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: Jesse Lemisch, in an email circulating on the Internet
5-6-06
Dear Fellow Historians (and a few others):
Below is a statement from the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, which I have signed, opposing both theocratic repression in Iran and US aggression there. I think this intelligent statement can play a very positive role in shaping public discussion on this increasingly urgent situation. Historians among the initial signers include: Ros Baxandall, Eileen Boris, Martin Duberman, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Rusti Eisenberg, Linda Gordon, Adam Hochsch
Source: John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt in the London Review of Books
5-11-06
We wrote ‘The Israel Lobby’ in order to begin a discussion of a subject that had become difficult to address openly in the United States (LRB, 23 March). We knew it was likely to generate a strong reaction, and we are not surprised that some of our critics have chosen to attack our characters or misrepresent our arguments. We have also been gratified by the many positive responses we have received, and by the thoughtful commentary that has begun to emerge in the media and the blogosphere. It is
Source: D.M. Giangreco at AmericanThinker.com
5-8-06
Three weeks ago, Robert J. Maddox outlined for American Thinker readers the “contentious debate” swirling around the awarding of the Ferrell Book Prize by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa for Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan—- and the bullets are still flying. Robert P. Newman’s “Has the History Profession Awarded a Prize to Another Flawed Book?’” on the History News Network is paired with a response by Hasegawa a
Source: Robert KC Johnson at HNN Blog, Cliopatria
5-3-06
This morning’s Chronicle features an opinion piece by William Chafe on conditions at Duke. I’m a great admirer of Chafe’s scholarship, which I’ve frequently used in my classes. So of all the signatures on the Group of 88’s statement, his disappointed me the most.
Many of Chafe’s current comments are common sense. He argues that based on the undisputed facts, the lacrosse team deserved “censure and disciplinary action”—which, of course, it received, in the form of a cancellation of t
Source: Jamie Glazov at frontpagemag.com
5-5-06
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Efraim Karsh, the author of the new book Islamic Imperialism: A History. He is a professor and head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme, King’s College, University of London. He has published extensively and often served as a consultant on Middle Eastern affairs, Soviet foreign policy, and European neutrality. His books include Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 and Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography.
Source: Martin Kramer at Sandbox (blog)
5-3-06
Last year, Rashid Khalidi came to Princeton to deliver a job talk. His aim: to win the newly-established Robert H. Niehaus '77 Professorship of Near Eastern Studies and Religion. He didn't get it. Last month, Princeton announced the appointment of Muhammad Qasim Zaman, a McGill-schooled specialist on Islam from Brown University.
But Khalidi, it turns out, has friends in Princeton's history department, and they began to push for his appointment there. People tell me that Jeremy Adelm
Source: Times Picayune
5-3-06
Best-selling Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley rips government leaders at all levels for their wan response to Hurricane Katrina -- with his most acidic prose reserved for Mayor Ray Nagin -- in an article that will hit New York City newsstands today in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.
Brinkley, who since Katrina has been outspoken in his criticism of Nagin in frequent appearances on national media outlets -- at one point calling his handling of the crisis "criminal&q
Source: Scotsman
5-3-06
A leading Scots historian yesterday criticised the keepers of Rosslyn Chapel for perpetuating "ludicrous" Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories. Dr. Louise Yeoman said guides and information boards at the chapel should portray the real history of the 15th-century building, rather than attempt to cash in on the popularity of fictional works, such as the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The author and academic said the medieval chapel in Midlothian was built by William Si
Source: NY Review of Books
5-11-06
The following letter was sent to Michael Chertoff, US Secretary of Homeland Security, and Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, on February 22, 2006.
Dear Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Rice:
We are writing on behalf of the Department of History and the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to express our dismay over the US government's refusal to issue a visa to Dr. Waskar Ari to allow him to accept the position of
Source: Jill Lepore in the New Yorker
4-24-06
Samuel Eliot Morison, the last Harvard historian to ride a horse to work, liked to canter to Cambridge on his gray gelding, tie it to a tree in the Yard, stuff his saddlebags with papers to grade, and trot back home to his four-story brick house at the foot of Beacon Hill. “Ours was the horsey end of town,” he wrote of the place where he was born, in 1887, and died, in 1976. Morison has been called the greatest American historian of the twentieth century. With that, as these things go, not every
Source: Central Daily (Pennsylvania)
5-2-06
Vice President Dick Cheney honored Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis on Monday in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.Lewis, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, was celebrating his 90th birthday on the same day of a conference organized by the council on Islam and the West.
During a brief luncheon speech, Cheney said he first met Lewis more than 15 years ago, when he was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, after
Source: Press Release -- John W. Kluge Center
5-2-06
Historian Robert V. Remini will discuss his recently published book, "The House: The History of the U.S. House of Representatives," at the Library of Congress at noon on Tuesday, May 9, in Room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.
The event, which is sponsored by the Library's John W. Kluge Center, is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.
Remini's single-volume history traces the development of the Hous
12-31-69
Tom Fleming, the author of more than 40 books, has won the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award for Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge.
The award goes each year to the"author of the best, newly published work on the American Revolutionary period."
Previous winners include David Hackett Fischer and Joseph Ellis.
Source: Richard Byrne in the Chronicle of Higher Education
5-1-06
Studying the early Christian writings found in Egypt over the past 110 years is painstaking, even frustrating work. The texts were written on brittle papyrus, often in tantalizing fragments, in Coptic — an Egyptian language rendered in Greek letters.
Until the 1980s, the scholars who worked on these writings formed a small circle in which almost everyone knew everyone else. Thanks in part to the success of a series of books written by the Princeton University professor of religion E
Source: Inside Higher Ed
5-1-06
One of the many classes that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shares with the world through its pioneering OpenCourseWare initiative is “Visualizing Cultures,” an esteemed, interdisciplinary look at “how images have been used to shape the identity of peoples and cultures,” notably Japan. Among the hundreds of images displayed on the site are wood-block prints that Japan used as propaganda during the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war, which captions and other text on the site criticize for their
Source: Fouad Ajami in the WSJ
5-1-06
Bernard Lewis came to the New World in the nick of time. Fate--or, more appropriately, history--decreed his American journey and the direction it would take. The historian, who will turn 90 in a handful of days, had come to Princeton from London, at the age of 58, in 1974, to do the work of Orientalism which had gained him scholarly renown. But there would be no academic seclusion for him in the years after. The lands of Islam whose languages and cultures he knew with such intimacy would soon be
Source: Martin Kramer, at his blog, Sandbox
4-26-06
In February, I wrote that I would be shocked if Yale appointed Juan Cole to a professorship in the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Now that he's been declared a finalist, I see I'm not alone. The appointment has been the subject of three hard-hitting pieces in the
Source: Yale Daily News
4-18-06
Controversial University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is a top candidate for a senior faculty position in modern Middle East studies, two members of the search committee said Monday.
Cole writes about contemporary politics on his blog, "Informed Comment," and has drawn criticism from conservatives for his opposition to the war in Iraq. But Frances Rosenbluth, a member of the search committee for the professorship, said the committee considered only his scholarly
Source: NYT
5-1-06
Grady McWhiney, a historian who called his fellow Southerners "crackers" in influential books and articles, then explained that this was a compliment to the glorious Celtic heritage he said they shared, died on April 18 at his home in Abilene, Tex. He was 77.
Causes included cancer and heart and Alzheimer's diseases, Donald S. Frazier, president and chief executive officer of the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation, said.
"It's just a question of which one
Source: NYT
4-30-06
John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat and an unapologetically liberal member of the political and academic establishment he often needled in prolific writings for more than half a century, died Saturday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.
Mr. Galbraith lived in Cambridge and at an "unfarmed farm" near Newfane, Vt. His death was confirmed by his son J. Alan Galbraith.
Mr. Galbraith was one of the most widely read aut
