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: http://www.middletownpress.com
2-2-09
A peaceful protest preceded a speech by a controversial author and professor at Wesleyan University Monday.
Benny Morris, writer of “1948: A History of the First Arab Israeli War,” spoke to a room full of students and teachers from the university, but his speech did not entail the concepts that most vexed protestors outside the Usdan Center.
The group opposed to Morris’ speech — the Middle East Crisis Committee — accuses him of favoring ethnic cleansing.
“W
Source: Newsweek
1-26-09
At noon on Sept. 16, 1920, a carriage filled with dynamite exploded at the corner of Wall St. and Broad St.—the heart of America's newly confident financial capital. The attack, which was clearly aimed at the headquarters of the era's dominant financial institutions, J.P. Morgan & Co., killed dozens of people and has remained one of the greatest unsolved mysteries. In "The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror" (Oxford University Press), Yale histo
Source: PBS Bill Moyers's Journal
1-30-09
... MARILYN YOUNG: You know, the thing that gets me, Obama appoints George Mitchell and he says what we're going to do is listen. What we're going to do is figure we're just going to listen. And in his first press interview on that Arab TV network, which was a brilliant move I thought, he talked about respect. BARACK OBAMA [SOT]: We are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest.
MARILYN YOUNG: He used the word "respect" repeatedly. And
Source: http://www.auroragov.org
1-23-09
The executive director of the Aurora History Museum will take on a new role this
month as he prepares to direct the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project, which will collaborate with the
Iraq National Museum in Baghdad on a wide range of projects, among other initiatives.
International Relief and Development—a nonprofit, non-governmental organization dedicated to
improving the lives and livelihood of people in the most economically deprived parts of the
world—selected Dr. Gordon Davis to lea
Source: Press Release--David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
2-2-09
Three biographers of Franklin D. Roosevelt have topped the annual list of the ten “most absurd statements” about the Allies’ response to the Holocaust.
The annual list for 2008 was released this week by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in conjunction with the recent commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Topping the Absurdities list for 2008 was a statement by FDR biographer H.W. Brands claiming that the Allies would have had to div
Source: Telegraph (UK)
1-29-09
There is support, albeit from an unlikely quarter, for Pope Benedict XVI after he chose to rehabilitate Bishop Richard Williamson, who had questioned the scale of the Holocaust.
David Irving, the controversial historian, has disclosed that he is a friend of the bishop.
"I think he's a man who clearly thinks for himself and I agree with his opinions on Catholicism," says Irving, who was imprisoned in Austria for breaking the country's strict anti-Nazi laws. &qu
Source: Times (UK)
1-31-09
The jury of a prestigious Italian literary prize run by an Italian grappa distillery has named the historian Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, winner of this year’s award as a “master of our time” for his lifetime’s achievement.
The jury of the Nonino prize, chaired by the writer V. S. Naipaul, said that Thomas, noted for his histories of the Spanish Civil War and the conquest of Mexico, had crowned this achievement with The Slave Trade, an “immense work” which told a painful
Source: https://humanexperience.stanford.edu
1-27-09
The Slave Mart Museum building in Charleston, South Carolina doesn’t draw much attention from passersby. The stone, two-story building with an unassuming entry-way certainly doesn’t give any clues about the building’s pivotal role as a slave auction house. But to Rhonda Goodman’s trained eye the building has a lot to teach us about how ante-bellum Americans felt about the especially de-humanizing but integral facet of the slave trade; the slave auction. Goodman, a Stanford Art History Ph.D. cand
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
1-30-09
Last month Clement A. Price, a member of the Obama transition team’s committee on the arts, spent several days walking the halls of the National Endowment for the Humanities, interviewing program officers and generally taking the temperature of the place.
It was an interesting moment to visit. Not only was a new president preparing to take office, but the endowment was about to lose the longest-serving chairman in its history. Bruce Cole, who had served in that role since 2001, anno
Source: AP
1-29-09
Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House, The Associated Press has learned.
Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and
Source: NYT
1-29-09
John P. Diggins, an intellectual historian who brought a provocative, revisionist approach to the history of the American left and right, and to figures as varied as Thorstein Veblen, Max Weber, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 73 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications of colon cancer, said his companion, Elizabeth Harlan.
Mr. Diggins, who taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, roamed widely a
Source: http://www.thaindian.com
1-29-09
New US President Barack Obama’s background makes him pro-Indian and “he is going to do a lot for India before this spring is out”, says noted historian Simon Schama.A professor at Columbia University in the US, British historian Simon Schama foresees a favourable run for India vis-a-vis bilateral ties with the US during Barack Obama’s government.
Why? “Obama’s background - his mother was a hippy adventurist and his Indonesian link - makes him very pluralistic and very pro-Indian,” S
Source: http://www.aasianst.org
1-28-09
Dear Colleagues,
As President of the Association for Asian Studies and Editor of its flagship periodical, respectively, we’re writing this message to share our excitement about some initiatives underway relating to the annual meeting and the Journal of Asian Studies. Our hope is that these initiatives will help us continue to serve the needs of a wide range of people concerned with Asia, from K-12 educators to independent scholars, librarians to museum curators, and of course gradua
Source: James Kurth at FPRI--Foreign Policy Research Institute website
1-28-09
[James Kurth is the Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and an FPRI Senior Fellow. Parts of this memorial essay were published in First Principles: ISI Web Journal (January 13, 2009).]American political science has not produced very many great ideas, and what ideas it has produced have not been very consequential. In part this is because most American political scientists have very much adhered to the liberal or progressive tradition in American
Source: Daniel Pipes at frontpagemag.com
1-28-09
In an article earlier this month,"Israel's Strategic Incompetence in Gaza," I made three points: that the Israeli leadership unilaterally created its current problems in Gaza, that the war against Hamas meant ignoring the much larger threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, and that the goal of empowering Al-Fatah makes no sense.These arguments prompted an earful from readers, who made interesting points that deserve answers. Slightly edi
Source: http://www.dailynews.lk (Sri Lanka)
1-28-09
Eminent historian Romila Thapar, professor emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and winner of the prestigious Kluge Prize in 2008, spoke to Kalpana Sharma of The Hindu about the importance of history teaching, the need for autonomous institutes to govern textbooks and historical research and the media's interpretation of contemporary developments.
Though she spoke about India her comments are relevant to Sri Lanka too. Hence we produce below a few excerpts of the interview.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
1-27-09
History as a discipline is most popular as an undergraduate field of study at liberal arts colleges or research universities — institutions that attract well-prepared students. Professors at community colleges in the Seattle area are trying to find ways to attract more students, in part by accepting that many of those they want to educate view the field as boring, thinking of it as “just memorizing names and dates.”
To reach the students, these professors are working on a two-pronge
Source: Richard Borkow M.D., Village Historian of Dobbs Ferry
1-27-09
Washington’s bold and secret 1781 march from Dobbs Ferry, NY, to victory at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, began on Sunday morning, August 19, 1781, when the American army broke its 6 week summer encampment in lower Westchester and was paraded for the march in Dobbs Ferry. The allied French army, under the command of General Rochambeau, broke camp and departed for Virginia on the same day, about 3 miles to the east of Dobbs Ferry. Washington, the supreme commander of the alli
Source: Noah Mendel, reporting for HNN. (Mr. Mendel is an HNN intern.)
1-27-09
John Hope Franklin, an iconic figure in both contemporary and historic African-American life, was unable to attend the inauguration of President Obama. Although Dr. Franklin had been in Washington the Sunday before to attend the African American Church Inaugural Ball, his personal secretary told HNN that he was unable to attend the Presidential Inauguration on Tuesday, January 20th, on account of bad health.
Born July 2, 1915, Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Hist
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment, his blog
1-27-09
My Democratic Party colleague Taylor Marsh took exception to my Salon piece on Obama's decision to bomb Pakistan during his first week in office.I always welcome vigorous debate and believe that arguing substance in public is essential to our attaining the ideals of a democratic republic. I value Taylor Marsh's perspective and we have
