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: Pillarisetti Sudhir at the AHA Blog
5-19-09
In what can be seen as an opening salvo in Britain’s war of cultural conquest of India, Thomas Babington Macaulay, member of the Council of India (and author of the Lays of Ancient Rome, and a multivolume history of England, among other books) proclaimed in 1835 that “all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England.” In thus art
Source: HNN Staff
5-18-09
David Donald died on Sunday. On our homepage we have published a tribute by Gil Troy.
Related Links
HNN Doyen: David Herbert Donald
WaPo Obituary
Source: http://www.newsok.com
5-21-09
The Oklahoma History Center will close two days a week, and closures and reduction of hours are in store for up to 12 museums and sites ...
Source: Press Release
5-21-09
At a hearing today focusing on the National Archives and Records Administration and the selection of a new Archivist, National Security Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs said: "[The new Archivist] should have a vision for an Archives 2.0."
Discussing electronic records management, classification, presidential records and libraries, and access as critical challenges before the Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Gov
Source: Boston Globe
5-19-09
Speaking of "history and memory and possibilities," award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns asked Boston College graduates yesterday to mind the past, while encouraging them to draw inspiration and guidance from it at a time of seemingly daunting problems.
"History is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts, and events that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known truth," Burns said. "It is an inscrutable and mysterious and malleable th
Source: Science News
3-28-09
James Cuno, a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, has spent years investigating implications of a United Nations treaty: the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. It prohibits museums and other research centers from acquiring objects unearthed after 1970 without permission from the country of origin. Such permission is seldom granted, Cuno notes in his new book, Who Owns Antiquity? L
Source: Press Release emailed to HNN by James Loewen
5-19-09
Dallas, Texas More than four dozen prominent professors, historians and authors have signed a letter asking President Barack Obama to break with a tradition that they say represents the values of white supremacy and neo-Confederacy. The group is asking Mr. Obama to be the first president since Woodrow Wilson not to send a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington DC on Memorial Day.
Co-signers of the letter include: James Loewen, Profes
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-22-09
Two historians married to each other seems an instant opportunity for caricature, an invitation to disciplinary and institutional clichés.
They didn't swear, "I do!," you imagine, but "I do — notwithstanding a variety of complicating factors that bear mentioning." Amorous instincts possibly play second fiddle to archival impulses. The union's stability may depend on adequate supportive evidence, rather than faith, loyalty, passion, or love.
Normally
Source: Inside Higher Ed
5-18-09
How do historians become historians? That's the question answered in the essays of Becoming Historians, just published by the University of Chicago Press. Among those contributing -- senior scholars in the field today -- are Joan Wallach Scott, Linda Gordon, David A. Hollinger and the two co-editors of the volume, James M. Banner Jr. and John R. Gillis. Banner, co-founder of the National History Center and historian-in-residence at American University; and Gillis, professor emeritus at Rutgers U
Source: CAROLYN EISENBERG in a letter to the editor of the NYT Book Review
5-13-09
[The writer, a professor of American diplomatic history at Hofstra University, is completing a book about the foreign policy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.]
To the Editor:
From Paul M. Barrett’s review of Mark Rudd’s memoir, “Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen” (May 3), one might imagine that Rudd had written an unrepentant, unreflective, shallow defense of his activist days with “some mistakes” tossed in.
In his introduction, Rudd expr
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
5-14-09
If Mormon history is a kind of rich, hearty stew, the professional historians and independent researchers gathering next week in Springfield, Ill., are like picky eaters, fishing out a carrot, potato or a morsel of beef for closer scrutiny.
Like any omnivore, some LDS Church observers prefer the flavor of all the ingredients mixed together.
Such specificity and expansiveness will be much in evidence at the annual three-day meeting of the Mormon History Association begi
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-15-09
It is a custom well known among farmers and ranchers: Inspect the fences each year to ensure their soundness.
David M. Kennedy first heard of it in the 1960s from his roommate at Yale University, an Iowa farm kid. Two and a half years ago, as a distinguished historian at the former horse farm known as Stanford University, Mr. Kennedy approached Jon Christensen, a doctoral candidate and instructor in history. "You ever heard of walking the farm?"
Turns out that
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-15-09
... What hasn't been talked about much is the idea that the settlement may benefit certain groups of authors more than others. A professional writer and an academic author often have different notions about when and how to make work available. One counts on revenue from book sales; the other cares more about spreading ideas.
That distinction is made loud and clear in the letter sent to Judge Chin. Organized by Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley
Source: Jon Stewart The Daily Show
5-11-09
The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Source: Commentary
5-1-09
Rarely in modern history have nations faced genuine existential threats. Wars are waged to change regimes, alter borders, acquire resources, and impose ideologies, but almost never to eliminate another state and its people. This was certainly the case during World War II, in which the Allies sought to achieve the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan and to oust their odious leaders, but never to destroy the German and Japanese states or to annihilate their populations. In the infrequent
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
5-14-09
The development of Bush Administration policies on the treatment of suspected terrorist detainees was probed yesterday at a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing, which also led to the release of two primary source documents reflecting internal Bush Administration deliberations.Former State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow described his efforts in 2005-6 to advance a standard that would effectively prohibit “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment of detainees, a standard
Source: Independent (UK)
5-14-09
Serious research can be a solitary affair. As Malcolm Noble and Matt Neale, two first-year history PhD students at Leicester University discovered, long hours in dusty archives and obscure collections all too often follow the bustle and camaraderie of undergraduate life. But they have found a cure for the loneliness of the historian: the New History Lab.
The Lab is an act of mild insurrection. Leicester's conventional postgraduate seminars – in which students read papers and comment
Source: Globe and Mail
5-14-09
A Quebec historian is giving a failing grade to a high-school course that skips René Lévesque, obscures the Quiet Revolution and scratches the surface of two sovereignty referendums.
Charles-Philippe Courtois, who recently analyzed the history curriculum aimed at Grades 9 and 10, condemned it for replacing Quebec's nationalist history with "radical Trudeauist" teachings of multiculturalism.
The 1980 and 1995 referendums were omitted from the original course ou
Source: HNN Staff
5-13-09
Mother Jones reports today that former State Department counselor Philip Zelikow's memo against torture has apparently been found and will be declassified.
In April Zelikow, a historian at the University of Virginia, revealed that he had written a memo expressly rejecting torture while at the State Department. He said that the White House ordered all copies of the memo destroye
Source: Austin American-Statesman
5-12-09
Noted Texas historian and author Light Townsend Cummins of Sherman was named the official State Historian by Gov. Rick Perry.
Cummins replaces Jesus de la Teja of Austin.
The state historian is a largely ceremonial designation that lasts for two years.
Cummins is a history professor and director of the Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies at Austin College in Sherman.
He is also a board member of the Texas State Historical Association, a
