In the news this week, historians debate Newt Gingrich’s history background, an AHA member is announced as a future nominee for an Obama administration post, and a UC Davis historian receives criticism for stating the Armenian genocide took place. Finally, look back at the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor through archival records and oral histories.

Newt Gingrich and History

• What Gingrich Didn’t Learn in Congo
  In this op-ed for the New York Times, Author Adam Hochschild, who won the AHA’s 2008 Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award, takes a closer look at Newt Gingrich’s dissertation from his PhD in modern European history.
• Why Newt Gingrich’s Ph.D. Thesis Doesn’t Matter
  Writing for The Atlantic, historian Edward Tenner counters Hochschild’s article, asserting that “a 40-year-old dissertation has little relevance in today’s race.”

News

• Obama Appoints AHA Member to Administration Post
  President Obama has announced a number of upcoming nominations for administration posts, including AHA member and MIT professor of American history Pauline Maier to the Board of Trustees of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation.
• New Dispute Between Historian and Turkish American Group
  UC Davis historian Keith David Watenpaugh stands behind his recent statement that an Armenian genocide took place after World War I, despite criticism from Turkish-American groups.

Pearl Harbor

• Video – Pearl Harbor: In their Own Words
  The National Archives put together a video on the events of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, using U.S.  Navy deck logs.
• Pearl Harbor attacked: A witness remembers, 70 years later
  The Washington Post sits down with Francis Stueve, who was a 24 year-old Army Private stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Read, and watch, other Pearl Harbor oral histories from members of the military in this post from the Washington Times.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day
  Yesterday, the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Pare Lorentz Center at the FDR Library launched “Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day," an interactive site for searching through Roosevelt’s daily schedule.
• Pearl Harbor Lesson Plan
  Teachers of 9-12 graders may be interested in the four-part lesson plan: The Road to Pearl Harbor: The United States and East Asia, 1915-1941.
• Archive Watch: ‘A Date Which Will Live in Infamy’
  Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog rounds up even more Pearl Harbor related links from around the web.

Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Vernon Horn, Robert B. Townsend

This post first appeared on AHA Today.