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: Email sent by the AHA to members
3-1-07
At its last meeting on January 7, 2007, the American Historical Association Council discussed the "Resolution on Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession" adopted by the AHA Business Meeting on January 6, 2007.
Members of the Council reviewed carefully the options for dealing with the resolution as defined in the AHA constitution, considering particularly the appropriateness of the Association's taking a position on the particular issue addr
Source: Bob Herbert in the NYT
3-1-07
... There’s a great deal that Americans don’t fully understand about slavery. It’s such an uncomfortable subject that the temptation is to relegate it to the distant past and move on. But the long tentacles of that evil institution are still with us. Slavery was the foundation of the thriving consumer society that we have today and the wellspring of the racism that still poisons so many white attitudes and black lives.
The sheer size of the phenomenon of slavery, which was woven int
Source: NYT
3-1-07
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the historian whose more than 20 books shaped discussions for two generations about America’s past and who himself was a provocative, unabashedly liberal partisan, most notably in serving in the Kennedy White House, died last night in Manhattan. He was 89.
The cause was a heart attack, said Mr. Schlesinger’s son Stephen. He died at New York Downtown Hospital after being stricken in a restaurant.
Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National
Source: David Garrow in the LAT
2-27-07
[DAVID J. GARROW, a senior fellow at Cambridge University, is the author of "Bearing the Cross," a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.]
RECENT NEWS headlines announce a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Christian Science Monitor warns that the KKK "appears to be on the rise again after years of irrelevance." The Associated Press reports that white supremacists are "significantly more active" and are "focused on stirri
Source: NYT
2-28-07
Ever since the gross mistreatment of poor black men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study came to light three decades ago, the federal government has required ethics panels to protect people from being used as human lab rats in biomedical studies. Yet now, faculty and graduate students across the country increasingly complain that these panels have spun out of control, curtailing academic freedom and interfering with research in history, English and other subjects that poses virtually no danger to anyo
Source: The Messenger (Tbilisi, Georgia)
2-27-07
Controversial new textbooks are being distributed to secondary schools in breakaway Abkhazia, which present the past of the region in a decidedly contentious way.
"The appearance of a new textbook is not unusual during conflict situations. The book serves to discredit Georgians and totally eliminate them from the historical past of the region. The historical peaceful co-existence of Georgians and Abkhaz is totally ignored in the new textbook," Georgian historian Malkhaz To
Source: http://www.newwest.net
2-25-07
Hal K. Rothman, the acclaimed Western historian, writer and former chair of the Univerity of Nevada-Las Vegas history department died Sunday night after a year and a half battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Hal, who was widely considered one of the nation’s experts on the New West, tourism and post-industrial economies, wrote here at NewWest.Net about what he called “a hodgepodge of urban issues, environmental critique, assaults on federal agencies and their tormentors, and a few oth
Source: NYT
2-28-07
It was the Summer of Love. The carnival capers of the flower children could not have seemed more distant from the neo-Classical world of late-18th-century European art. Yet that same year — 1967 — saw the publication of a book that collapsed the distance of two centuries into the twinkling of an educated eye.
The book was “Transformations in Late 18th Century Art.” Its author was Robert Rosenblum, a young professor of art history. The book, Mr. Rosenblum’s first, has been a staple e
Source: International Herald Tribune
2-27-07
IASI, Romania -- An American historian sentenced to seven years in prison for sexual perversion and sexual abuse of minors was released Tuesday after serving less than five years.
Kurt W. Treptow, of Miami Beach, Florida, left the prison in this northeastern city in his lawyer's car.
He was sentenced to the maximum of seven years in Dec. 2002 for offenses involving two girls, aged 10 and 13, who he invited into his home in Iasi. A Romanian woman convicted of being his
Source: http://www.delawareonline.com
2-24-07
NEWARK -- After escaping from points south, runaway slaves entered Delaware and faced "the gauntlet," the dangerous journey east from the state line to Camden. From there, the path diverged: head north toward Pennsylvania by land or east to find freedom by water.
After the Civil War, the secret paths were no longer needed. The landscape changed. Open fields gave way to buildings. Creeks were traversed by bridges, and dirt paths became concrete roads. Old homes were torn do
Source: http://dailybeacon.utk.edu
2-21-07
Cynthia Fleming has a remarkable memory.
For an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee, this skill of quickly retrieving historical details comes in handy.
Without notes, Fleming flawlessly lectured on the civil rights movement while speaking to students in one of her African-American studies classes last week. In fact, Fleming humorously says she never uses notes.
As an oral historian who joined the Peace Corps in 1971 and served in
Source: NYT
2-27-07
TEHRAN, Feb. 26 — A group of Iranian academics, writers and artists has denounced the Holocaust conference held in Tehran late last year, calling it a move that endangered peace and hurt the reputation of Iranian academics.
The Iranian government organized a two-day gathering in December, billed it as a legitimate conference on the historical record and invited notorious Holocaust deniers and white supremacists from around the world. Among those from the United States was the former
Source: Reuters
2-26-07
BERLIN -- Spies for communist East Germany's feared secret police had little in common with the "good Stasi agent" at the center of an Oscar-winning German film, a German historian and Stasi expert said on Monday.
"I'm happy that someone has finally dealt with the Stasi in a critical way," said historian Hubertus Knabe, director of the Hohenschoenhausen memorial museum at the site of a former Stasi prison in what used to be East Berlin.
"But the
Source: Notice posted on H-OIEAHC
2-26-07
Many of you have already heard that Winthrop D. Jordan passed away Sunday
morning after a long illness. He was himself--wryly humble, thoughtful,
and even funny right up until the end. There will be a"Celebration of
his Life" on the campus of the University of Mississippi on Monday, March
5, at 7:00 p.m. Further details are available on the University Website
(olemiss.edu).
In lieu of flowers, the family would prefer that you send donations to the
Interfaith Compassionate Me
Source: Sky News
2-27-07
Is Israel guilty of ethnic cleansing? Dr Ilan Pappe, called by some as the"most hated Jew in Israel", says yes. But fellow Israeli Professor Efraim
Karsh says he is"fabricating history."
Source: Doug Monroe at his blog at Atlanta Magazine
2-27-07
For generations of Georgians who have accused the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution of being too liberal,
Elliot Jaspin's charge that the AJC covered up his
story about racism in Forsyth County sounds almost
comical. Most of us who grew up in Georgia knew about
Forsyth County and its legendary signs that said,
"Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Forsyth
County." The late Hosea Williams led a civil rights
march into Forsyth in 1987
Source: Jamie Glazov at FrontpageMag.com
2-26-07
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Andrew Roberts, a professional historian since the publication of his life of Lord Halifax, The Holy Fox, in 1991, which won the Wolfson History Prize in 2000. He is the author of the new book, A History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900.
FP: Andrew Roberts, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Roberts: Many thanks for asking me. It's a delight to appear in your pages.
FP: Some have called your work a “revisionist” h
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
3-5-07
In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, historian Maurice Isserman identifies Brown University's Paul Buhle, as one of the three key leaders of the new SDS.
Although Buhle holds no official position in the new SDS, he is among the principal elders involved in the effort to revive it and is an editor at Next Left Notes. Now in his early sixties and a senior lecturer in history and American c
Source: Juan Cole at his blog: Informed Comment
2-26-07
77% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a new Gallup poll. Only Black Protestants are more opposed, at 78%.
(Given that the Pope and the bishops oppose the Iraq War, you'd think Catholics would be against it in large numbers, too. But only 28% know what position their religious leaders have taken on it, so the Church has not been good at getting out the word. And, the hierarchy has seen its moral authority on such things deeply eroded by its silly stance on birth c
Source: Boston Globe
2-25-07
In September 1967, just shy of her 20th birthday, Drew Gilpin Faust led a delegation of Bryn Mawr College students to ask trustees to abolish their 2 a.m. curfew.
At the women's college near Philadelphia, students had to sign a log when they went out at night, saying where they were going and with whom. When they returned to campus in darkness, "lantern men" guided them to their dormitories. Amid Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement, and the sexual revolution, t
