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: Inside Higher Ed
5-13-09
In March, a few institutions -- such as Emory and Columbia Universities -- announced plans to shrink the enrollment of new Ph.D. students this fall. Now it appears that a number of other universities, generally private institutions that have some of the most well regarded Ph.D. programs around, are also getting smaller. At some, but not all, of the institutions, the shrinkage will be greatest in the humanities....
... Emilio H. Kouri, an associate professor who is chair of the gradu
Source: Atlantic
5-12-09
Donald Cole, 87, has been answering questions as part of the Harvard Study on Adult Development since he was a sophomore in the early 1940s. [The landmark study tracked Harvard students throughout their lives.] A historian who’s written books on 19th-century American politics, Cole served in World War II and spent most of his career teaching at Phillips Exeter Academy. His next book, Vindicating Andrew Jackson: The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two-Party System, is due out in September. Josh
Source: http://www.2theadvocate.com
5-7-09
LSU has quietly and unceremoniously ousted Graduate School Dean William Worger after just eight months on the job.
LSU leaders are calling it a private personnel matter, and Worger did not respond to a request for comment.
But some LSU graduate students who support Worger are angrily demanding answers and a meeting with LSU Provost Astrid Merget, who is the university’s chief academic officer.
Electrical engineering graduate student Charisma Edwards ,of Hou
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-7-09
Louisiana State University Press, one of the South’s top scholarly publishers, could fall victim to its state’s budget hemorrhage, and supporters are rallying to keep it alive. The Louisiana Legislature wants to slash funds for higher education, and that includes a proposed $40-million cut for the press’s home institution, LSU at Baton Rouge, said Bob Mann, a professor of mass communication there. He also edits a series for the press.
The press counts on “a quarter of a percent” of
Source: Inside Higher Ed
5-12-09
Two national groups are weighing in on the controversy over William I. Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is being investigated for charges of unprofessional conduct related to an e-mail message he sent to students in one of his courses, comparing images of Nazi attacks on Jews with Israeli attacks on Gaza. Some students have called the e-mail anti-Semitic.
The Middle East Studies Association of North America sent a letter express
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
5-11-09
The CIA Historical Review Panel, an advisory group which is composed of academic historians and political scientists, provides the CIA with recommendations on its declassification policies and priorities. The role of the Panel was described lately by its chairman, Prof. Robert Jervis, in the latest issue of Passport (pdf, at pp. 10-13), the newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.Pro
Source: David Sanger in the NYT Book Review
5-7-09
... [George W.] Bush’s effort to equate America’s amalgam of new enemies to the Axis powers of World War II quickly fizzled. Even some in the White House admitted privately to embarrassment, and the word “Islamofascism” was stricken from presidential speeches. Evil? Yes. But not an organized force — and Bush’s speeches quickly came to be regarded as a huge mistake because they inflated the power of America’s enemies rather than dividing them by playing off their longstanding rivalries. After all
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
5-8-09
Under the Obama administration’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 budget request, funding for the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) would increase by $7 million from the current fiscal year’s $447 million to $454 million.
The Teaching American History (TAH) Grants program at the U.S. Department of Education would see no increase under the Obama administration’s proposed fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget released this week. The budget for the program would stay at the FY 2009 le
Source: James McPherson in the WaPo
5-3-09
In May 1864, two armies clashed in a desperate struggle for the course of our nation's history. The Battle of the Wilderness was a great turning point of the Civil War -- the first clash between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant and the beginning of the end for the beleaguered Confederacy. The fighting was so intense that the tangled underbrush caught fire, burning wounded soldiers alive.
To commemorate the bloody struggle, portions of the Wilderness -- which is near Locust Grove,
Source: AHA Blog
5-7-09
There are signs that the Google Book Settlement may be unraveling. Jennifer Howard at the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog reports a delay at least to October, and some interest from the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Meanwhile, the library community, which will be key intermediaries in the proposed arrangements, raise significant concerns about privacy, access, and costs under the terms of the settlement in a new filing with the court. This bears close interest from the many independent
Source: Paul Gottfried in American Conservative
5-4-09
[Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at
Elizabethtown College and the author of Encounters: My Life With
Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.]
ERIC FONER, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia
University, is the most professionally successful academic historian
of our time. He has served as president of all three major historical
organizations, published a widely acclaimed book on Reconstruction as
“America’s unfinished revolution,” and app
Source: Stan Katz in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
5-6-09
Two weeks ago I attended a moving conference at Rutgers University in honor of my late University of Wisconsin colleague, William Appleman Williams. Bill Williams was perhaps the most influential, and certainly the most controversial, of the U.S. diplomatic historians of the mid to late 20th century. Among his students can be counted three of the most distinguished living American diplomatic historians: Lloyd Gardner (Rutgers), Walter LaFeber (Cornell) and Thomas McCormick (Williams’s successor
Source: Paul Krugman at his NYT blog
5-2-09
Joe Nocera writes about Thursday’s New York Revie/PEN event on the economy, but fails to mention what I found the most depressing aspect of the whole thing: further confirmation that we’re living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics, in which hard-won knowledge has simply been forgotten.
What’s the evidence? Niall Ferguson “explaining” that fiscal expansion will actually be contractionary, because it will drive up interest rates. At least that’s what I think he said; there were so many f
Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com
4-22-09
Ronald C. White Jr., a Huntington Library fellow and a visiting professor of history at UCLA, is the author of the bestselling books Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words. His latest book A. Lincoln: A Biography (2009) has been a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller and a History Book Club selection. He is in high demand as a speaker, especially a
Source: Press Release--Miami University (Ohio)
4-30-09
“To Everything There is a Season,” written and recorded by Pete Seeger in 1962, is one of the most recognizable songs in American music history.
In time for Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday, Miami University Distinguished Professor of History Allan M. Winkler has written To Everything There is a Season: Pete Seeger and the Power of Song. Winkler uses Seeger’s life and music as a frame of reference to discuss the important role popular music played during the various protest movements in
Source: Evan R. Goldstein in Foreign Policy
4-1-09
On an overcast afternoon in early April, unsmiling men with big guns and earpieces patrol the sidewalk in front of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's private residence in the upscale Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. A short walk up the road on Azza Street, Benny Morris sits outside a cafe, radiating despair. "Iran is building atomic weapons at least in part -- maybe in large part -- because it intends to use them. The people there are religious fanatics," he says in a rapid
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
5-4-09
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced the National Park Service will undertake more than 800 projects at parks across the country. The projects reflect an investment of $750 million in the national park system part of more than $3 billion the Interior Department is receiving under President Obama’s recovery plan. For a full list of the projects, go to the Department’s Recovery Web Site at www.interior.gov/recovery.
Al
Source: http://www.reporter.am
5-2-09
Historian Richard Hovannisian of the University of California, Los Angeles, met with Tatul Hakobyan of the Armenian Reporter on April 24 in Yerevan at the Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS), a think tank established by Armenia's first foreign minister, Raffi Hovannisian.
Tatul Hakobyan: Professor, in the early morning hours of April 23, Armenia and Turkey, through Swiss mediation, issued an optimistic joint statement announcing that they had charted a roa
Source: AP
5-4-09
A federal judge ruled that a public high school history teacher violated the First Amendment when he called creationism "superstitious nonsense" during a classroom lecture.
U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan and his former teacher, James Corbett.
Farnan sued in U.S. District Court in 2007, alleging that Corbett violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by making repe
Source: Philadelphia Bulletin
5-5-09
Unquestionably, hiring Steven J. Rosen to become part of the Middle East Forum was the most difficult decision since I founded the organization in 1994.Steven J. Rosen (left)
