 
• SOURCE: The Chronicle of Higher Education
  1-16-15
  

  Linda Gordon backs the BDS Movement but not an academic boycott of Israel

  by Linda Gordon

  In a column in the Chronicle she lays out the argument she made at the AHA: The BDS Movement is pressuring Israel in desirable ways.

• 
• SOURCE: Mondoweiss
  1-17-15
  

  The legacy of Joan Peters and ‘From Time Immemorial’

  "From Time Immemorial is an embarrassment that taints anyone who embraced it as well as those who continue to do so."

• 
• SOURCE: Simon & Schuster
  1-18-15 (accessed)
  

  Coming Soon: David McCullough's new book

  It's about the Wright Brothers. It will be published in May. 

• 
• 1-16-15
  

  NYT History Book Reviews: Who Got Noticed this Week?

  by Erik Moshe

  This week:   Sven Beckert, Richard Dunn, and Bartow J. Elmore.