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: Network of Concerned Historians (NCH)
12-4-07
Dear Colleagues,
Today, Scholars at Risk (SAR) reports about Mehrnoushe Solouki, a filmmaker and journalism graduate student at Quebec University (UQAM), who, while making a documentary on burial rites of religious minorities in Iran, allegedly stumbled upon a site that was reportedly a mass grave of regime opponents summarily executed in 1988. On 17 November 2007, she was tried on charges of “intent to commit propaganda”. I hope that you can send the recommended urgent appeals imme
Source: http://www.recordpub.com/
11-30-07
John Jameson said Thursday his ouster as chair of the Kent State University history department earlier this month and the means by which it was done disrupts the learning process and "rips asunder a pretty good history department."
KSU and Jerry Feezel, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, assert Jameson was removed from his post for violating written university policy by improperly granting academic study leave to a controversial KSU history professor.
Source: http://www.newuniversity.org
12-3-07
Despite encountering protests during his last visit in January of this year, Daniel Pipes, a well-known American historian with outspoken views on the Israel/Palestine conflict and Islam, was again invited to speak at UC Irvine this past Wednesday, Nov. 28. His lecture, hosted by the College Republicans, the David Project and the Objectivist Club, was titled “Militant Islam and the Middle East.”
Pipes’ speech was intended “to defeat stereotypes,” according to Cameron Galbraith, fou
Source: Julia Keller in the Chicago Tribune
12-2-07
Nobody writes about America's early days better than Joseph J. Ellis, the Mt. Holyoke history professor whose latest book, "American Creation: Triumph and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic" (Knopf), is a vigorous and fascinating exploration of what he calls a "politically creative" era, filled with names such as Washington, Jefferson and Adams. They weren't perfect -- but they did pretty well, all told. Ellis has a wonderful knack for making his argument through stori
Source: HNN Staff
12-4-07
Last February historian Max Holland argued in the pages of HNN that the Zapruder film missed the first shot Lee Harvey Oswald fired at President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, meaning Oswald had more time to have gotten off his three shots than previously believed. In November the New York Times
Source: http://www.budapesttimes.hu
12-4-07
Politicians, academics, former students, family and friends gathered at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) on Tuesday to pay tribute to Historian Domokos Kosary, former president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who died on November 15 at age 95.
President Laszlo Solyom, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and House Speaker Katalin Szili paid their respects at the funeral bier.
Kosary's funeral will be held at Budapest's Farkasreti Cemetery on Tuesday aft
Source: Independent Catholic News
12-4-07
A Swansea University historian is to shed light on a Catholic manuscript lost for nearly 200 years.
Professor Maurice Whitehead, an educational historian in the University's School of Humanities, was shown the document last July by Bart Op de Beeck, from the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels. Professor Whitehead, whose research focuses on the educational experience of English and Welsh Catholics before emancipation, identified the manuscript as the long-lost catalogue of the libr
Source: Catholic News Service
12-4-07
Pope Benedict XVI has chosen an art historian and former Italian cultural minister to be the new director of the Vatican Museums.
The appointment of Antonio Paolucci, 68, was announced Dec. 4.
The same day, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict appointed Francesco Buranelli, an archaeologist and the museums' director since 1996, to be the new secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church and an officer in the Pontifical Commission for
Source: AP
12-4-07
A far-right Greek historian went on trial Tuesday for allegedly inciting racial hatred with a book that denies the Holocaust took place and allegedly contains offensive references to Jews.
Jewish community leaders testified at an Athens court that the book by Costas Plevris "The Jews: The whole truth" has led to a spike in attacks on Jewish monuments in the country.
"After the book was published, attacks against Jewish sites increased," said Moses Co
Source: The Hill
11-16-07
How can someone write an objective account of one of the most important Senate elections of recent times if he also worked for the winning campaign? An unabashed conservative, Jon Lauck was not only a research and debate consultant for then-Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) in his 2004 bid against then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D); he also actively supported Thune’s unsuccessful Senate bid in 2002. He then joined Thune’s staff after the Senate victory before joining the history faculty at South
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
12-4-07
At long last, the members of the American Academy of Religion have weighed in on how their annual meetings ought to be run. The results are good news for those who would like to see the academy resume its longstanding tradition of meeting in tandem with the Society of Biblical Literature.
In 2003 the academy's leadership announced that 2007 would be the last year of joint meetings—a decision it reached without consulting either its own membership or the society. The unilateral move
Source: http://www.sj-r.com
12-2-07
Much of the 1908 Springfield race riot story still remains untold, including how many of the city's black residents repelled white rioters by organizing armed fronts, according to a historian who spoke at a downtown history symposium Saturday.
"Generally, in a lot of race-riot stories, when resistance is present, oftentimes black resistance is viewed as black retaliation," said Anthony Landis, during a presentation he gave in the auditorium of the Howlett Building as part
Source: Michael Kenney in the Boston Globe
12-2-07
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., historian, political insider, and man about town, began his journal entry for March 13, 1968, with a bang: "Here we go again!"
It was the day on which Robert F. Kennedy decided he would enter the Democratic primaries for president, and Schlesinger had been involved in the high-tension huddles leading up to it. "Are you happy about this?" Kennedy asked him. Schlesinger said he was. Kennedy was not convinced. "You have some reservati
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-3-07
Australian war veterans demanded an apology from the historian Sir Max Hastings yesterday after claiming that his new book portrays their fellow soldiers as too cowardly to fight the Japanese towards the end of the Second World War.
Sir Max's account of the latter stages of the war in Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944-45 was labelled "offensive" by veterans in the wake of Australia's stand against Japan after the fall of Singapore and heroic attempts to stop the Japanese
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
12-3-07
[Alice Kessler-Harris is a professor of history at Columbia University and also a professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She is, most recently, the author of Gendering Labor History, published by the University of Illinois Press (2007), and is working on a biographical study of the playwright Lillian Hellman, to be published by Bloomsbury Press.]
From the perspective of the profession, the study of gender offers a different set of temptations. It immediately re
Source: Inside Higher Ed
12-3-07
With debate over the role of anthropologists in aiding the military machine a theme threading through their annual meeting, scholars voted Friday to demand that the American Anthropological Association reinstate strict language from its 1971 code of ethics prohibiting secret research. Members at the meeting – who, for the second time in about 30 years and the second year in a row constituted a quorum in excess of the required 250 — also voted overwhelmingly to oppose “any covert or overt U.S. mi
Source: http://www.northjersey.com
12-2-07
Rutgers University President Richard L. McCormick gets generally high marks -- and a half-million-dollar retention bonus -- as he completes five years at the helm of the state university this weekend.
McCormick appears to have fairly broad support on campus and even in the State House, where his vocal criticism of funding cuts was not always well-received. He has his critics -- most notably those upset that he has supported the school's escalating investment in big-time football.
Source: HNN Staff (research by HNN intern Lee Winningham)
11-28-07
More than fifty historians have now signed a statement in support of the candidacy of Barack Obama, which was posted at HNN on Monday. But they aren't the only historians to have come out early in support of a presidential candidate. Two weeks ago Princeton historian Sean Wilentz announced in an interview with a bl
Source: http://www.abc.net.au
12-2-07
A prominent English historian claims Australian troops were on the brink of mutiny in the final year of World War II and disobeyed orders to attack the Japanese, according to reports today.
The claims, reportedly made by Sir Max Hastings in his Nemesis - The Battle for Japan 1944-45, have sparked an angry response from veterans.
Today's The Age quotes Hastings as writing that the "the last year of the war proved the most inglorious of Australia's history as a fight
Source: China Post
12-1-07
U.S. historian Richard Kagan has had a long love affair with Taiwan, having first stepped foot on the island in 1965 and staying here for two years to study at National Taiwan University. Now at the age of 69, he has published an English-language biography of former President Lee Teng-hui, recently released by a U.S. publisher.
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Kagan received a master's degree there in 1963, later earning a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvan
