Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has appointed our colleague Harald Braun as Staatssekretär (State Secretary, equivalent to the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State) effective July 2011.

Harald is Research Professor for Global Studies and Diplomacy in the Department of History and at the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies (SBIGS). According to a recent article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, his responsibilities will include international trade, development and economic affairs, international law, cultural affairs, protocol as well as the overall management of the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For a German link announcing this good news, see politik & kommunikation.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009, the Science Times section of the New York Times has published my first ever Letter to the Editor — some decline.

Monday, 14 December 2009, volume 21, issue 1, of the LIHJ went online with six articles, eight reviews, a video interview, the first images of its eMuseum and the “enhanced mission” of writing Long Island history into the larger framework of local, national, and global history.

The Editor in Chief, Charles Backfish, summarized the main content of volume 21, issue 1:

The articles in this first online issue of the Long Island History Journal underscore this enhanced mission. Our publisher and Editor at Large, Wolf Schäfer, sets the conceptual stage using a letter written by Albert Einstein (summering in what is now Cutchogue) to illustrate the intersection of global, national and local history. Joshua Ruff, Associate Editor, offers historical perspective on recent tensions on Long Island involving undocumented day laborers. Joseph Tiedemann’s article on Thomas Jones, a loyalist in the era of the American Revolution, examines the plight of a Long Island man of privilege confronted with the realities of a more democratic society. Frank Cavaioli traces the chartering of a prominent area educational institution in response to the area’s changing economic needs. Neil Buffett studies high school students organizing to call attention to environmental conservation, while Associate Editor Noel Gish profiles Lee Koppelman, whose important work as a planner in Nassau and Suffolk Counties spanned several decades and whose Center for Regional Policy Studies was the previous publisher of the LIHJ. This article serves as a companion piece to video excerpts from an interview with Koppelman, which inaugurates what will be an on-going feature of the LIHJ.

Margaret, Sharon, Gregory, Tao, Nicholas, Erin, Michelle, and William

1st year graduate students at holiday party 2009

Coming to grips with the twentieth century started early and is a historical challenge that will probably stimulate interesting responses for a long time. This seminar will explore some of the first exemplary efforts to “understand” that pivotal century:

Barraclough, Geoffrey. An introduction to contemporary history. New York: Basic Books, 1964.

Von Laue, Theodore H. The world revolution of westernization: the twentieth century in global perspective. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Hobsbawm, Eric. The age of extremes: a history of the world, 1914-1991. New York: Vintage Books, 1996 [1994].

McNeill, John R. Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2000.

Ferguson, Niall. The war of the world: twentieth-century conflict and the descent of the west. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

For MA and PhD students only.