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: WaPo
2-5-07
J. Merton England, a history professor, author, editor, Fulbright lecturer and National Science Foundation historian, died of colon failure Jan. 25 at Montgomery General Hospital. He was 91.
As historian, Dr. England wrote a history of the independent federal agency, "A Patron of Pure Science: The National Science Foundation's Formative Years, 1945-1957."
It was published in 1984, the same year Dr. England received the first Richard W. Leopold Prize, given by
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
2-6-07
The songs sung about John Henry say he knew, when he was a little baby sitting on his mother's knee, that a hammer would be the death of him. They say he grew up strong and drove steel on the railroad. And they agree that one day he took that hammer and raced a steam drill. The drill made it only nine feet into the rock. The man drove in 14 feet and then collapsed, calling for a cool drink of water before he died.
Now a historian believes that he has found the flesh-and-blood man be
Source: Spiked
12-31-69
Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, may be one of the best-known warriors against Holocaust denial. But she has no time for the proposals currently doing the rounds of the European Union which suggest making it a crime to deny the Holocaust, other genocides and crimes against humanity in general. Last week it was revealed that Germany, current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, is proposing
Source: David Smith in the Guardian
1-28-07
It is one of the questions that has baffled economists, cultural commentators and consumer-watchers: why are people who drive a hard bargain in all other parts of their lives willing to spend £3 on a shot of coffee and some hot, frothy milk in a very large cardboard cup?
The reason for the remarkable growth of one of the social markers of the past two decades - upmarket coffee shops such as Starbucks and Caffe Nero - could now be a little clearer thanks to an American academic who h
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
2-6-07
A former University of Pennsylvania history professor who specializes in women's studies and is known for her passion for women's rights and racial equality has emerged as a leading candidate for the Harvard University presidency.
Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, who spent 25 years at Penn before moving to Harvard to head its Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2001, was reported to be under serious consideration by Harvard's presidential search committee, both the Harvard Crimson and t
Source: MSNBC
2-4-07
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.
Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys." They are smart colonels who hav
Source: Ian Buruma in the NYT
2-4-07
Tariq Ramadan, Muslim, scholar, activist, Swiss citizen, resident of Britain, active on several continents, is a hard man to pin down. People call him “slippery,” “double-faced,” “dangerous,” but also “brilliant,” a “bridge-builder,” a “Muslim Martin Luther.” He wants Muslims to become active citizens of the West but four years ago was himself refused permission to enter the U.S. He could not take up the teaching position he’d been offered at the University of Notre Dame. Oxford University took
Source: Email from Omar Dewachi circulating on the Internet
2-5-07
Dear friends and colleagues,
As some of you know I have been trying to get back to school for the last three months after completing my fieldwork last August in London. Last October, I managed to get an interview at the American Consulate in Montreal, where I am currently residing. The consulate informed me that my application needed to go through security clearance at the US State Department. My minimum wait was supposed to be 3 weeks. Three months later (three days ago), I receiv
Source: http://www.dallasnews.com
2-5-07
Archivists and historians are urging Southern Methodist University to reject the Bush presidential library unless the administration reverses an executive order that gives former presidents and their heirs the right to keep White House papers secret in perpetuity.
"If the Bush folks are going to play games with the records, no self-respecting academic institution should cooperate," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of Am
Source: http://www.cavalierdaily.com
2-1-07
While most professors typically provide students with a semester of insightful instruction and a few office hours a week, Civil War Professor Gary Gallagher takes the concept of student-professor interaction to the next level by leading an interactive battlefield visit.
"I've always done the field trip," Gallagher said. "I think it's important to let students get out on the sites where things actually happened."
Not only will students visualize the l
Source: WaPo
2-4-07
When university professor Khalid al-Dakhil was growing up, clergymen had a say in everything.
Following the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th-century preacher who founded the Wahhabi ideology that has inspired Islamic extremism, mosque imams took attendance at dawn prayers; people did not smoke in public or listen to music because it was viewed as sinful; and stick-wielding clerics forced men to pray.
The pervasive religiosity permeating his childhood her
Source: Boston Globe
2-4-07
A prominent female historian and Harvard dean, who has never run a major institution, appears to be the front-runner for the Harvard University presidency now that a Nobel prize-winning scientist has bowed out.
Drew Gilpin Faust , head of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study , is a Southern-bred scholar with a dry wit and unflappable demeanor, colleagues say. If chosen, she would be the university's first female president, named two years after former president Lawrence H. Sum
Source: Christopher Hitchens in the WSJ
2-3-07
Those who were born in Year One of the Russian Revolution are now entering their 10th decade. Of the intellectual class that got its vintage laid down in 1917, a class which includes Eric Hobsbawm, Conor Cruise O'Brien and precious few others, the pre-eminent Anglo-American veteran must be Robert Conquest. He must also be the one who takes the greatest satisfaction in having outlived the Soviet "experiment."
Over the years, I have very often knocked respectfully at the doo
Source: Press Release -- New-York Historical Society
2-2-07
NEW YORK – The New-York Historical Society is pleased to announce the Richard Gilder Distinguished Visiting Fellow in American History Lecture Series, a new series offering the general public the opportunity to hear pre-eminent American historians speak about broad and important themes in American history. Inaugurating the lecture series are Bernard Bailyn, James M. McPherson and John Lewis Gaddis--three of America’s most distinguished scholars specializing in 18th, 19th and 20th century America
Source: Press Release
2-2-07
The Society for Military History 2007 Awards were announced on February 1. This international organization is composed of university, college, and defense academy faculty, scholars employed by government historical agencies or sections, and others among the general public interested in military studies. The Society encourages research and publication across the whole range of military history (ancient, medieval, and modern, including related popular culture studies). Its scholarly journal, Th
Source: BBC
2-1-07
More than 1,000 mourners in South Africa have attended the funeral of historian David Rattray, renowned for leading Anglo-Zulu battlefield tours.
He was murdered by intruders at his lodge in KwaZulu-Natal province.
He lived in Fugitive's Drift, which overlooks Isandhlwana - the 19th Century site where Zulu fighters inflicted a defeat on the British army.
The site is also near Rorke's Drift, defended by a small British band against an overwhelming Zulu force.
Source: Times (of London)
2-2-07
JOHANNESBURG -- The personal envoy of the Prince of Wales was among 1,500 mourners who attended an emotional funeral service in South Africa yesterday for his friend, the renowned historian David Rattray.
The Prince compared his death to that of “my beloved great uncle, Lord Mountbatten”.
Mr Rattray, 48, an expert on the 1879 Anglo-Zulu war, was murdered by a gang who broke into his lodge in KwaZulu- Natal province at the weekend. He lived in Fugitives’ Drift, which ove
Source: http://www.cornellsun.com
2-2-07
A recent University of Connecticut report on students’ knowledge of American history puts Cornell near the bottom of the heap, but history professors, rankled, are railing against the results.
“This is a crock,” said Prof. Mary Beth Norton, director of undergraduate studies in history. “A study like this happens once a decade. There is one like this from the ’20s, one from the ’40s, the ’50s and one from 10 years ago.”
Out of 50 colleges surveyed nationwide, Cornell ran
Source: Daniel Pipes blog
2-1-07
My talk last night at the University of California-Irvine, on the topic of"The Threat to Israel's Existence," was disrupted just over 15 minutes into my lecture by what appear to be goons of an Islamist persuasion. Three videos on the internet document my remarks, then their response:http://video.google.com/ (anonymous) covers all 53:29 minutes of my talk, from beginning to end. The disruption begins at 15:0
Source: Bryn Mawr Now
2-1-07
In 2003, in the context of a campus debate about reparations for the descendants of slaves, President Ruth Simmons of Brown University created a committee to investigate the university's relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. On Sunday, Feb. 4, Bryn Mawr President Nancy J. Vickers and the Brown Club of Philadelphia will sponsor a public address by the chair of that committee, which issued its report in 2006. Brown Associate Professor of American Civilization and Africana Stud
