GREENVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina) -

In South Carolina, marriage is defined as between a man and a woman.

Now, North Carolina has joined the other 28 states by adding this definition to its constitution. Amendment 1 passed by a 22 percent margin on Tuesday. Only eight counties in North Carolina voted against the law....

Dr. Carmen Harris, history professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate, said the vote is less about marriage and more about "the concept of American liberty, and whether a majority of people in America have aright to make decisions for others....

“BackStory with the American History Guys,” a public radio program produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, will be syndicated on a weekly basis starting May 11. The program, which first aired as a monthly spot in 2008, has been picked up by stations in 39 states.

At one point or another the program has aired on every public radio outlet in Virginia, Executive Producer Andrew Wyndham said.

The show is hosted by “18th Century Guy” Peter Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation professor of history at UVa; “19th Century Guy” Ed Ayers, current president of the University of Richmond, former dean of the UVa College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and “20th Century Guy” Brian Balogh, Hugh P. Kelly professor of history at UVa and director of the Fellowship Program at UVa’s Miller Center of Public Affairs....

Young history academics are too eager to convert their research into books that have only a slim chance of success in an increasingly crowded market, according to the chief judge of a leading history writing prize.

Sir Keith Thomas, the Oxford historian who is chairman of the judging panel for the Wolfson History Prize, applauded the growth of interest which has seen telegenic dons propelled on to the nation's television screens and bookshop shelves, but warned that the dash for the bestseller lists risks undermining the status of academic study.

Two women historians were last night named as this year's winners of the prize, which was founded 40 years ago to reward high-quality history writing that is accessible to the general public. Previous winners include some of Britain's most renowned historians, including Simon Schama, Eric Hobsbawm and Antonia Fraser....

A University of Florida professor recently published an article in “Law and History Review” from Cambridge Journals, which asserts that the racist and oppressive history of police officers in New Orleans have many Blacks viewing cops as “killers behind the badge.”

Jeffery S. Adler, professor of History and Criminology, researched race and police homicide in New Orleans between the years of 1925 to 1945, alleging that a practice of “fear conditioning” exists even now....

...[S]niffiness about what they ["serious academics"] refer to as “popular historians” (rather as elderly judges talk of “popular musicians”) has moved on to a new target in “telly-dons” – those who present high-profile series on the small screen about aspects of our past – yet the prejudice remains unchanged, as demonstrated by remarks made this week by Professor Sir Keith Thomas. At the presentation of the Wolfson History Prize, Sir Keith referred to the damage done to “diligent” scholarship by “eye-catching academics”....

The senior common rooms of universities are famously bitchy, jealous places. A  J P Taylor in the 1950s was the granddaddy of TV historians, but his success was said to have led to a whispering campaign among colleagues that stopped him securing the Regius Professorship in History at Oxford. And to this day otherwise hard-working, blameless academics begin to drip with acid at the mere mention of David Starkey or Niall Ferguson, using words like “sold out” or “no longer taken seriously”....

The problem doesn’t appear to be with history itself. When imaginatively presented, it can draw people in by the coach-load. We are fascinated with the past. The challenge is to harness that. And it is a challenge the TV historians are rising to. Indeed, many of these telly-dons succeed on both the small screen and in academia. Bettany Hughes, for example, has just been awarded the prestigious Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association....

The AHA Council has passed the following statement on recently proposed legislation in Michigan:

Academic freedom is indispensable to the educational enterprise. The AHA deplores efforts of legislators and other public officials to override the professional judgment of college and university faculty in curricular matters broadly defined. Faculty must remain in control of decisions such as establishing curriculum, creating syllabi, choosing reading material and making other kinds of assignments, and providing research opportunities for their students. Partisan political meddling is bad both for the educational development of students and for the pursuit of knowledge.

Increasingly, faculty are finding that students’ education can often be enhanced by internships in organizations that are not a part of the college or university. An internship can enable a student to obtain knowledge, develop skills, and acquire experience in a way that would be difficult, or even impossible, to duplicate in campus settings. At the same time, students should receive history credit for internships only if they are doing work that historians would unquestionably recognize as historical. For a history student, this kind of work outside the classroom might involve learning to create, manage, or do research in a particular type of archive; compiling oral histories or other kinds of documentation; summarizing complex patterns of historical fact for people who have neither the time nor skills to do such research themselves; or countless other activities that simultaneously bring historical skills to institutional needs and enable students to understand the value of their history education beyond the academy.

In a free and diverse society, some students will inevitably choose to intern at organizations pursuing projects of which some people disapprove; indeed, some may wind up at organizations of which the supervising faculty does not fully approve. Placements across the political spectrum are not necessarily inappropriate. In all cases, when assessing the educational value of placements, the professional judgment of properly qualified and appointed faculty must be decisive.

The proposed Michigan legislation improperly injects political criteria into education, and attempts to write into law broad principles that would have negative consequences, both for education and the communities in which our institutions of higher education exist. Had legislation like this existed fifty years ago, a Michigan public university probably could not have placed a student as an archivist with a civil rights organization that supported lunch counter sit-ins; today it probably could not approve an internship that requires a student to search foreign newspapers to help build a non-profit’s database on forced labor by prisoners, worker safety, or waste disposal at third-world factories if a Michigan company had an interest in one of those factories. Nor, for that matter, could it place a student doing even non-controversial kinds of research at an organization studying any number of global problems—religious or political persecution, child trafficking, or genocide—if that organization called for a Michigan business to stop dealing with the offending foreign government or movement.

The proposed law would, in short, make illegal the gathering of information, or even learning how to gather information, in cooperation with a group that seeks to inform public debate. Such restrictions would both improperly hinder student learning, and impoverish the reasoned debate which is essential to democracy. Moreover, since the proposed legislation does not distinguish between the main activity of the organization and incidental activities, its reach and its harm are probably even broader than is immediately apparent. Even a single gesture in the history of an otherwise completely neutral organization could theoretically make it impossible for a university to ever place an intern there.

The question to ask about an educational internship is not whether one fully endorses everything that every organization receiving an intern does; it is whether a particular internship has been designed in order to confer a significant educational benefit on the student. And that is a question for educators, not politicians, to decide.

Bernard Bellush, Professor Emeritus of History at the City College of New York (CCNY), died of natural causes at age 94 on December 30, 2011 in White Plains, New York.

Born in the Bronx, New York, on November 15, 1917, Bellush attended New York City public schools, graduated from CCNY in 1941, and then entered the history graduate program at Columbia University. He was raised in a politically active leftist household and was active himself politically during his years at CCNY, and indeed throughout his life. Part of the famous Shepherd Hall "Alcove Number One" group of student radicals at CCNY during the 1930s (as discussed in the book and movie Arguing with the World), he identified with Norman Thomas's Socialist Party and wrote his MA thesis on Eugene V. Debs.

Despite a pacifist upbringing, Bellush did not apply for conscientious objector status during World War II; instead he was inducted into the U.S. Army on November 14, 1942—the same day he handed in his MA thesis on Debs and one day before his 25th birthday. He rose to the rank of sergeant and took part in the June 6, 1944, D-Day landing at Omaha Beach in Normandy—a harrowing experience that left him with a lifelong fear of cliffs. He remained proud of his service throughout the rest of his life, served on the national board of the American Veterans Committee, and often marched in uniform during the July 4th parades in the small towns of Vermont where he often spent the summer....

Domenico Sella, professor emeritus of economic history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, died on Thursday, March 8, 2012. He was born 16 November 1926 in Milan and took his Laurea at the University of Milan in 1949. He grew up speaking French, German, and Italian, so he studied English. Although Italian remained his most beloved language—the language he spoke with his family to the very end of his life—English set early steps in his career. English would first take him on a fellowship to De Pauw University, then to the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where he was invited to take a master's degree in history (1951). His facility in English led his doctoral adviser to suggest the oeuvre of the American historian of Christianity, Kenneth Latourette, as the focus of his dissertation, for which he received his doctorate from the University of Milan in 1954. Before moving to the United States in 1960, he was a Rockefeller Fellow (1957–59) and a British Council Fellow (1959–60) at the London School of Economics.

The year after completing his dissertation, he was called to Venice to work as a postdoctoral fellow under the direction of Carlo Cipolla. With support from the Fondazione Ca'Foscari, he began research in the Archivo di Stato on a topic that was far removed from his dissertation—the early modern Venetian economy. This became his second book, Commerci e industrie a Venezia nel secolo XVII (1961), which qualified the then-beloved notion of a "rise of the Atlantic economies," by proving that the Mediterranean basin did not necessarily decline. It proved to be the first in a series of works grounded in meticulous and original research in the archives of northern Italy that would reshape the history of early modern Italy and the economic history of early modern Europe.

Sella arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1960, to take up a newly created position, a joint appointment in both history and economics at the University of Wisconsin. His first year was probationary, but three years later, in 1963, he was tenured, and in 1967, promoted to full professor. He remained at Wisconsin for his entire career, retiring in 1995. One of his favorite stories was of a Lutheran undergraduate who thought that Sella, a Catholic, had offered a "pretty good lecture on Luther."...

...Among those who doubt global warming, a Stanford University poll last year found that their skepticism had grown even stronger: Those who are extremely or very certain that global warming is not happening rose from 35 percent in 2010 to 53 percent in 2011. But those skeptics are a minority among Americans over all. The same poll found that 83 percent of adult Americans believe that the world's temperature has been going up. An even larger proportion of scientists actively working in climate change have similar views: 97 percent of them believe human-caused global warming is under way, although there is plenty of disagreement about the details (see related article, Page A15).

Academic pollsters, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists have been sorting through public attitudes about global warming for some time, but even though human behavior is central to the debate, the voices of social scientists are often lost in the din.

"In the end, all of the changes come down to what makes us behave the way we do and think the way we do," says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. "We need to understand us, not just the natural world."...

Two historians, Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes, point to another source of polarization in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt. There Mr. Conway, a historian affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, and Ms. Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California at San Diego, write about the efforts of a handful of physicists to emphasize uncertainty on some key science-policy issues, including acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming.

As early as the 1960s, climate scientists were trying to warn such political leaders as President Johnson that the "greenhouse effect" could be a problem, the historians write, and in 1995 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported a scientific consensus that humans were creating climate change. But the historians showed that long after the majority of climate scientists believed in global warming, the physicists sowed confusion and delayed action. The physicists' motives weren't entirely clear, although at times they expressed concern over the expense of mitigating global warming and conveyed the view that human migration to cooler parts of the earth would solve any problem caused by climate change.

They borrowed tactics from the tobacco companies' fight against the antismoking movement, launching assaults in the letters-to-the-editor pages of scientific journals, at White House meetings with the Bush administration, and in supposedly neutral forums like a 1983 National Academy of Science report. Journalists, feeling compelled to present "both sides" of the issue and drawn to the drama of contrarian views, often served as handmaidens to the denialists. At least one young researcher, the graduate student of a climate-change scientist who objected to one of the physicist's tactics, found himself slapped with a libel suit. Without resources to defend himself, he was forced to settle, issuing a retraction and submitting to a 10-year gag order.

Mr. Conway remembers having to take breaks to "detoxify" when he was doing research on the book. He says he avoids keeping up on the climate-denial movement. "It's not a happy story; it's kind of a disturbing one," he says....

"I am not a welfare queen," says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.

That's how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship.

"I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare," she says....

A record number of people are depending on federally financed food assistance. Food-stamp use increased from an average monthly caseload of 17 million in 2000 to 44 million people in 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Web site. Last year, one in six people—almost 50 million Americans, or 15 percent of the population—received food stamps.

Ms. Bruninga-Matteau is part of an often overlooked, and growing, subgroup of Ph.D. recipients, adjunct professors, and other Americans with advanced degrees who have had to apply for food stamps or some other form of government aid since late 2007.

Some are struggling to pay back student loans and cover basic living expenses as they submit scores of applications for a limited pool of full-time academic positions. Others are trying to raise families or pay for their children's college expenses on the low and fluctuating pay they receive as professors off the tenure track, a group that now makes up 70 percent of faculties. Many bounce on and off unemployment or welfare during semester breaks. And some adjuncts have found themselves trying to make ends meet by waiting tables or bagging groceries alongside their students.

Of the 22 million Americans with master's degrees or higher in 2010, about 360,000 were receiving some kind of public assistance, according to the latest Current Population Survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau in March 2011. In 2010, a total of 44 million people nationally received food stamps or some other form of public aid, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

People who don't finish college are more likely to receive food stamps than are those who go to graduate school. The rolls of people on public assistance are dominated by people with less education. Nevertheless, the percentage of graduate-degree holders who receive food stamps or some other aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010.

During that three-year period, the number of people with master's degrees who received food stamps and other aid climbed from 101,682 to 293,029, and the number of people with Ph.D.'s who received assistance rose from 9,776 to 33,655, according to tabulations of microdata done by Austin Nichols, a senior researcher with the Urban Institute. He drew on figures from the 2008 and 2011 Current Population Surveys done by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor....

As a medieval historian with some decidedly old-school habits, Guy Geltner wanted to expand his online presence, but he shuddered at the thought of "friending" or "Tweeting" to get other scholars' attention.

Then a colleague introduced him to Academia.edu, one of a growing number of networking sites designed specifically for scholars.

"Friends told me that it's basically Facebook for nerds, which I'm very happy with," says Mr. Geltner, a professor of medieval history at the University of Amsterdam.

The profile he set up includes far more information than his university's Web page could accommodate, including links to research papers, books, blogs, and forthcoming talks. It lets people know what he's working on and helps him connect with others in his field. "I like the fact that I can read someone's paper without having to be their friend or follower," he says....

Zotero offers similar technical tools for researchers in other disciplines, including many in the humanities. The free system helps researchers collect, organize, share, and cite research sources.

It hosts group discussions, but social networking isn't a major focus of the site.

"After six years of running Zotero, it's not clear that there is a whole lot of social value to academic social networks," says Sean Takats, the site's director, who is an assistant professor of history at George Mason University. "Everyone uses Twitter, which is an easy way to pop up on other people's radar screens without having to formally join a network."...

JERUSALEM – Zvi Shefel recalled the day the German army arrived at his Polish town of Slonim in the summer of 1942. The soldiers immediately began mass exterminations and eventually killed more than 25,000 Jews, including his mother, father and sister.

There is nothing in that town that Shefel, 86, can find about his family, he said while attending the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial Thursday for the "Day of Remembrance" commemoration of the 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide of World War II.

"I've visited all the archives in Belarus to find the names of people, but they weren't there because the archives of Slonim were burned by the Germans when they retreated — but we have to keep the memory of what happened in order to never forget," he said....