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: Haaretz (Tel Aviv)
2-12-07
The author of a book on the use of blood by Jews in Ashkenazi communities in the Middle Ages said Sunday, in the face of the furor its publication aroused, "I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me."
In an interview with Haaretz from Rome, Professor Ariel Toaff said he stood behind the contention of his book, "Pasque di Sangue," just published in Italy, that there is a factual basis for some of the medieval b
Source: Daniel Pipes website
2-13-07
In October 2006, the Brandeis Middle East Review and the Middle East Forum at Brandeis invited me to speak at the University, and I quickly accepted. The hosts and I selected the date April 23 and the topic ("The Islamization of Europe?"), and everything appeared settled.
But on Jan. 23, former President Jimmy Carter visited Brandeis, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz quasi-debated him, and the ensuing contention prompted the University to establish a closed student-fa
Source: Yale Daily News
2-1-07
A granite quilt, a small plaque and one woman’s story have suddenly come under fire in New York City, thanks in part to Yale Civil War historian David Blight.
After hearing of the city of New York’s plans to construct the $15 million Frederick Douglass Circle in the northwest corner of Central Park, Blight voiced concerns about the historical accuracy and relevance of the memorial’s centerpiece, a granite replica of a quilt that a nearby plaque says was used as a means of covert co
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-13-07
A new book by an Italo-Israeli scholar of Jewish history, which has drawn strong criticism from Jewish community leaders and academic critics alike, may have placed its author's job in jeopardy.
The scholar, Ariel Toaff, a professor of history at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, was "discussing the fate of his job" with the university's Academic Senate on Monday evening, according to an e-mail message from a spokeswoman for the book's publisher.
A spokesman for B
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-13-07
The leaks that trickled out over the last year about Harvard University's search for a new president often centered on its reported interest in landing a prominent scientist and a woman. Harvard got its first female president, but not a scientist, with Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the university's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, who was appointed on Sunday. Harvard also picked a defender of the role of higher education in society, said Ms. Faust.
University officials are clear
Source: John Elrick
2-13-07
Mr. Elrick is a History News Network intern.The appointment of historian Drew Gilpin Faust as Harvard’s next president has drawn a considerable response since the University’s official announcement on Sunday. Dr. Faust will be the first woman to head the prestigious institution in its 371-year history. Her appointment comes on the heels of the controversy generated by previous president Lawrence Summer’s remarks about the academic aptitude of women. Faust was a profes
Source: NYT
2-12-07
Douglas L. Wilson will become a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize today when his book “Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words” (Knopf) is designated the recipient of $50,000 and a bronze cast of an Augustus Saint-Gaudens portrait sculpture of Abraham Lincoln. Professor Wilson, a co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., won in 1999 for “Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln.” “Douglas Wilson’s incisive analysis of Abraham Linc
Source: NYT
2-12-07
Recalling her coming of age as the only girl in a privileged, tradition-bound family in Virginia horse country, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, has often spoken of her “continued confrontations” with her mother “about the requirements of what she usually called femininity.” Her mother, Catharine, she has said, told her repeatedly, “It’s a man’s world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better off you’ll be.”
Instead, Dr. Faust left home at an early age, to be educated at Concord Acad
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-12-07
In late September, I finally received a response to the question I had been asking the Bush administration for more than two years: Why was my work visa revoked in late July 2004, just days before I was to take up a position as a professor of Islamic studies and the Henry Luce chair of religion, conflict, and peace building at the University of Notre Dame? Initially neither I nor the university was told why; officials only made a vague reference to a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act that allows
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-12-07
Israel’s Bar-Ilan University expressed “its strongest reservations” on Sunday about a book by one of its professors that reportedly suggests that some ritual murders of Christians by Jews might have actually taken place in the Middle Ages, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The book, by Ariel Toaff, was published in Italy last week as Pasque di Sangue, or Bloody Passovers. It delves into centuries-old allegations that Jews added the blood of Christian children to wine and unleavened bread
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-12-07
The ascent of Drew Gilpin Faust to the presidency of Harvard University culminates the rapid climb of someone who had no ties to the institution when she arrived six years ago. Ms. Faust is founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the only one of the 10 members of the Council of Deans who represents an academic department without a full-time student body or faculty.
It is highly unusual for Harvard to choose such an "outsider." She is the first H
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-12-07
In her first public address as Harvard University's new president, Drew Gilpin Faust said she intends to break down barriers between disciplines and schools while pressing for more collaboration at the university, setting an example she hopes will ripple throughout higher education.
"I can imagine no higher calling and no more exciting adventure than to serve as president of Harvard," she said, while reading from prepared
Source: Inside Higher Ed
2-12-07
The night before Drew Gilpin Faust was formally named president of Harvard University, women involved in efforts to promote female leaders in academe happened to be gathering in Washington for workshops and networking sessions held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Council on Education. During a fund-raising pitch at a dinner, women were reminded that the programs they support might just help someone who could become “the next president of Harvard.”
While Faust
Source: Jamie Glazov interview posted at frontpagemag.com
2-12-07
[Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy.]
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Geoffrey Roberts, a Professor of History at the University College Cork, Ireland. He is a frequent contributor to British, Irish and American newspapers and to popular history journals and he has acted as a consultant for a number of TV and radio documentaries. His publications include Victory at Stalingrad and
Source: Carol Iannone in Academic Questions, the journal of the National Association of Scholars
2-10-07
John Agresto, a longtime N.A.S. supporter and member of its Advisory Board, served as president of St. John’s College, Santa Fe for over 10 years. From September 2003 until the end of June 2004 he served as the Senior Adviser for Higher Education and Scientific Research, working with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) under Paul Bremer in Iraq.
Agresto has taught political philosophy and American government at the University of Toronto, Kenyon, Duke, Wabash College, and the N
Source: Harvard Crimson
2-9-07
... Faust, who attended Bryn Mawr College as an undergraduate before entering Penn’s graduate program in American civilization, will also be the first Harvard president since 1672 without a degree from this school.
Until 2001, her academic career had been confined to Penn. She taught there ever since she received her Ph.D. in 1975 and she became the Annenberg professor of history in 1989. From 1996 to 2001, she served as director of women’s studies.
When Faust was app
Source: Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker
2-5-07
In “The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It” (Houghton Mifflin; $27), David A. Bell, a professor at John Hopkins, tries to restore military history to the center of history. This ambition may come as a surprise to amateur readers, for whom military history i probably already at the center of history. But academics tend to regard it either as old-style history, where seven key battles change everything, or a hobbyist’s history, where Tom Clancy types look
Source: Jon Wiener at his blog at the Nation
2-10-07
[Jon Wiener started writing for The Nation in 1984. Since then he’s written more than 100 stories and reviews for the magazine, many about American history, university politics, and California life. He’s also professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Los Angeles radio host.]
Drew Faust, the historian who h
Source: Boston Globe
2-11-07
... Faust, an award-winning historian expected to be named Harvard's president today, reveals much about herself and her work habits in a three-decade career as a scholar of the American south. Her goal, she has said in interviews, is not simply to tell the stories of the neglected. Instead, colleagues say, Faust wants to confront the truth -- even when it is ugly.
Pulitzer-winning historian Steven Hahn , who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where Faust taught American history f
Source: Boston Globe
2-11-07
Harvard University on Sunday named historian Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president, ending a lengthy and secretive search to find a successor to Lawrence Summers and his tumultuous five-year tenure.
The seven-member Harvard Corporation elected Faust, a noted scholar of the American South and dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, as the university's 28th president. The board of overseers recommended her for the post.
Faust, 59, recognized the sign
