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: Inside Higher Ed
11-21-06
At Barnard College, Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist who is coming up for tenure, is under attack by some alumnae and pro-Israel groups for a book, published by the University of Chicago Press, that was critical of Israeli archaeology and its use in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At Wayne State University, similar groups are pushing the university not to hire Wadie Said for a faculty position in the law school. In that case, critics of Said are attacking him and his late fat
Source: diverseeducation.com
11-22-06
Violence and lawlessness in Iraq is “dismantling” the country’s higher education system and creating a climate of terror on campuses, according to Iraqi professors who attended the Middle East Studies Association’s conference Sunday.
“The students are disappointed in America and they say it now openly, even on the television: ‘Bring back Saddam and we will apologize and he will restore order to the country,’” said Dr. Saad Jawad, professor of political science at Baghdad University.
Source: Charles Burress in the San Francisco Chronicle
11-22-06
The British writer who tried to steal the turkey from Thanksgiving might have bitten off more than he can chew.
The provocative claim that there was no turkey in the Pilgrims' first harvest feast in 1621 comes from a newly published history of Thanksgiving by British journalist and historian Godfrey Hodgson.
But devotees of holiday authenticity need not kiss the gobbler goodbye. Hodgson's claim is more tosh than truth, according to scholars and Pilgrim experts.
Source: Martha's Vinyard Times
11-22-06
"For me," says Nathaniel Philbrick, "Thanksgiving has always been the best, most fun family holiday."
Mr. Philbrick is a resident of Nantucket and the author of such acclaimed histories as "In the Heart of the Sea," the National Book Award-winning story of the whaleship Essex. His latest effort, "Mayflower," was released in May and immediately jumped to the New York Times bestseller list, where it spent more than four months. His life is settl
Source: NYT
11-23-06
To the Editor:
Re “An Iraqi Solution, Vietnam Style” (Op-Ed, Nov. 21):
Mark Moyar implies that if Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of the South Vietnamese government, had been given free rein in 1963 to suppress opposition, we would have had a different outcome in Vietnam.
But the Kennedy administration’s decision to encourage a coup against Diem’s government rested on the realistic understanding that Diem could neither maintain his country’s public support nor ef
Source: NYT
11-22-06
Curtis Cate, an American biographer who chronicled the lives of several well-known European writers, among them Nietzsche, George Sand and André Malraux, died in Paris on Thursday. He was 82 and had lived in Paris for most of his life.
The cause was melanoma, his brother, Benjamin, said.
Mr. Cate’s most recent book, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” was published in the United States last year by the Overlook Press. Reviewing the biography in The New York Times Book Review, Willia
Source: Economist
11-2-06
SO IS it to be 1967 or 1948? For watchers of the Middle East this question is shorthand for two different ways to think about the origins of, and solutions to, the long conflict between Israel and the Arabs of Palestine. In the eyes of the 1967 crowd, Israel was entitled to the borders it had before its abrupt expansion in the six-day war of that year. To make peace, the trick is therefore to create circumstances in which Israel will give up most or all of that land and allow an independent Pale
Source: FrontpageMag.com
11-16-06
Frontpage Interview's guest today is KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. With a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, he specializes in 20th century U.S. political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. He writes a blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, which offers comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case.
FP: KC Johnson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Johnson: Thank you for speaking with me.
FP: Kindly su
Source: Weekly Standard Scrapbook
11-27-06
Our attention was drawn this week to the award of the John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity to the historian John Hope Franklin. The Kluge prize, named for the Metro media mogul who endowed it, is awarded annually by the Library of Congress and is, in the words of Librarian James H. Billington, "the only global award given at the level of the Nobel Prizes that recognizes a lifetime of accomplishment in humanities and social sciences." THE SCRAPBOOK assumes there's a plaque or g
Source: Press Release-- Queen Mary, University of London
11-16-06
Dr Dan Todman, author of The Great War: Myth and Memory, impressed The Times Higher’s judges with his expert juggling of ‘an enormous body’ of sources.
He delves into literature, films, war comics and television programmes to present his compelling argument about how attitudes towards the First World War have changed.
Today, it may seem a cut-and-dried case: the war was a national disaster, ill-managed and horrifyingly futile. But Todman illustrates that such a view is
Source: New America Media
11-13-06
Waskar Ari Chachaki is an ill-fated victim of the War on Terror. Born in the remote Andean highlands of Bolivia, by age 42 he had earned a Ph.D. from prestigious Georgetown University. Ari, the first member of the pre-Incan Aymara tribe with a doctorate in history from the United States, also helped establish eight indigenous organizations in Bolivia and Peru. He's an expert in indigenous history, culture and political movements.
But American students may never benefit from his sin
Source: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria
11-21-06
Hey! We'll probably never know whether last month's discussions at National Review Online, Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Cliopatria, Phi Beta Cons, Altercation, and
Source: News & Observer
11-16-06
John Hope Franklin, whose writings on the African-American experience changed the nation's understanding of its history, is one of two winners of a $1 million international award announced Wednesday by the Library of Congress.
The 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the study of humanity honors lifetime achievement in humanities and social sciences, fields that aren't covered by the Nobel Prize. Franklin, 91, a retired professor at Duke University, will split the $1 million prize with Yu Ying-sh
Source: Press Release-- Purdue
11-16-06
A Purdue University history professor has been named the state's top professor by the only national ranking specifically designed to recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring.
Randy Roberts, a professor of American history who as been at Purdue for 18 years, will be recognized Thursday (Nov. 16) as the 2006 Indiana Professor of the Year. The annual award program, which takes place at noon at the Willard Intercontinental in Washington, D.C., is administered by the
Source: http://www.demaz.org
11-15-06
While protest actions against the adoption of a draft bill concerning the punishment for denial "Armenian genocide" adopted by the Lower Chamber of the French Parliament are ongoing, the Armenians living in Turkey decided to join to the process. According to the Armenians, distinguishing with their more moderate approach to the 1915 events rather than the Armenian diaspora, political speculations developing around the so called "Armenian genocide" complicates the process of i
Source: http://www.theday.com
11-16-06
Lisa Wilson, a professor of American history at Connecticut College, is featured as a commentator in the History Channel's original documentary, “Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower,” which will debut on the History Channel at 8 p.m. Sunday.
Wilson, who specializes in colonial British North America, comments on the domestic life of women and men in early New England. She was also interviewed about the mysterious death of the wife of the colony's first governor, Wil
Source: Thomas Ricks in the WaPo
11-19-06
When Americans talk about the raging insurgency in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. That's one reason why the landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace, has been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years, with used copies selling on Amazon.com for $150. Indeed, "Algeria" has become almost a c
Source: Jon Meacham in the WaPo
11-19-06
Forty-six autumns ago, in the final chapter of the 1960 presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy, who was running his brother Jack's operation, made it clear what his family's priorities were. As the distinguished political scientist James MacGregor Burns tells the story, Bobby spoke "brutally" to a group of New York Democrats: "I don't give a damn if the state and county organizations survive after November, and I don't give a damn if you survive." His sole interest -- the t
Source: Nathaniel Fick in the WaPo
11-19-06
The most impressive thing about Is Iraq Another Vietnam? (PublicAffairs, $24) is that Robert K. Brigham doesn't treat the title's question rhetorically. In this readable book, he emphasizes the military distinctions between the two conflicts: The United States does not have half a million troops in Iraq, many of them drafted; Iraq's insurgents lack the support of a sympathetic superpower and are unlikely to find a single galvanizing leader such as Ho Chi Minh; and while Vietnam began as an insur
Source: Times Online (UK)
11-19-06
A LEADING British historian has sparked a row about free speech in America after an article criticising Israel prompted a backlash from Jewish groups and the cancellation of meetings where he was due to speak.
Tony Judt, a liberal Jew and former kibbutznik, was accused of calling for the destruction of Israel after he wrote an article in The New York Review of Books in 2003, and in The Sunday Times, arguing for the creation of a secular bi-national state of Jews and Palestinians.
