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: Time Magazine
4-16-13
In the aftermath of the deadly explosions in Boston, one word quickly became attached to the tragedy: terrorism. The major media honed in on the presence of the term in President Barack Obama’s speeches, and as the investigation continues into the motives of its unknown culprit or culprits, so too will speculation into the terrorist pathologies underlying it all. In post–9/11 America, terrorism is the frame through which we now instinctively make sense of seemingly senseless violence.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
4-16-13
A student has told how she was conned by the BBC into believing its journalist was a history professor so he travel to North Korea for a Panorama investigation.The London School of Economics student, who wants to remain anonymous, has intensified pressure on the BBC, which is under fire over a Pyongyang documentary shown last night.The student told MailOnline: '[Panorama journalist] John Sweeney was presented to use as a history professor from a university in Beijing.'I was wondering why they were filming him so much. It was two days before then end of the trip that I realised he was an undercover journalist.'...
Source: Daily Show
4-10-13
Documentarian Ken Burns questions the New York City institutions that botched the "Central Park Five" case.
Source: NYT
4-7-13
A specter is haunting university history departments: the specter of capitalism.After decades of “history from below,” focusing on women, minorities and other marginalized people seizing their destiny, a new generation of scholars is increasingly turning to what, strangely, risked becoming the most marginalized group of all: the bosses, bankers and brokers who run the economy.Even before the financial crisis, courses in “the history of capitalism” — as the new discipline bills itself — began proliferating on campuses, along with dissertations on once deeply unsexy topics like insurance, banking and regulation. The events of 2008 and their long aftermath have given urgency to the scholarly realization that it really is the economy, stupid....
Source: Times Higher Education
4-3-13
Silvio Laccetti was cleaning out his office after 43 years of teaching at the Stevens Institute of Technology, a science and technology school in Hoboken, New Jersey, when he stumbled across a pile of unreturned reports, assignments and examinations from some of the thousands of students he had taught over the years.It gave him an idea: invite some of his best former students for dinner. Not all at once, however: one at a time.What Dr Laccetti, who taught history, called his “retirement odyssey” involved 83 dinners and lunches consumed over three and a half years with 104 of his one-time students, mostly individually but a few in small groups.He spoke by phone with another dozen who lived too far away to meet in person.The odyssey gave him an opportunity academics seldom get: to measure his impact on the world.“They had listened to my advice,” Dr Laccetti, 72, said. “They maintained an interest in the humanities. They even talked about me to their kids, and taught their children some of the things that I taught them.”...
Source: WaPo
4-4-13
Robert V. Remini, an award-winning historian who was considered a preeminent biographer of President Andrew Jackson and who also served as official historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, died March 28 at a hospital in Evanston, Ill. He was 91.His death was announced by the University of Illinois at Chicago, with which Dr. Remini had been associated for nearly five decades. He had complications from a stroke, said his son-in-law Dennis Costello.Equal parts scholar and storyteller, Dr. Remini was regarded as one of the finest political biographers of his era. His subjects included presidents John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren, House speaker Henry Clay, senator and statesman Daniel Webster and Mormon leader Joseph Smith. Dr. Remini also wrote a sprawling history of the House of Representatives, where he served as historian from 2005 to 2010....
Source: WaPo
4-3-13
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Georges Corvington, a prominent Haitian historian best known for his exhaustive study of the Caribbean nation’s capital of Port-au-Prince, died Wednesday at age 88, a close friend said.Fellow historian and longtime friend Georges Michel said that Corvington died peacefully in his sleep at his home in the capital he wrote so much about. Michel said Covington had recently spent a few weeks in the hospital and the cause of death was heart failure.“He’s a giant that has fallen,” said Michel, who is also a physician. “He was the greatest living Haitian historian.”...
Source: Daily Show (click for video)
4-2-13
Jonathan Sperber discusses Karl Marx's colorful personal life, and speculates as to how Marx would view the capitalist modern world.
Source: AHA Today
4-3-13
Declaring that "access to health care is a basic human right," the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has issued a statement calling on colleges and universities to comply with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and to calculate the hours of part-time and adjunct faculty in a fair and accurate way. Such calculations would take into account the full responsibilities of these faculty for grading, advising students, and so forth, and not just the hours they spend in the classroom. The AAUP is responding to news accounts of a few institutions that have threatened to cut the course loads of non-tenure track faculty in order to avoid offering them health benefits- a move the AAUP terms "reprehensible."
Source: SF Appeal
3-27-13
The organization that oversees San Francisco’s de Young and Legion of Honor museums today announced it has appointed a New York-based art historian as its new director.Colin Bailey will be the new director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, overseeing 550 employees at the two museums in Golden Gate Park and Lincoln Park.Bailey, who most recently served as deputy director at The Frick Collection in New York City, will take over effective June 1, said Dede Wilsey, president of the Fine Art Museums’ board of trustees....
Source: Chicago Tribune
3-31-13
Dr. Hannelore Loevy Taschini, a pediatric dentist who taught for more than four decades at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry, was also a dental historian, editor and author."She was a nationally recognized historian of the dental profession who preserved the history of women in our profession for posterity," Bruce Graham, the school's dean, said in a statement....
Source: World Socialist Web Site
4-3-13
Allen Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as director of the Civil War Era Studies Program. He is the author of numerous books, including Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America and Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Guelzo spoke with Tom Mackaman of the World Socialist Web Site in his office at Gettysburg College on a Saturday morning in March. A large academic conference was being held that weekend at the college entitled “The Future of Civil War History.” Gettysburg, in southeastern Pennsylvania, was the location of the bloodiest battle in the Civil War, and the city’s college is now one of the leading centers in the study of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln.Tom Mackaman: How did you come about your interest in Lincoln and the Civil War?
Source: Economic Times (India)
4-3-13
There's a fortune to be made in an old pair of jeans. The only caveat (and it's a big one) is that the pair has to be really old; over a century is a good starting point. If you do have access to great-great-grandad's wardrobe (and assuming he wore jeans), the old pair could sell for close to $150,000. Lynn Downey, brand historian of Levi's travels the world with just such a pair; quite literally one of the first branded blue jeans ever made. She ensures the jeans are always part of hand luggage; this is one item of clothing that cannot be trusted with airlines. The other pair she's exhibiting is a 501 from the 1980s. What it lacks in vintage pedigree, this pair from Japan makes up for by sporting the signatures of all the members of The Rolling Stones....Brand historians or archivists are quite popular among American brands with a long pedigree. They are (or have been) present at Coca-Cola, Disney, Ford, Hallmark and Wells Fargo. And yet, according to Downey, having a brand historian shouldn't just be the preserve of older brands: "The day you start your business is the day you start your archive. I hope Google have an archivist because they are making history."...
Source: AP
4-2-13
BOWIE, Md. — Scholars will discuss the impact of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and message during a free public conference at Bowie State University.Friday’s inaugural conference commemorates the 45th anniversary of King’s assassination, which took place on April 4, 1968 in Memphis....
Source: Media Matters
4-1-13
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Robert Caro criticized conservative media coverage of President Obama during an appearance in New York City, describing it as "something quite horrible" and venomous.Caro, known for his biographies of President Lyndon Johnson, spoke during a March 29 interview at Strand Books in Manhattan conducted by New York magazine writer Frank Rich as part of promotion for the paperback version of his fourth Johnson book, The Passage of Power....
Source: Donnellan Family Funeral Services
3-31-13
Noted American political historian/biographer and former Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives Robert V. Remini of Wilmette IL passed away on March 28 due to complications from a recently suffered stroke. He was 91.Dr. Remini was born in 1921 in New York City, the son of the late William Remini and Lauretta Tierney Remini. He was the older brother of the late Vincent and William Remini. After graduating from Fordham University, he served as a Lieutenant in the U.S Navy in the Atlantic during WWII before returning to New York to obtain his Masters and Doctorate in History from Columbia University. During these studies in 1948, he married his kindergarten friend and classmate Ruth Kuhner, who passed away in 2012. Together they were the proud parents of Elizabeth Nielson of Eugene OR, Joan Costello of Cincinnati OH, and Robert W Remini of Wilmette IL, as well as grandparents to Caitlin and Brian Costello and Grace Nielson.
Source: Global Times (China)
3-28-13
The Diaoyu Islands, although uninhabited, have long been the source of tensions between China and Japan, since both claim sovereignty over the islands. The two countries' relationship has often been strained by this dispute, which has intensified in recent years. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has reiterated that "the Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands have been China's sacred territory since ancient times" and has presented its historical and legal case to back its claim. This is a rare example, however, of a Japanese historian coming to the same conclusion. The late Kiyoshi Inoue was a Japanese academic, historian, author and professor emeritus at Kyoto University. He published Diaoyu Islands - The Historical Treaties in 1972, in which he presented his interpretation of why the Diaoyu Islands belong to China. This book was first issued by Daisan Shokan, a Japanese publisher. Against the currently escalating tensions on the islands, New Star Press reprinted this book in February....
Source: AHA Today
3-27-13
On March 20, 2013, the United States Senate approved an amendment offered by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013, which would restrict the use of federal funds in the National Science Foundation’s Political Science Program. In response, the Council of the American Historical Association approved the following statement of concern:The American Historical Association vigorously opposes the recent Senate appropriations amendment restricting National Science Foundation funding for research in political science to specific topics. The amendment, which requires the agency to limit funding to projects which it can certify “as promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States,” is wrong-headed in many ways.First, the amendment represents an intrusion by politicians into the well-established and generally successful peer-review process by which the agency reviews grant applications. Peer review ensures that grant decisions are made by individuals with the necessary expertise through a reliable, widely accepted, process which minimizes bias. Imposing even innocuous-sounding political criteria for research compromises the autonomy that is necessary for intellectual progress—the first responsibility of the National Science Foundation.
Source: WaPo
3-27-13
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Inside a Catholic convent deep in St. Augustine’s historic district, stacks of centuries-old, sepia-toned papers offer clues to what life was like for early residents of the nation’s oldest permanently occupied city.These parish documents date back to 1594, and they record the births, deaths, marriages and baptisms of the people who lived in St. Augustine from that time through the mid-1700s. They’re the earliest written documents from any region of the United States, according to J. Michael Francis, a history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.Francis and some of his graduate students in the Florida Studies department have spent the past several months digitizing the more than 6,000 fragile pages to ensure the contents last beyond the paper’s deterioration.
