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: NYT
10-28-06
For the last 18 months, Philip D. Zelikow has churned out confidential memorandums and proposals for his boss and close friend, Condoleezza Rice, that often depart sharply from the Bush administration’s current line.
One described the potential for Iraq to become a “catastrophic failure.” Another, among several that have come to light in recent weeks, was an early call for changes in a detention policy that many in the State Department believed was doing tremendous harm to the Unite
Source: Press Release -- Berkeley
10-26-06
Lawrence W. Levine, a highly influential history professor
for more than three decades at the University of California, Berkeley,
died on Monday (Oct. 23) of cancer at his home in Berkeley. He was 73.
Through his writings and teaching, colleagues said, Levine helped
transform cultural history in the United States into a vibrant and
accessible field of study. A champion of multiculturalism, Levine won
a MacArthur"genius" fellowship in 1983 for his intellectual curiosity
and scholarshi
Source: Mark Solomon at the website of Portside
10-22-06
"I continue to wish for discussion as to how the attititudes expressed in Herbert's awful acts might have been reflected in books like the centrally important American Negro Slave Revolts."
Source: David White in Campus Watch
10-27-06
[David White is a writer in Washington, D.C.]
Earlier this month, the folklore department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison sponsored an event billed as "9/11: Folklore and Fact."
Held in the university's social sciences building, two leaders in what is known as the "9/11 Truth"—Kevin Barrett and James Fetzer—came to discuss their notion that 9/11 resulted not from the actions of al Qaeda, but from a Bush Administration conspiracy. As Barrett ha
Source: Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek
10-30-06
When he died in 1848, John Jacob Astor was America's richest man, leaving a fortune of $20 million that had been earned mainly from real estate and fur trading. Despite his riches, Astor's business was mainly a one-man show. He employed only a handful of workers, most of them clerks. This was typical of his time, when the farmer, the craftsman, the small partnership and the independent merchant ruled the economy. Only fifty years later, almost everything had changed. Giant industrial enterprises
Source: Iraqi Crisis (letter sent Sept. 23, 2006)
10-26-06
H. E. Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq
H. E. Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq
H. E. Hoshyar Zebari, Minister of Foreign Affairs
H. E. Dr. Asaad Al-Hashimi, Minister of Culture
Mufid Mohammad Jawad al-Jazairi, Chair of Cultural Committee, Iraqi Parliament
Maysoon al-Damluji, Member of the Iraqi Parliament
Your Excellencies:
We, the undersigned, would like to express our concern for the present and future state of
antiq
Source: Keli Senkevich in the California Aggie
10-26-06
... In his latest book, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Class, religious studies professor Keith David Watenpaugh explores the rise and formation of this Arab middle class and its relationship to modernity during the period from 1908 to 1946.
The role of the middle class in the Middle East is a new and relatively untouched field of study, and academics recognize Watenpaugh's research as an innovative contribution to the study of th
Source: Dutch News
10-17-06
Historians have come up with a checklist of 50 icons or windows to illustrate 3,000 years of Dutch history. Ranging from the megalithic tombs in Drenthe (hunebeds) to the euro, the aim of the Canon van Nederland is to outline what important elements in the development of the Netherlands could be taught at both a primary and secondary level.
The list takes the form of a flow chart through time and includes the first example of written Dutch, the Beemster polder and the Groningen nat
Source: NY Review of Books
11-16-06
A letter protesting the cancellation of a talk by Tony Judt to the Polish Consulate has been signed by more than a hundred people including:
Peter Beinart, Thomas Bender, Ian Buruma, Lizbeth Cohen, Franklin Foer, Timothy Garton Ash, Todd Gitlin, Michael Kazin, Richard Sennett, Jim Sleeper, Fritz Stern, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Tomasky, Leon Wieseltier, Alan Wolfe, and Marilyn Young.
Source: Deseret News
10-22-06
Carlos Eire is really two people — one is an erudite professor of history and religion at Yale University, who teaches classes and writes scholarly books, and the other is a Cuban exile of 47 years ago.
This second Eire is a man with strong emotions, and he is responsible for writing "Waiting for Snow in Havana" three years ago, the story of Eire's childhood in Cuba and his escape to the United States at the age of 11.
Eire, who said he loves both
Source: WMU News (Western Michigan U.)
10-17-06
KALAMAZOO--A documentary film with Western Michigan University history professor Dr. Linda Borish serving as executive producer and historian had its premiere in early October.
Borish, professor of history and gender/women's studies, shares her expertise and research on American women's sport history in this first-ever film about Jewish women in American sport from the 1880s through the 20th century.
"Jewish Women in American Sport: Settlement Houses to the Olympic
Source: Susan Mansfield in scotsman.com
10-20-06
SIMON Schama breaks off a conversation about his new TV series to talk about kippers. "Scotland has almost all my favourite foods in the world. I'm so glad I don't live here because I would be incredibly fat. I'd eat four kippers for breakfast, and I'd eat shortbread every day all day long. And I'd drink vast amounts of whisky."
Then, I suggest, he begins to see why we Scots are dropping like flies from diet-related illnesses? "Yeah, but I hope you die happy!" he
Source: NYT
10-24-06
John V. Murra, a professor of anthropology who culled voluminous Spanish colonial archives for research that reshaped the image of the Incas and their vast South American empire, died on Oct. 16 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 90.
The death was confirmed by Blaine Friedlander, a spokesman for Cornell University, where Professor Murra taught from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.
“Before he came along, the image of the Incas was one of barbaric splendor,” said Frank
Source: Anthony Grafton in the New Yorker
10-23-06
... what does the academic agenda of the modern research-based university have to do with the other side of college life as we know it—with fraternity pledges, the choruses of “Gaudeamus igitur,” the stone façades of Victorian Gothic buildings? The mixed inheritance of the modern university is the subject of a new book with the somewhat oxymoronic title “Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University,” by William Clark, a historian who has spent his academic career at both American
Source: Transcript from This Week (ABC News) with George Stephanopoulos
10-22-06
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS)
(Off-camera) What was the last book you read?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (UNITED STATES)
I'm reading history of the English speaking peoples from 1990 on - 1900 on. It's a great book. [Editor: The book, History of the English-Speaking People
Source: David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
10-23-06
Fifty years ago today, thousands of students and workers took to the streets of Budapest to demand democratic reform. Among them was Charles Gati, who was then a young newspaper reporter.
Twelve days later, Soviet tanks rolled across Hungary, crushing what had become a broad popular revolt. Before the end of November, Mr. Gati, like tens of thousands of others, had fled the country.
Today Mr. Gati is a senior adjunct professor of European studies at the Johns Hopkins Un
Source: Norman Stone in the Journal of Turkish Weekly
10-21-06
[Norman Stone (1941-) is a British historian of modern Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe. He is the author of ''Europe Transformed, 1878-1919.'' Stone was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Between 1984-1997, he served as professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Since 1997 Stone has worked at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. After 2005, he transferred to Koc University,Istanbul,Turkey and still continues to teach there.]
“The Armenian ‘genocide’ is an imperi
Source: Jenny Brown at lbo-talk, a forum for the discussion of economics, politics, and culture from a broad left perspective, sponsored by Left Business Observer
10-21-06
... In order to say
that Bettina is having 'false memory syndrome' you'd also have to claim that
she's lying that as an adult she spoke to her father about the abuse, and he
apologized--was sick with shame, actually, is the feeling you get from her
account. So it's not just false memory syndrome she'd be being accused of, it's
also a wholesale fabrication of her adult interaction with her father about it.
(She also said she got therapy after she remembered, not before, so these
s
Source: Press Release
10-20-06
[Michael Honey is a professor of labor and ethnic studies and American
history at the University of Washington, Tacoma. For information on Watada's
case, see www.thankyoult.org.]
The Bush Administration and Congress this week took the destruction of American
civil liberties to a new low, in the name of a war against terror. The Magna
Carta of 1215 established habeas corpus, the right to come before a court of
law to confront one's accusers and to be safe from arbitrary arrest, ind
Source: Henry Kissinger in the NYT Book Review
10-15-06
Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state in modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in “Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War,” his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson’s tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years — 1949-53 — that Acheson served as secretary of state, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).
History
