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: CBS News
8-5-13
Now, a new book claims Monroe actually called first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to talk about it.
Source: Asahi Shimbum
8-6-13
HIROSHIMA--An American professor living in Hiroshima is getting the young descendants of hydrogen and atomic bomb survivors to tell their stories, as well as linking victims of nuclear weapons and accidents around the world, to prevent future tragedies.Robert Jacobs, 53, an associate professor of the history of nuclear weapons and scientific technology at Hiroshima City University, settled near the city’s Mitakidera temple seven years ago. The old temple is well known for offering water of the falls on its grounds to the annual Peace Memorial Ceremony, held on Aug. 6 to commemorate victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima.Jacobs has interviewed a number of people at nuclear testing sites and in areas affected by nuclear accidents all over the world....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
8-1-13
Not every scholarly study of early Christianity rockets to best-seller status thanks to an attack by a belligerent cable-network reporter.But that became the fate last week of Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, just out from Random House in the United States while, in Britain, the Westbourne Press is rushing the book forward from its original August 18 publication date.The fortunes of Zealot offer a cautionary tale for scholars who publish on touchy subjects—or perhaps a primer on how to provoke conservative-media hostility, and then to capitalize on it, even if you're no religious or intellectual radical....
Source: The Daily Reflector
8-1-13
Whatever happens in the next decade or two, East Carolina University professor Michael Gross said he did not want to look back and think he failed to stand up for something.A professor of German history with degrees from the University of Chicago, Columbia and Brown, Gross teaches his students about the effects of “fanatical, right-wing radicalism” and its effect on Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.“One of the things we talk about is the responsibility we have to participate and protect democracy by speaking up,” Gross said. “If we don’t, it may very well collapse and be replaced by hypocrisy or a minority group that dictates its will. We’re in danger of letting others undermine our republic if we don’t educate ourselves.”...
Source: Irish Independent
7-30-13
THE abolition of the Seanad is a "grubby power grab" by a Government that already keeps major economic decision-making within a powerful inner circle, historian Diarmaid Ferriter has claimed.In strident criticisms of the Coalition, Prof Ferriter also said the Economic Management Council (EMC) – the powerful four-member committee that decides all major economic decisions – showed "centralisation and unaccountable elites still dominate" even more than ever.His comments come after Emily O'Reilly, who will soon leave her Ombudsman post to become EU Ombudsman, criticised the Dail for not taking itself seriously, saying it spends its time "ducking and diving"....
Source: ITV
7-29-13
Television historian and Cambridge professor Mary Beard has forced a Twitter troll to apologise after publicly naming and shaming him.The male Twitter user had sent an obscene message to Professor Beard that she then retweeted to her 42,000 followers, saying she was "not going to be terrorised."...
Source: NZ Herald
7-30-13
Maori culture has been cheapened, the haka has become a corrupted spectacle and Maori tourism villages are degrading, according to one of the country's leading historians.Paul Moon's criticisms come in his latest book, Encounters: The Creation of New Zealand, where the Auckland University of Technology academic takes a look at the changing New Zealand identity over the last couple of centuries.Speaking on Firstline this morning, Dr Moon said it was about time someone took aim at the version of Maori culture we – and especially the tourism industry – present to the world."For a long time, we've had a snap-frozen version of Maori culture that's been around since the late 19th century," he says....
Source: Der Spiegel
7-26-13
British-American historian Walter Laqueur experienced the demise of the old Europe and the rise of the new. In a SPIEGEL interview, he shares his gloomy forecast for a European Union gripped by debt crisis. SPIEGEL: Mr. Laqueur, you experienced Europe and the Europeans in the best and the worst of times. Historical hot spots and the stations of your personal biography were closely and sometimes dramatically intertwined. Which conclusions have you reached today, at the advanced age of 92?Laqueur: I became a historian of the postwar era in Europe, but the Europe I knew no longer exists. My book "Out of the Ruins of Europe," published in 1970, ended with an optimistic assessment of the future. Later, in 2008, "The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent" was published. I returned to the subject in my latest book, "After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent." The sequence of titles probably says it all.SPIEGEL: The last two, at any rate, sound as if the demise of the Western world were imminent.
Source: Indianapolis Star
7-27-13
...[Former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels] upset Stanford University professor Sam Wineburg by invoking Wineburg’s criticisms of Zinn to defend his own stance. Wineburg objected to Daniels using his work to rationalize a ban on the textbook.“This is not about Zinn, per se,” Wineburg told the Star. “This is about whether in an open democratic society we should be exposed — whether you’re in ninth grade or seventh grade or a freshman at Purdue — whether you should be exposed to views that challenge your own cherished view.”In a tweet directed at Daniels, Wineburg wrote: “How could I possibly agree that ‘banning Zinn’ makes sense when I assign him in my own classes?”...
Source: NYT
7-29-13
The historian Howard Zinn won a dubious prize of sorts last year when his best-selling “People’s History of the United States” came in second in an informal online poll to determine the “least credible history book in print.”But now some of Mr. Zinn’s strongest scholarly critics have rushed to his defense, following the revelation that former Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana had, while in office, sent e-mails to a state education official asking for assurance that Mr. Zinn’s “truly execrable, antifactual piece of disinformation” was “not in use” in Indiana classrooms....
Source: The Age (AU)
7-30-13
Remote tribes in Indonesian Papua and the Amazon are at grave risk of genocide and it is happening now in Syria and the Sudan, despite the world saying ''never again''.So says a genocide expert, Yale University history professor Ben Kiernan. Papuan tribes - more than 40 regarded as ''uncontacted'' - faced genocide by the Indonesian military, he said. ''Not enough is known about what is happening in Papua, but lots of refugees are fleeing,'' he said.In Papua, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru indigenous people faced deforestation, disease and violent confrontation. Although only the violence could be called genocide, diseases brought by ranching and logging often could not be called accidental....
Source: NYT
7-29-13
FIRST came years of being a foot messenger in New York City and working in data entry. Then, frustrated with his life, and feeling the responsibility of providing for a child, Michael D. Hattem entered the Borough of Manhattan Community College — the only college that would admit him, he says, as a high school dropout with a G.E.D. He succeeded at community college, and, in 2011, graduated from City College.Today, Mr. Hattem, 38, is a graduate student at Yale working on a dissertation in American history that “explores the role of competing historical memories of 17th-century Britain in shaping late colonial political culture.”He told his exceptional story to help explain why he came to the defense of the American Historical Association last week when it issued a statement calling on universities to allow newly minted Ph.D’s to “embargo” their dissertations for up to six years — that is, keep them from being circulated online....
Source: NYT
7-23-13
For decades the dominant story of postwar American religious history has been the triumph of evangelical Christians. Beginning in the 1940s, the story goes, a rising tide of evangelicals began asserting their power and identity, ultimately routing their more liberal mainline Protestant counterparts in the pews, on the offering plate and at the ballot box.But now a growing cadre of historians of religion are reconsidering the legacy of those faded establishment Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, tracing their enduring influence on the movements for human rights and racial justice, the growing “spiritual but not religious” demographic and even the shaded moral realism of Barack Obama — a liberal Protestant par excellence, some of these academics say.After decades of work bringing evangelicals, Mormons and other long-neglected religious groups into the broader picture, these scholars contend, the historical profession is overdue for a “mainline moment.”
Source: Vanderbilt News
7-25-13
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham will be a dynamic presence at Vanderbilt University during the fall 2013 semester, teaching a political science course and leading two events open to the general public.“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of the vibrant Vanderbilt world,” said Meacham. “The university seems to be in a kind of golden age–at once culturally exciting and intellectually exacting.”Meacham, executive editor and executive vice president at Random House, was awarded the Pulitzer for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. His most recent book, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and made many critics’ “best of the year” lists. Meacham is a contributing editor to Time and a former editor of Newsweek. A fellow of the Society of American Historians, he is a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, chairs the National Advisory Board of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, and is a scholar-trustee of the New-York Historical Society....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed.
7-25-13
Leslie Cohen Berlowitz has agreed to resign as president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on July 31, after she was accused of embellishing her résumé with a spurious doctoral degree, The Boston Globe reported....
Source: AHA Today
7-24-13
The AHA’s Statement on Policies Regarding the Embargoing of Completed History PhD Dissertations has generated wide discussion, controversy, articles inInside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and a number of questions. In the Q&A below, we’ve summarized some of the most common claims and questions about the statement that we’ve seen on Twitter, blogs, and the comment section of the AHA’s announcement. We welcome further discussion on this issue. Is the AHA recommending that students embargo their dissertations? No. The AHA is recommending that universities adopt flexible policies that will allow newly minted PhDs to decide for themselves whether or not to embargo their dissertations.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
7-22-13
The American Historical Association on Friday released a statement criticizing the way Mitch Daniels (when he governor of Indiana, prior to becoming president of Purdue University) exchanged e-mail messages with staff members criticizing the work of the late Howard Zinn. "Whatever the strengths or weaknesses of Howard Zinn’s text, and whatever the criticisms that have been made of it, we believe that the open discussion of controversial books benefits students, historians, and the general public alike. Attempts to single out particular texts for suppression from a school or university curriculum have no place in a democratic society," said the statement....
Source: Stanford Daily
7-21-13
Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and a former Director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo. As Egypt continues to grapple with the aftermath of a military-assisted popular uprising against the incumbent president, Beinin talked with The Daily about the recent events in Egypt, the role of the military in bringing about a change of government and how the transition may affect American foreign policy towards the African nation.The Stanford Daily (TSD): What do you make of the recent events in Egypt?
Source: David Austin Walsh for HNN
7-22-13
David Austin Walsh is the editor of the History News Network.It's a cliche, but it's true: historical controversies are as much about contemporary politics as they are about history.Laurence Zuckerman, a former reporter for the New York Times and currently an adjunct professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, just published a feature article in the The Nation that profiles the dispute between Richard Breitman and Allen Lichtman on the one hand and Rafael Medoff on the other about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust and his failure to save European Jews.Roosevelt's critics, argues Zuckerman, are motivated less by the historical evidence and more by contemporaries challenges faced by Israel. "The not-so-subtle message" of critics like Medoff, Zuckerman writes, is "like the Jews of Europe in 1939, Israel is under an existential threat and cannot count on anyone for help -- even the United States, even liberals, even Jews in the United States."
Source: HNN staff
7-22-13
In 1945, Detroit was the American Dream.During World War II, the Detroit region was the center of American wartime production. The Willow Run factory near Ypsilanti, a few miles outside of Detroit proper, produced nearly half of the some 18,500 B-24 Liberator bombers built during the war. Ninety-one percent of all G.I. helmets were produced in Detroit. The city was home to the nation's first tank plant; a quarter of the nearly 90,000 tanks produced by the United States during the war were built in Detroit.That was the Detroit Tom Sugrue's parents and grandparents knew. But it was a city largely built on quicksand, reliant on the postwar auto industry for continued growth and which dealt with the large wartime influx of African American workers with discriminatory housing policies and at times brutal violence.The good times wouldn't last.
