Historians in the News Archive
This page includes, in addition to news about historians, news about political scientists, economists, law professors, and others who write about history. For a comprehensive list of historians' obituaries, go here.
SOURCE: Marc Abrahams in the Guardian (11-8-05)
True, at its height, the British empire produced magnificent heaps of wealth and power. But according to the historian Jeffrey Auerbach, the empire also generated staggering amounts of boredom.
In a copiously documented report in the journal Common Knowledge, Auerbach writes: "Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, British imperial administrators at all levels were bored by their experience travelling and working in the service of king or queen and country. Yet in the public mind, the British empire was thrilling - full of novelty, danger and adventure, as explorers, missionaries and settlers sailed the globe in search of new lands, potential converts and untold riches."
Auerbach is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Northridge. His interests are not limited to boredom. He has published on many other subjects, among them "The Homogenisation of Empire", "The Monotony of Empire", and, inspirationally titled, "The Impossibility of Artistic Escape"....
Auerbach complains that, for generations, "Scholars have by and large perpetuated (a) glamorous view of the empire, portraying imperial men either as heroic adventurers who charted new lands and carried 'the white man's burden' to the farthest reaches of the planet, or as aggressors who imposed culturally bound norms and values on indigenous peoples and their ways of life."
He says he did his research by "reading against the grain of published memoirs and travel logs" and by digging into the unspectacular mutterings of private diaries and letters. His task was the more difficult, he argues, because "if people felt bored before the mid-18th century, they did not know it." This view of boredom, he points out, was persuasively developed by Patricia Meyer Spacks, whose 304-page book Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind, titillated thrill-starved scholars in 1995.
Auerbach is himself writing a book. It's about imperial boredom. He will need to expand considerably upon his current study, which is 23 pages long and includes only 76 footnotes....
In a copiously documented report in the journal Common Knowledge, Auerbach writes: "Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, British imperial administrators at all levels were bored by their experience travelling and working in the service of king or queen and country. Yet in the public mind, the British empire was thrilling - full of novelty, danger and adventure, as explorers, missionaries and settlers sailed the globe in search of new lands, potential converts and untold riches."
Auerbach is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Northridge. His interests are not limited to boredom. He has published on many other subjects, among them "The Homogenisation of Empire", "The Monotony of Empire", and, inspirationally titled, "The Impossibility of Artistic Escape"....
Auerbach complains that, for generations, "Scholars have by and large perpetuated (a) glamorous view of the empire, portraying imperial men either as heroic adventurers who charted new lands and carried 'the white man's burden' to the farthest reaches of the planet, or as aggressors who imposed culturally bound norms and values on indigenous peoples and their ways of life."
He says he did his research by "reading against the grain of published memoirs and travel logs" and by digging into the unspectacular mutterings of private diaries and letters. His task was the more difficult, he argues, because "if people felt bored before the mid-18th century, they did not know it." This view of boredom, he points out, was persuasively developed by Patricia Meyer Spacks, whose 304-page book Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind, titillated thrill-starved scholars in 1995.
Auerbach is himself writing a book. It's about imperial boredom. He will need to expand considerably upon his current study, which is 23 pages long and includes only 76 footnotes....
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 - 20:29
Comments
SOURCE: Bill Eichenberger in the Columbus Dispatch (11-8-05)
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln reached bookstores only a few weeks ago, but author Doris Kearns Goodwin is already experiencing symptoms of withdrawal from her subject.
"I've been living with Mr. Lincoln for a decade and could easily have stayed with him for another 10 years without being bored or feeling I had him all figured out," she said in advance of her Columbus visit for a Thurber House event.
"Ida Tarbell (author of The Life of Abraham Lincoln ) said the reason there were so many books about Lincoln is that he was so companionable.
"But he was so kind, so sensitive, so intelligent. It is hard for me to imagine leaving this period in history."
In a review of Team of Rivals , New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani complained that the book "belongs to the hagiographic tradition" and that Goodwin "skims lightly over her subject's more pragmatic political maneuverings and his troubling utterances about race."
Yet such a judgment seems facile.
In the first half of her biography, Goodwin explores the relationships among the candidates for the 1860 Republican nomination to the presidency: Lincoln, Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and William H. Seward.
What's remarkable is that Lincoln made the three others members of his cabinet -- the topic of the second half.
A few questions were posed to the author:
Q: Didn't you initially think you might write about Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln in the same way you wrote about Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt?
A: I wanted to learn more about Lincoln and the Civil War, and it was sort of a leap of faith thinking that I could find some new angle so that I wouldn't be telling the same story again in the same way.
I thought I might write about Abe and Mary in the same way I wrote about Franklin and Eleanor. But Mary couldn't hold up the public side of the story the way Eleanor could. They weren't a political team.
I came to realize that, during the tense and agonizing years of the war, Lincoln was more married to his rivals than he was to Mary. And they were such fascinating characters in their own rights. That's when I knew I'd found a story.
Q: You concentrate on the nature of male relationships in the 19th century -- which were unlike those of today.
A: There's a letter in which Seward apologizes to one of his mentors for "my womanish feelings toward you."
I think the sexes were kept so separate by convention that both men and women were more free to express their emotions to one another. It's led to a lot of hypothesizing that this or that 19th-century figure was gay. But I don't think that's it....
"I've been living with Mr. Lincoln for a decade and could easily have stayed with him for another 10 years without being bored or feeling I had him all figured out," she said in advance of her Columbus visit for a Thurber House event.
"Ida Tarbell (author of The Life of Abraham Lincoln ) said the reason there were so many books about Lincoln is that he was so companionable.
"But he was so kind, so sensitive, so intelligent. It is hard for me to imagine leaving this period in history."
In a review of Team of Rivals , New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani complained that the book "belongs to the hagiographic tradition" and that Goodwin "skims lightly over her subject's more pragmatic political maneuverings and his troubling utterances about race."
Yet such a judgment seems facile.
In the first half of her biography, Goodwin explores the relationships among the candidates for the 1860 Republican nomination to the presidency: Lincoln, Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and William H. Seward.
What's remarkable is that Lincoln made the three others members of his cabinet -- the topic of the second half.
A few questions were posed to the author:
Q: Didn't you initially think you might write about Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln in the same way you wrote about Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt?
A: I wanted to learn more about Lincoln and the Civil War, and it was sort of a leap of faith thinking that I could find some new angle so that I wouldn't be telling the same story again in the same way.
I thought I might write about Abe and Mary in the same way I wrote about Franklin and Eleanor. But Mary couldn't hold up the public side of the story the way Eleanor could. They weren't a political team.
I came to realize that, during the tense and agonizing years of the war, Lincoln was more married to his rivals than he was to Mary. And they were such fascinating characters in their own rights. That's when I knew I'd found a story.
Q: You concentrate on the nature of male relationships in the 19th century -- which were unlike those of today.
A: There's a letter in which Seward apologizes to one of his mentors for "my womanish feelings toward you."
I think the sexes were kept so separate by convention that both men and women were more free to express their emotions to one another. It's led to a lot of hypothesizing that this or that 19th-century figure was gay. But I don't think that's it....
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 - 20:26
SOURCE: Max Holland, in the Washington Spectator (11-1-05)
Timothy Naftali's Response
Designating Norton as the publisher of the 9/11 Report was not the only plum handed out during Philip Zelikow's tenure as director. Zelikow engaged in some blatant cronyism when he arranged for a colleague from the University of Virginia, Tim Naftali, to write a history of U.S. counterterrorism policy from the Johnson to the Clinton administration.
The commission's prime directive was to investigate the 9/11 attacks, of course, but a historical account of counterterrorism policy is the kind of ancillary study that comparable commissions have published. As part of its final report, the Church Committee, which investigated activities of U.S. intelligence agencies, included an invaluable 100-page study of the CIA that was based upon access to classified internal histories.
But like other aspects of the commission's work, the Naftali study was not published as part of the commission's output; it was not even deemed fit for posting on the Internet. Why was it commissioned in the first place? Naftali, a Canadian citizen at the time, could not review classified materials. His study would have to depend entirely on open sources, meaning that at best it would represent a marginal addition to public knowledge. Naftali was not even a noted expert on the subject.
Naftali's unfamiliarity with the topic probably contributed to what happened next: he belatedly turned in a work that was way too long. Indeed, because of its tone and perspective it was quickly deemed unusable, according to sources on the commission. Since there was no time left to edit it, the commissioners would not even agree to have it posted on-line as a monograph.
There's an interesting coda to this story, too. Months before the commission closed its doors, in August 2004, some staff members found it odd that Naftali was engaged in research that clearly seemed tangential to his assignment. Sure enough, once the commissioners decided to "pass" on Naftali's history and gave him permission to use the study any way he liked, he took his manuscript—which had cost U.S. taxpayers at least $15,000—and nine months later published Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism. Naftali advertises the book as having been written partly "at the request of the 9/11 Commission" and markets himself as "the official historian" of the commission.
The commissioners reportedly have gagged over this self-aggrandizement, brazen even by Washington standards. They are nonplussed that someone should have secured work from the commission through a personal favor, produced work of no usefulness to the commission, yet managed to exploit the opportunity for his own professional and financial gain.
I feel compelled to respond to Max Holland's piece because we were once colleagues and friends and his comments give a false impression of the work I did for the 9/11 Commission. Regrettably our friendship ended when Max left the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs after a series of disagreements with both Philip Zelikow (as director) and me (as Max's direct supervisor). So far as I can tell he never reveals in his published attacks that he and I were once personal friends, collaborators and colleagues before a painful falling out.
Max's article relies on unnamed sources, untruths and half-truths. A number of 9/11 staffers, including but not limited to Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, wanted me to write a background study on US counterterrorism policy between 1968 and 1993, the prehistory of the period under review by the Commission. Although I had never published on counterterrorism policy before, for over fifteen years I had written and lectured widely on the history of US national security policymaking with a special interest in studying how our government counteracted foreign secret organizations (counterespionage). Another scholar was asked to write on the period 1993-1998. Neither report was to be based on classified material, but it was assumed that you could develop a fresh and useful historical narrative on the basis of open sources, declassified materials and interviews. Thanks to the National Security Archive, I ultimately consulted many helpful declassified records on this subject and found a great deal of additional material at the Johnson and Reagan presidential libraries and at the Nixon presidential materials project in the National Archives, especially in the tapes. I also uncovered a lot through interviews with former US government officials.
The Commission staff read my study and instead of finding it useless, as Max alleges, actually cited it in at least two places in the final report. The piece was then thoughtfully edited by staffers and carefully copyedited for public distribution, but the Commission ultimately decided not to issue it as a singleton, signed report (the other case study was never written). When the piece came out in a slightly different form as the middle chapters in Blind Spot, noted counterterrorism experts such as Martha Crenshaw and Andrew C. McCarthy gave it very positive reviews.
As for Max's charge that I exaggerated my connection to the 9/11 Commission: public references to my affiliation with and my work for the Commission were cleared in advance with the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, the follow-on to the 9/11 Commission. Last spring the president of the Project, Christopher Kojm, expressed his satisfaction with the press release for the book and wished me well with it. In any case, I would not present myself as the official historian of anything. I value my independence too much.
The information about Naftali's study was derived from repeated interviews of several individuals with first-hand knowledge of the commission and its work. These sources set the rules for attribution. The thrust of the sidebar entitled"The Making of a Washington Expert" would have been identical if the author of the study were named Tim Jones instead of Tim Naftali.
The one thing Naftali is correct about is that his study was mentioned in two footnotes to the final report, rather than one. But I can understand why Al Felzenberg, the former deputy for communications at the 9/11 Commission, neglected to mention the second footnote when we discussed Naftali's contribution to the work of the commission. The second footnote is a secondary reference. The text in question quotes from President Reagan's National Security Directive 138, and Naftali's study is cited rather than the NSD itself.
By clicking on this link, HNN readers can decide for themselves whether Naftali is repeatedly represented as the commission's"official historian."
Related Links
Tuesday, November 8, 2005 - 13:29
SOURCE: Independent (London) (11-7-05)
David Reeder was a gifted teacher and one of the most influential historians of his generation. He was a key figure in the study of Urban History, during a period of intense inner-city redevelopment, and of Education History, at a time when ideas about schooling were undergoing re-examination. In both of these fields Leicester University led the way, and Reeder's contribution to the university's reputation was sustained over a long and varied career.
Reeder was born in Hull in 1931. His father, Alec, worked for the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) and his mother, Elizabeth, at Reckitt's starch works. In 1940 the family moved to York, where Alec Reeder was to drive The Flying Scotsman.
David Reeder was educated at Nunthorpe Grammar, followed by a degree in Social Studies at Durham University and a postgraduate certificate in education at University College, Leicester. At Leicester, he met Barbara Hunt, a student of mathematics, standing at a bus stop on University Road. They were going different ways at the time, but married in 1955.
While in the RAF, and after teaching in Leicester, Reeder took a London external degree in Economic History. This was followed by an MA and a PhD at Leicester on 19th-century suburbanisation, supervised by Jim Dyos. In the early 1960s the Reeders moved to London " David in teacher training " before being tempted back to Leicester in 1966 by a Research Fellowship in Economic History.
He resumed his intellectual friendship with Dyos, and together they set about winning recognition for the flourishing sub-discipline of Urban History. The body of their argument was set out in March 1967 at a conference in Bloomington, Indiana. There they made the simple but startling point that, beyond a certain critical mass, cities ceased to be aggregates of other 'social forces' and became forces in their own right; and, moreover, that all cities " all suburbs indeed " were different. Reeder and the Leicester School would spend their lives exploring the implications of this insight but, in essence, this was it. Fernand Braudel had likened cities to electrical transformers; Karl Marx had said they were the first divisions of labour; Reeder said they were independent variables of infinite variety.
Reeder was born in Hull in 1931. His father, Alec, worked for the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) and his mother, Elizabeth, at Reckitt's starch works. In 1940 the family moved to York, where Alec Reeder was to drive The Flying Scotsman.
David Reeder was educated at Nunthorpe Grammar, followed by a degree in Social Studies at Durham University and a postgraduate certificate in education at University College, Leicester. At Leicester, he met Barbara Hunt, a student of mathematics, standing at a bus stop on University Road. They were going different ways at the time, but married in 1955.
While in the RAF, and after teaching in Leicester, Reeder took a London external degree in Economic History. This was followed by an MA and a PhD at Leicester on 19th-century suburbanisation, supervised by Jim Dyos. In the early 1960s the Reeders moved to London " David in teacher training " before being tempted back to Leicester in 1966 by a Research Fellowship in Economic History.
He resumed his intellectual friendship with Dyos, and together they set about winning recognition for the flourishing sub-discipline of Urban History. The body of their argument was set out in March 1967 at a conference in Bloomington, Indiana. There they made the simple but startling point that, beyond a certain critical mass, cities ceased to be aggregates of other 'social forces' and became forces in their own right; and, moreover, that all cities " all suburbs indeed " were different. Reeder and the Leicester School would spend their lives exploring the implications of this insight but, in essence, this was it. Fernand Braudel had likened cities to electrical transformers; Karl Marx had said they were the first divisions of labour; Reeder said they were independent variables of infinite variety.
Monday, November 7, 2005 - 21:35
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times (11-7-05)
Gordon A. Craig, considered America's dean of German historians and a respected professor at Stanford University, has died. He was 91.
Craig, perhaps best known for his books "Germany" and "The Germans," died Oct. 30 of heart failure at the Sequoias, a nursing facility in Portola Valley, Calif., Stanford officials announced.
The prolific writer and educator was described as "the most distinguished historian of modern Germany in this country and possibly one of the greatest in the world" by his colleague Peter Stansky, also a retired Stanford professor of history, in a statement released by Stanford officials.
"He was among a handful of people in the late '50s and early '60s who ... helped elevate Stanford from a good local university to a great national university," added James Sheehan, the university's Dickason Professor in the Humanities.
Author of a dozen books on Germany and editor of many more, Craig concentrated on writing after retiring from Stanford and became a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He was also consulted by politicians and the news media on changes in modern Germany, including the nation's reunification in 1990.
In reviewing Craig's "Germany: 1866-1945" for the Washington Post in 1979, UCLA history professor Peter Loewenberg said the book carried forward the "study of the integral relationship between military and political affairs and the fabric of German society that has been the hallmark and essential contribution of Craig's work."
Loewenberg praised Craig's "deft and intelligent handling" of historic material and concluded, "Altogether this is the best contemporary statement of modern German history in the classical mode."
Craig, perhaps best known for his books "Germany" and "The Germans," died Oct. 30 of heart failure at the Sequoias, a nursing facility in Portola Valley, Calif., Stanford officials announced.
The prolific writer and educator was described as "the most distinguished historian of modern Germany in this country and possibly one of the greatest in the world" by his colleague Peter Stansky, also a retired Stanford professor of history, in a statement released by Stanford officials.
"He was among a handful of people in the late '50s and early '60s who ... helped elevate Stanford from a good local university to a great national university," added James Sheehan, the university's Dickason Professor in the Humanities.
Author of a dozen books on Germany and editor of many more, Craig concentrated on writing after retiring from Stanford and became a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He was also consulted by politicians and the news media on changes in modern Germany, including the nation's reunification in 1990.
In reviewing Craig's "Germany: 1866-1945" for the Washington Post in 1979, UCLA history professor Peter Loewenberg said the book carried forward the "study of the integral relationship between military and political affairs and the fabric of German society that has been the hallmark and essential contribution of Craig's work."
Loewenberg praised Craig's "deft and intelligent handling" of historic material and concluded, "Altogether this is the best contemporary statement of modern German history in the classical mode."
Monday, November 7, 2005 - 11:36
SOURCE: The Independent (London) (11-7-05)
David Reeder was a gifted teacher and one of the most influential historians of his generation. He was a key figure in the study of Urban History, during a period of intense inner-city redevelopment, and of Education History, at a time when ideas about schooling were undergoing re-examination. In both of these fields Leicester University led the way, and Reeder's contribution to the university's reputation was sustained over a long and varied career.
Reeder was born in Hull in 1931. His father, Alec, worked for the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) and his mother, Elizabeth, at Reckitt's starch works. In 1940 the family moved to York, where Alec Reeder was to drive The Flying Scotsman.
David Reeder was educated at Nunthorpe Grammar, followed by a degree in Social Studies at Durham University and a postgraduate certificate in education at University College, Leicester. At Leicester, he met Barbara Hunt, a student of mathematics, standing at a bus stop on University Road. They were going different ways at the time, but married in 1955.
While in the RAF, and after teaching in Leicester, Reeder took a London external degree in Economic History. This was followed by an MA and a PhD at Leicester on 19th-century suburbanisation, supervised by Jim Dyos. In the early 1960s the Reeders moved to London " David in teacher training " before being tempted back to Leicester in 1966 by a Research Fellowship in Economic History.
He resumed his intellectual friendship with Dyos, and together they set about winning recognition for the flourishing sub-discipline of Urban History. The body of their argument was set out in March 1967 at a conference in Bloomington, Indiana. There they made the simple but startling point that, beyond a certain critical mass, cities ceased to be aggregates of other 'social forces' and became forces in their own right; and, moreover, that all cities " all suburbs indeed " were different. Reeder and the Leicester School would spend their lives exploring the implications of this insight but, in essence, this was it. Fernand Braudel had likened cities to electrical transformers; Karl Marx had said they were the first divisions of labour; Reeder said they were independent variables of infinite variety.
After another spell in London, David Reeder returned to Leicester in 1973 where he took up residence in the School of Education and the side bar of the Craddock Arms. Once a Leicester man, he never stinted, whether in the Department of Education, or Adult Education, or Urban History, or Economic and Social History, or Victorian Studies.
...
David Alec Reeder, historian and teacher: born Hull, Yorkshire 5 May 1931; Education Officer, RAF 1953-56; staff, Fosse Boys' School, Leicester 1956-59; Lecturer in History, Westminster College, London 1959-62; Senior Lecturer, Garnett College of Education, Roehampton 1962-66, Head of Faculty of Education 1967-73; Research Fellow, Department of Economic History, Leicester University 1966-67, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Education and Urban Studies 1973-88, Senior Lecturer, Victorian Studies Centre and Senior Tutor for Associated Colleges 1973-88, Acting Director 1987-88, Deputy Director, Centre for Urban History 1988-96, Acting Director 1989-90, Tutor in History, Department of Adult Education 1988- 98, Research Associate, Centre for Urban History 1993-98, Acting Director 1996; married 1955 Barbara Hunt (one son, one daughter); died Epsom, Surrey 1 August 2005.
Reeder was born in Hull in 1931. His father, Alec, worked for the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) and his mother, Elizabeth, at Reckitt's starch works. In 1940 the family moved to York, where Alec Reeder was to drive The Flying Scotsman.
David Reeder was educated at Nunthorpe Grammar, followed by a degree in Social Studies at Durham University and a postgraduate certificate in education at University College, Leicester. At Leicester, he met Barbara Hunt, a student of mathematics, standing at a bus stop on University Road. They were going different ways at the time, but married in 1955.
While in the RAF, and after teaching in Leicester, Reeder took a London external degree in Economic History. This was followed by an MA and a PhD at Leicester on 19th-century suburbanisation, supervised by Jim Dyos. In the early 1960s the Reeders moved to London " David in teacher training " before being tempted back to Leicester in 1966 by a Research Fellowship in Economic History.
He resumed his intellectual friendship with Dyos, and together they set about winning recognition for the flourishing sub-discipline of Urban History. The body of their argument was set out in March 1967 at a conference in Bloomington, Indiana. There they made the simple but startling point that, beyond a certain critical mass, cities ceased to be aggregates of other 'social forces' and became forces in their own right; and, moreover, that all cities " all suburbs indeed " were different. Reeder and the Leicester School would spend their lives exploring the implications of this insight but, in essence, this was it. Fernand Braudel had likened cities to electrical transformers; Karl Marx had said they were the first divisions of labour; Reeder said they were independent variables of infinite variety.
After another spell in London, David Reeder returned to Leicester in 1973 where he took up residence in the School of Education and the side bar of the Craddock Arms. Once a Leicester man, he never stinted, whether in the Department of Education, or Adult Education, or Urban History, or Economic and Social History, or Victorian Studies.
...
David Alec Reeder, historian and teacher: born Hull, Yorkshire 5 May 1931; Education Officer, RAF 1953-56; staff, Fosse Boys' School, Leicester 1956-59; Lecturer in History, Westminster College, London 1959-62; Senior Lecturer, Garnett College of Education, Roehampton 1962-66, Head of Faculty of Education 1967-73; Research Fellow, Department of Economic History, Leicester University 1966-67, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Education and Urban Studies 1973-88, Senior Lecturer, Victorian Studies Centre and Senior Tutor for Associated Colleges 1973-88, Acting Director 1987-88, Deputy Director, Centre for Urban History 1988-96, Acting Director 1989-90, Tutor in History, Department of Adult Education 1988- 98, Research Associate, Centre for Urban History 1993-98, Acting Director 1996; married 1955 Barbara Hunt (one son, one daughter); died Epsom, Surrey 1 August 2005.
Monday, November 7, 2005 - 11:33
SOURCE: Isi Liebler in the Jerusalem Post (11-1-05)
Historically, self-hating Jews besmirching their kinsmen have ranged from apostates in the Middle Ages to communists in Stalinist Russia. Today their successors have assumed pivotal roles in the global campaign to delegitimize Israel.
The most recent chapter in the ongoing offensive is Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpa, which endeavors to depict Israel as one of the most evil countries in the world. The author also defames Alan Dershowitz, author of the widely acclaimed The Case for Israel. Dershowitz is particularly hated by the anti-Israeli pack because of his impeccable credentials as a champion of human rights.
Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of plagiarizing material for his book from Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, published over 20 years ago. The accusation is specious, because Dershowitz never used a single phrase or idea from Peters without proper citation. All Dershowitz did was to collate the evidence (including material used by Peters) and employ his professional fort to present a first-rate case for Israel. Indeed, after reviewing the charge of plagiarism, the former presidents of Harvard and Dartmouth both concluded that it was baseless.
Finkelstein also accused Dershowitz of trying to suppress his views on the grounds that he expressed surprise that a purportedly reputable publisher like University of California Press would associate itself with so unscholarly a work.
But Dershowitz was entirely justified in describing Beyond Chutzpa as a vile, unscholarly anti-Semitic tract. It employs similar techniques that Holocaust revisionists do in seizing upon tiny grains of truth to build a framework of lies, employing myriads of distorted or misleading footnotes to provide a veneer of pseudo scholarship.
Peter Novick, whose work criticizing aspects of Holocaust memorial activity was utilized by Finkelstein, described Finkelstein's "scholarship" as "a twenty-first century updating of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a piece of trash."
NEVERTHELESS Beyond Chutzpa is likely to confuse those unaware of the extent to which human rights agenda of NGOs as been hijacked and transformed into a vehicle for demonizing Israel.
Finkelstein quotes extensively from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty, and the Public Committee against Torture which have long track records of bias and employing double standards in relation to Israel.
Finkelstein had already assumed the role of a global cult figure among anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli groups prior to the publication of Beyond Chutzpa.
In an earlier book, Finkelstein described the "holocaust industry" as "an extortion racket", a vehicle "to crush any dissent, any criticism of the State of Israel." Jewish leaders were referred to as "gangsters" and "crooks." Eli Wiesel was depicted as "the resident clown for the Holocaust circus." He challenged the authenticity of survivors, "If everyone who claimed to be a survivor is one, my mother used to say 'Who did Hitler kill then?'"
In subsequent interviews, Finkelstein attacked Leon Uris, author of Exodus alleging that "the chief character was named Ari Ben Canaan because Ari is the diminutive for Aryan." He admired Hizbullah - "The honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hizbullah as the US and Israel target it for liquidation." ...
The most recent chapter in the ongoing offensive is Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpa, which endeavors to depict Israel as one of the most evil countries in the world. The author also defames Alan Dershowitz, author of the widely acclaimed The Case for Israel. Dershowitz is particularly hated by the anti-Israeli pack because of his impeccable credentials as a champion of human rights.
Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of plagiarizing material for his book from Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, published over 20 years ago. The accusation is specious, because Dershowitz never used a single phrase or idea from Peters without proper citation. All Dershowitz did was to collate the evidence (including material used by Peters) and employ his professional fort to present a first-rate case for Israel. Indeed, after reviewing the charge of plagiarism, the former presidents of Harvard and Dartmouth both concluded that it was baseless.
Finkelstein also accused Dershowitz of trying to suppress his views on the grounds that he expressed surprise that a purportedly reputable publisher like University of California Press would associate itself with so unscholarly a work.
But Dershowitz was entirely justified in describing Beyond Chutzpa as a vile, unscholarly anti-Semitic tract. It employs similar techniques that Holocaust revisionists do in seizing upon tiny grains of truth to build a framework of lies, employing myriads of distorted or misleading footnotes to provide a veneer of pseudo scholarship.
Peter Novick, whose work criticizing aspects of Holocaust memorial activity was utilized by Finkelstein, described Finkelstein's "scholarship" as "a twenty-first century updating of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a piece of trash."
NEVERTHELESS Beyond Chutzpa is likely to confuse those unaware of the extent to which human rights agenda of NGOs as been hijacked and transformed into a vehicle for demonizing Israel.
Finkelstein quotes extensively from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty, and the Public Committee against Torture which have long track records of bias and employing double standards in relation to Israel.
Finkelstein had already assumed the role of a global cult figure among anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli groups prior to the publication of Beyond Chutzpa.
In an earlier book, Finkelstein described the "holocaust industry" as "an extortion racket", a vehicle "to crush any dissent, any criticism of the State of Israel." Jewish leaders were referred to as "gangsters" and "crooks." Eli Wiesel was depicted as "the resident clown for the Holocaust circus." He challenged the authenticity of survivors, "If everyone who claimed to be a survivor is one, my mother used to say 'Who did Hitler kill then?'"
In subsequent interviews, Finkelstein attacked Leon Uris, author of Exodus alleging that "the chief character was named Ari Ben Canaan because Ari is the diminutive for Aryan." He admired Hizbullah - "The honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hizbullah as the US and Israel target it for liquidation." ...
Saturday, November 5, 2005 - 16:00
SOURCE: The Independent (London) (11-3-05)
The historian of philosophy Raymond Klibansky would have celebrated his 100th birthday on 15 October. Although he was best known for his critical editions and scholarly interpretations of medieval and Renaissance thinkers, his expertise ranged from antiquity to the present and included British as well as continental philosophy.
His father, Hermann Klibansky, a German wine exporter of Lithuanian Jewish descent, moved the family to Paris a few years before Raymond's birth in 1905, but they were forced to return to Germany at the outbreak of the First World War. From 1923 Raymond Klibansky studied philosophy and classical philology at the University of Heidelberg. These two fields remained a central feature of his scholarship, which emphasised the necessity for philologically sound editions of philosophical works, whether ancient, medieval or modern, based on a thorough examination of all surviving manuscripts.
Another defining characteristic of his work, the conviction that in order to understand philosophers one needed profound knowledge of the historical context in which they wrote, was strongly influenced by the Hamburg art historian Aby Warburg, to whom he was introduced in 1926 by one of his philosophical mentors, Ernst Cassirer. Klibansky became a member of the inner circle of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, not only making extensive use of but also helping to organise the famous library, whose subject-based arrangement was designed to facilitate research on the survival of all aspects of the ancient world and their often dramatic transformation by differing historical circumstances.
Klibansky's first publication, an edition of a Latin treatise by the 16th-century French philosopher and mathematician Charles de Bovelles, appeared an as appendix to Cassirer's Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance published by the Warburg in 1927 (and translated in 1963 as Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy). The Neoplatonic current in Bovelles' thought derived in part from Nicholas of Cusa, the 15th-century German philosopher whose Latin writings were to occupy Klibansky, as an editor and interpreter, for the rest of his life. He believed that the dialectical tension in German philosophy between rationality and a suprarational mysticism, which reached its culmination in Hegel, could be traced back to Nicholas of Cusa and to one of his sources, the medieval German theologian Meister Eckhart.
Completing his doctoral dissertation on 12th-century Platonism in 1928 and his Habilitationsschrift (post-doctoral thesis) on philosophy and history in 1931, Klibansky had already begun teaching in Heidelberg when the Nazi rise to power in 1933 put paid to his hopes of an academic career in Germany. In a defiant letter explaining that he considered it incompatible with his duties as a scholar and a teacher to fill out an official form disclosing the religious affiliation of his parents and grandparents, he nevertheless made a point of declaring that his entire lineage, as far as he knew, had been Jewish.
He caused further offence with his work on the Latin writings of Meister Eckhart (published as Magistri Eckardi Opera Latina, 1934-36), in which he highlighted the influence of medieval Arabic and Jewish thinkers. This challenged the view of Nazi ideologues who presented Eckhart's German works as a pure expression of Aryan philosophy. Klibansky's position in Heidelberg rapidly became untenable (despite support from Wilhelm Furtweengler, the new regime's favourite conductor). He was locked out of his office and his notes were confiscated. In August 1933, having secured a diplomatic pouch in which to carry his books, he left Germany, stopping for a few weeks in the Netherlands to do some manuscript research in the library of Leiden University, before crossing the Channel to England.
Arriving penniless in London, he set about improving his knowledge of English and learning its philosophical terminology by reading Hobbes and Hume. With support from influential scholars like Etienne Gilson, who wrote to the Academic Assistance Council describing Klibansky 'as one of the four or five greatest academics in the world of medieval philosophy', he obtained lectureships at King's College London, then Oriel College, Oxford, and Liverpool University.
His father, Hermann Klibansky, a German wine exporter of Lithuanian Jewish descent, moved the family to Paris a few years before Raymond's birth in 1905, but they were forced to return to Germany at the outbreak of the First World War. From 1923 Raymond Klibansky studied philosophy and classical philology at the University of Heidelberg. These two fields remained a central feature of his scholarship, which emphasised the necessity for philologically sound editions of philosophical works, whether ancient, medieval or modern, based on a thorough examination of all surviving manuscripts.
Another defining characteristic of his work, the conviction that in order to understand philosophers one needed profound knowledge of the historical context in which they wrote, was strongly influenced by the Hamburg art historian Aby Warburg, to whom he was introduced in 1926 by one of his philosophical mentors, Ernst Cassirer. Klibansky became a member of the inner circle of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, not only making extensive use of but also helping to organise the famous library, whose subject-based arrangement was designed to facilitate research on the survival of all aspects of the ancient world and their often dramatic transformation by differing historical circumstances.
Klibansky's first publication, an edition of a Latin treatise by the 16th-century French philosopher and mathematician Charles de Bovelles, appeared an as appendix to Cassirer's Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance published by the Warburg in 1927 (and translated in 1963 as Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy). The Neoplatonic current in Bovelles' thought derived in part from Nicholas of Cusa, the 15th-century German philosopher whose Latin writings were to occupy Klibansky, as an editor and interpreter, for the rest of his life. He believed that the dialectical tension in German philosophy between rationality and a suprarational mysticism, which reached its culmination in Hegel, could be traced back to Nicholas of Cusa and to one of his sources, the medieval German theologian Meister Eckhart.
Completing his doctoral dissertation on 12th-century Platonism in 1928 and his Habilitationsschrift (post-doctoral thesis) on philosophy and history in 1931, Klibansky had already begun teaching in Heidelberg when the Nazi rise to power in 1933 put paid to his hopes of an academic career in Germany. In a defiant letter explaining that he considered it incompatible with his duties as a scholar and a teacher to fill out an official form disclosing the religious affiliation of his parents and grandparents, he nevertheless made a point of declaring that his entire lineage, as far as he knew, had been Jewish.
He caused further offence with his work on the Latin writings of Meister Eckhart (published as Magistri Eckardi Opera Latina, 1934-36), in which he highlighted the influence of medieval Arabic and Jewish thinkers. This challenged the view of Nazi ideologues who presented Eckhart's German works as a pure expression of Aryan philosophy. Klibansky's position in Heidelberg rapidly became untenable (despite support from Wilhelm Furtweengler, the new regime's favourite conductor). He was locked out of his office and his notes were confiscated. In August 1933, having secured a diplomatic pouch in which to carry his books, he left Germany, stopping for a few weeks in the Netherlands to do some manuscript research in the library of Leiden University, before crossing the Channel to England.
Arriving penniless in London, he set about improving his knowledge of English and learning its philosophical terminology by reading Hobbes and Hume. With support from influential scholars like Etienne Gilson, who wrote to the Academic Assistance Council describing Klibansky 'as one of the four or five greatest academics in the world of medieval philosophy', he obtained lectureships at King's College London, then Oriel College, Oxford, and Liverpool University.
Friday, November 4, 2005 - 12:22
SOURCE: NYT (11-3-05)
Michael V. Korda will step down at the end of the year as editor in chief of Simon & Schuster's trade books imprint, a post he has held since 1968, the company said yesterday. He will remain as editor in chief emeritus, editing the books of about a half dozen writers, including David McCullough, Larry McMurtry and Mary Higgins Clark.
Mr. Korda, 72, is working on a biography of Eisenhower and a history of the Battle of Britain. He and his wife, Margaret, are the co-authors of "Cat People," an examination of cat owners' infatuation with their pets, and "Horse Housekeeping: Everything You Need to Know to Keep a Horse at Home," both published by HarperCollins. He also wrote "Another Life: A Memoir of Other People," about his publishing career (Random House, 1999) and "Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving From a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse," (HarperCollins, 2001), as well as several novels.
The decision to step away "is entirely my own decision," Mr. Korda said. "It is bittersweet." Jack Romanos, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster, and Carolyn Reidy, the president of the company's adult publishing group, said in a joint letter to the company's staff that Mr. Korda's list of authors "could very well form the basis for its own thriving publishing house."
Mr. Korda joined Simon & Schuster as an editor in 1958 and became editor in chief 10 years later. The authors he has edited include former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon as well as Henry A. Kissinger, Charles de Gaulle and Leonid I. Brezhnev. His authors have won four Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards. In September, books he edited were ranked No. 1 on both the New York Times fiction ("Chill Factor," by Sandra Brown) and nonfiction ("1776," by Mr. McCullough) hardcover best-seller lists.
Mr. Korda, 72, is working on a biography of Eisenhower and a history of the Battle of Britain. He and his wife, Margaret, are the co-authors of "Cat People," an examination of cat owners' infatuation with their pets, and "Horse Housekeeping: Everything You Need to Know to Keep a Horse at Home," both published by HarperCollins. He also wrote "Another Life: A Memoir of Other People," about his publishing career (Random House, 1999) and "Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving From a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse," (HarperCollins, 2001), as well as several novels.
The decision to step away "is entirely my own decision," Mr. Korda said. "It is bittersweet." Jack Romanos, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster, and Carolyn Reidy, the president of the company's adult publishing group, said in a joint letter to the company's staff that Mr. Korda's list of authors "could very well form the basis for its own thriving publishing house."
Mr. Korda joined Simon & Schuster as an editor in 1958 and became editor in chief 10 years later. The authors he has edited include former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon as well as Henry A. Kissinger, Charles de Gaulle and Leonid I. Brezhnev. His authors have won four Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards. In September, books he edited were ranked No. 1 on both the New York Times fiction ("Chill Factor," by Sandra Brown) and nonfiction ("1776," by Mr. McCullough) hardcover best-seller lists.
Thursday, November 3, 2005 - 20:40
SOURCE: Times Online (UK) (10-30-05)
If Robert Conquest’s thought were not so challenging, it would be easy to dismiss him as a colossus from a past age. Born in 1917, he counted Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin among his friends, and won fame as a poet as well as a historian. He traversed the whole political spectrum, joining the Communist party in 1937 and, in the 1980s, writing speeches for Margaret Thatcher. As an intelligence officer during the war he was posted to Bulgaria, and it was watching the post-war Soviet takeover there that disillusioned him with communism. The Great Terror, which he published in 1968, gave a ground-breaking account of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, and was furiously denounced by western intellectuals. He followed it, in 1986, with The Harvest of Sorrow, telling the story of the collectivisation of agriculture under Stalin, during which millions of peasants died of starvation. The persistent denial of Stalin’s crimes by the leftist intelligentsia was, he insisted, “an intellectual and moral disgrace on a massive scale”.
Time has proved him right. After the opening of the Soviet archives under Gorbachev, Conquest published The Great Terror: A Reassessment, which showed that he had, if anything, underestimated the atrocities. His new book adds chilling details from recent archival research, but its eye is on the future not the past. What can we learn from the Soviet catastrophe, he asks, that will help us survive? 9/11 has brought home to us that “the world that Americans and other Westerners full of goodwill want to mount and ride, feed and pat, is not a sweet-tempered little pony but a huge vile-tempered mule”. How should we respond? The ideas he comes up with have all been aired elsewhere in his writings, but that makes The Dragons of Expectation a useful compendium of his thought, and it is also a cracking read.
His starting point is a distrust of all utopias, theories and abstractions. He blames the 18th-century continental enlightenment and the French revolution for spreading these evils among Europe’s thinking classes. Unfortunately, he notes, intellectuals always feel superior to ordinary citizens, so they are a prey to “intoxicating generalisations” that common sense would instantly dismiss. Usually, too, like the founders of Soviet communism, they are seized with an unshakeable sense of their own righteousness, which is the most lethal of human infections, and the most prolific source of slaughter, terror and savagery. It follows, he deduces, that America and the UK have nothing to learn from 300 years of continental political thought. Rather their model should be the British enlightenment, a slow growth dating back to the middle ages, that has evolved a “disorderly pluralist” society, underpinned by custom and the rule of law, which allows the maximum individual liberty, and consequently the greatest release of creative energy into humanly profitable fields.
This, for Conquest, is civilisation, and measured against it the rest of the world can be divided into “civilised, semi- civilised, and uncivilised (or decivilised) countries”....
Time has proved him right. After the opening of the Soviet archives under Gorbachev, Conquest published The Great Terror: A Reassessment, which showed that he had, if anything, underestimated the atrocities. His new book adds chilling details from recent archival research, but its eye is on the future not the past. What can we learn from the Soviet catastrophe, he asks, that will help us survive? 9/11 has brought home to us that “the world that Americans and other Westerners full of goodwill want to mount and ride, feed and pat, is not a sweet-tempered little pony but a huge vile-tempered mule”. How should we respond? The ideas he comes up with have all been aired elsewhere in his writings, but that makes The Dragons of Expectation a useful compendium of his thought, and it is also a cracking read.
His starting point is a distrust of all utopias, theories and abstractions. He blames the 18th-century continental enlightenment and the French revolution for spreading these evils among Europe’s thinking classes. Unfortunately, he notes, intellectuals always feel superior to ordinary citizens, so they are a prey to “intoxicating generalisations” that common sense would instantly dismiss. Usually, too, like the founders of Soviet communism, they are seized with an unshakeable sense of their own righteousness, which is the most lethal of human infections, and the most prolific source of slaughter, terror and savagery. It follows, he deduces, that America and the UK have nothing to learn from 300 years of continental political thought. Rather their model should be the British enlightenment, a slow growth dating back to the middle ages, that has evolved a “disorderly pluralist” society, underpinned by custom and the rule of law, which allows the maximum individual liberty, and consequently the greatest release of creative energy into humanly profitable fields.
This, for Conquest, is civilisation, and measured against it the rest of the world can be divided into “civilised, semi- civilised, and uncivilised (or decivilised) countries”....
Thursday, November 3, 2005 - 20:26
SOURCE: WP (11-3-05)
Tell John Hope Franklin that he's the Rosa Parks of historians and he lets out a long, astonished laugh.
"Please," he says.
Okay, we won't push him on that right now. But the comparison is not as silly as he makes it sound.
"Please," he says.
Okay, we won't push him on that right now. But the comparison is not as silly as he makes it sound.
Franklin is in Washington this week to talk about his newly published autobiography, "Mirror to America." Now an emeritus professor at Duke, he's a handsome, white-haired man in a gray suit whose upright bearing makes him seem far younger than his 90 years. Fellow historian David Levering Lewis has described him as "a pioneer scholar; a splendid humanist; a shining model to generations of students, scholars, and activists," as well as "a man of prodigious generosity, prudent counsel, and unaffected grace."
Tuesday he spoke at the Library of Congress. Yesterday he did "The Diane Rehm Show" on WAMU-FM and spoke at Politics & Prose in Northwest Washington.
A lot has changed in Franklin's 90 years. Some things have not.
Thursday, November 3, 2005 - 15:48
SOURCE: BU Today (11-2-05)
Scooter Libby. Monica Lewinsky. John Poindexter. Sherman Adams. What do they have in common? Each was a troubling footnote in second-term presidencies — those of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Dwight Eisenhower, respectively — and they are the kind of historic dots that Julian Zelizer loves to connect for reporters, who increasingly regard him as a go-to expert in American political history, quoting him often since last year’s presidential campaign.
Now the CAS and GRS history professor has been named to the board of the Dirksen Congressional Center, a nonprofit research and educational institution that focuses on the history of Congress. It provides grants for research into congressional history, houses historical collections, and hosts unique online programs to help secondary educators teach American government, history, and civics lessons.
“It is one of the important places where university scholarship interacts with high school classrooms and the broader public,” Zelizer says. Named for the late Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), the 30-year-old center is located in Pekin, Ill.
“I have always been dedicated to helping all citizens — not just students and scholars — understand more about the historical roots of today’s problems and challenges in Washington,” Zelizer says. “Taking on a leadership role at Dirksen offers me the opportunity to encourage the kind of scholarly research that can offer these kinds of insights.”
Now the CAS and GRS history professor has been named to the board of the Dirksen Congressional Center, a nonprofit research and educational institution that focuses on the history of Congress. It provides grants for research into congressional history, houses historical collections, and hosts unique online programs to help secondary educators teach American government, history, and civics lessons.
“It is one of the important places where university scholarship interacts with high school classrooms and the broader public,” Zelizer says. Named for the late Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), the 30-year-old center is located in Pekin, Ill.
“I have always been dedicated to helping all citizens — not just students and scholars — understand more about the historical roots of today’s problems and challenges in Washington,” Zelizer says. “Taking on a leadership role at Dirksen offers me the opportunity to encourage the kind of scholarly research that can offer these kinds of insights.”
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - 15:08
SOURCE: Press Release -- Papers of Abraham Lincoln (11-1-05)
The late Dr. Clarence A. Tripp, author of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, left a bequest to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency’s Public Trust Fund. Illinois State Historian Dr. Thomas F. Schwartz, who chairs the committee in charge of the bequest, indicated that $100,000 would be given annually to the Papers of Abraham Lincoln for the next five years. According to Dr. Schwartz, “Any serious study of Lincoln is dependent upon a comprehensive compilation, accurate transcription, and informed editorial annotation of all his correspondence. The Papers of Abraham Lincoln will be the most significant contribution to Lincoln studies since the 1953 publication of The Collected Works.”
In addition to this generous gift, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Foundation pledged $50,000 to support the project in the current fiscal year. The project will use the funds primarily to begin research at the National Archives facilities in College Park, Maryland, and in Washington, D.C. These two repositories hold most of the official records of the federal government. The papers of the Civil War-era State Department, Treasury Department, and Interior Department are at the facility in College Park.
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 - 02:33
SOURCE: Mary Frances Berry in the Chronicle of Higher Education (11-4-05)
[Mary Frances Berry is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004. Her most recent book is My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).]
I first met the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin in the 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Over the years I have benefited from his counsel and friendship as I have made my way as a scholar and an activist. So I eagerly read his new memoir, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, published this week by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. As the title suggests, Franklin is writing not just about his life, but about the enduring impact of racism on our society.
The book is a tale of an African-American professor in the academy over almost a century. Its necessarily impatient tone reflects Franklin's deep awareness that, at age 90, he is still constantly jerked back to the racial reality he confronted in the 1930s when he entered the profession: that "no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in a racially divisive America."
The facts of Franklin's life and career include his birth in 1915 in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Okla., and his childhood in Tulsa, where the fallout from the 1921 race riots still resonated. His father and mother were educatedBuck Franklin was a lawyer, Mollie Franklin a teacherbut they were not well off, even compared to others in Tulsa's working-class black community. Franklin, an example of the Talented Tenth W.E.B. Du Bois had urged to pursue higher education as a path to leadership, worked his way through Fisk University and graduate school at Harvard University, then accepted professorships at the only colleges open to him, black colleges. Only after the civil-rights movement began was he offered an appointment, in 1956, as the first black department chairman at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College. From there, in the wake of a new emphasis on racial inclusion, he went on to an endowed chair at the University of Chicago and then at Duke University, and to awards and accolades in abundance as one of America's premier historians.
Although higher education and the nation necessarily long ago abandoned de jure segregation, reality in the academy today can sometimes be markedly similar to what Franklin endured. In 2005 still almost half of all black faculty members teach at historically black colleges and universities. In 1975 the number of black faculty members in predominantly white institutions reached what was then an all-time high of 4.4 percent. It still lingers around 5 percent. In fact the only growth at all in the participation of people of color has been among Asian-Americans, from 2.2 percent in 1975 to 6.2 percent today. Like black faculty members, Latinos have lagged: They were only 1.4 percent of the faculties in predominantly white institutions in 1975 and are around 3 percent today. The number of Native-American faculty members remains too minuscule to track.
As an undergraduate at Fisk, Franklin came under the influence of a white professor, Theodore S. Currier, who interested him in history, took out a loan to help him attend Harvard, and was perhaps the most important mentor in his life. Black colleges routinely had white faculty members long before any African-Americans were permitted to teach at most white institutions. (The faculties at most black colleges and universities remain more racially and ethnically diverse than those at predominantly white institutions.)
Franklin's experiences as a graduate student at Harvard were not much different from those of African-American graduate students at elite universities today. Some departments continue to be unable to recruit any African-American students at all, let alone a critical mass, and receive no criticism from deans and presidents about ignoring affirmative action. Those African-Americans who are admitted, no matter how well prepared, often describe their departments as unaccommodating and uncomfortable, just as Franklin found Harvard in the 1930s. Although he was an outstanding student, he was denied teaching assistantships that would bring him in contact with white undergraduates. He was supposed to be "reassured" by a professor who said he would pass him on his oral examinations because he, the teacher, was "from good abolitionist stock."...
Although he achieved great success, Franklin's "shock and awe" at the persistence of racism has continued to be reinforced throughout his career. In 1991 the distinguished historian C. Vann Woodward, a friend for more than 40 years, described Franklin's 1982 appointment as the James B. Duke professor of history at Duke as an effort to strengthen black studies. Franklin was grievously wounded. He had not taught African-American history for more than 25 years; his field was the history of the South....
I first met the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin in the 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Over the years I have benefited from his counsel and friendship as I have made my way as a scholar and an activist. So I eagerly read his new memoir, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, published this week by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. As the title suggests, Franklin is writing not just about his life, but about the enduring impact of racism on our society.
The book is a tale of an African-American professor in the academy over almost a century. Its necessarily impatient tone reflects Franklin's deep awareness that, at age 90, he is still constantly jerked back to the racial reality he confronted in the 1930s when he entered the profession: that "no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in a racially divisive America."
The facts of Franklin's life and career include his birth in 1915 in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Okla., and his childhood in Tulsa, where the fallout from the 1921 race riots still resonated. His father and mother were educatedBuck Franklin was a lawyer, Mollie Franklin a teacherbut they were not well off, even compared to others in Tulsa's working-class black community. Franklin, an example of the Talented Tenth W.E.B. Du Bois had urged to pursue higher education as a path to leadership, worked his way through Fisk University and graduate school at Harvard University, then accepted professorships at the only colleges open to him, black colleges. Only after the civil-rights movement began was he offered an appointment, in 1956, as the first black department chairman at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College. From there, in the wake of a new emphasis on racial inclusion, he went on to an endowed chair at the University of Chicago and then at Duke University, and to awards and accolades in abundance as one of America's premier historians.
Although higher education and the nation necessarily long ago abandoned de jure segregation, reality in the academy today can sometimes be markedly similar to what Franklin endured. In 2005 still almost half of all black faculty members teach at historically black colleges and universities. In 1975 the number of black faculty members in predominantly white institutions reached what was then an all-time high of 4.4 percent. It still lingers around 5 percent. In fact the only growth at all in the participation of people of color has been among Asian-Americans, from 2.2 percent in 1975 to 6.2 percent today. Like black faculty members, Latinos have lagged: They were only 1.4 percent of the faculties in predominantly white institutions in 1975 and are around 3 percent today. The number of Native-American faculty members remains too minuscule to track.
As an undergraduate at Fisk, Franklin came under the influence of a white professor, Theodore S. Currier, who interested him in history, took out a loan to help him attend Harvard, and was perhaps the most important mentor in his life. Black colleges routinely had white faculty members long before any African-Americans were permitted to teach at most white institutions. (The faculties at most black colleges and universities remain more racially and ethnically diverse than those at predominantly white institutions.)
Franklin's experiences as a graduate student at Harvard were not much different from those of African-American graduate students at elite universities today. Some departments continue to be unable to recruit any African-American students at all, let alone a critical mass, and receive no criticism from deans and presidents about ignoring affirmative action. Those African-Americans who are admitted, no matter how well prepared, often describe their departments as unaccommodating and uncomfortable, just as Franklin found Harvard in the 1930s. Although he was an outstanding student, he was denied teaching assistantships that would bring him in contact with white undergraduates. He was supposed to be "reassured" by a professor who said he would pass him on his oral examinations because he, the teacher, was "from good abolitionist stock."...
Although he achieved great success, Franklin's "shock and awe" at the persistence of racism has continued to be reinforced throughout his career. In 1991 the distinguished historian C. Vann Woodward, a friend for more than 40 years, described Franklin's 1982 appointment as the James B. Duke professor of history at Duke as an effort to strengthen black studies. Franklin was grievously wounded. He had not taught African-American history for more than 25 years; his field was the history of the South....
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 21:51
SOURCE: The Guardian (London) (11-1-05)
The historian and expert on central Europe and Russia, Professor Lionel Kochan, whose work on modern Jewish history helped establish it as an academic discipline, has died at 83. His famously readable book, The Making of Modern Russia (1964 and still in print), was a tour de force that distilled in a single volume a vast and potentially bewildering history. Similarly, his Russia in Revolution, 1890-1918, has been absorbed by generations of students since it first appeared in 1967.
Kochan realised that the essence of history was telling a good story. His books avoided the clutter of abstruse facts and sparkled with piquant examples of human virtues and foibles. Sometimes his comments were refreshingly, if witheringly, humorous. The 16th-century Tsar Theodore, he wrote, was "a physically degenerate and mentally enfeebled autocrat, (with) a perpetual simper playing about his mouth. Of devout character, his favourite pursuit was bellringing."
Rather than patronise his readers, Kochan encouraged them to consider underlying universal themes and the "what ifs" of history. Nor did he shy away from controversy. He depicted the 1917 Bolshevik revolution as completing Russia's long-standing desire to modernise. Its early successes, he argued, owed much to extraneous events, like the peasants' revolt and policies that strayed from Marxist orthodoxy.
Once a devout Marxist, Kochan scrutinised communism with the intimacy of an insider. His later disillusion with Marxist verities was reflected in a healthy scepticism. He saw through cant and propaganda to determine the truth behind eastern bloc politics. His early books, Russia and the Weimar Republic (1954) and The Struggle for Germany 1914-45 (1963), grew directly out of his doctoral thesis.
Increasingly his interest turned to Jewish history, as his own devotion to Judaism grew. He began studying the Torah and Talmud - a far cry from his secular childhood. On moving to Oxford in the 1970s, he and his wife, Miriam (they married in 1951), regularly attended Sabbath services at the community's Jericho Street synagogue. Without knowing Hebrew or the mooring posts of Jewish religious identity, he argued, any scholar of Jewish history would be as lost as a medieval European historian lacking Latin.
Kochan grew fascinated - some say obsessed - with the implications of the second commandment, the stricture on idolatry. In Jews, Idols and Messiahs: the Challenge from History (1990) and Beyond the Graven Image (1999), he wrestled with almost every conceivable aspect: theological, aesthetic, neuro-logical, lexicographical, musical.
Why, he asked, was the Israelite religion the first to value "hearing God" above seeing him? And what did this rift with the pagan past signify for Jewish and world history? The "transgression of idolatry" persists in new guises, Kochan recently told an Australian television interviewer. He condemned as "reprehensible" those Israelis whose "unthinking attachment to soil has taken precedence" over core Jewish values.
Kochan realised that the essence of history was telling a good story. His books avoided the clutter of abstruse facts and sparkled with piquant examples of human virtues and foibles. Sometimes his comments were refreshingly, if witheringly, humorous. The 16th-century Tsar Theodore, he wrote, was "a physically degenerate and mentally enfeebled autocrat, (with) a perpetual simper playing about his mouth. Of devout character, his favourite pursuit was bellringing."
Rather than patronise his readers, Kochan encouraged them to consider underlying universal themes and the "what ifs" of history. Nor did he shy away from controversy. He depicted the 1917 Bolshevik revolution as completing Russia's long-standing desire to modernise. Its early successes, he argued, owed much to extraneous events, like the peasants' revolt and policies that strayed from Marxist orthodoxy.
Once a devout Marxist, Kochan scrutinised communism with the intimacy of an insider. His later disillusion with Marxist verities was reflected in a healthy scepticism. He saw through cant and propaganda to determine the truth behind eastern bloc politics. His early books, Russia and the Weimar Republic (1954) and The Struggle for Germany 1914-45 (1963), grew directly out of his doctoral thesis.
Increasingly his interest turned to Jewish history, as his own devotion to Judaism grew. He began studying the Torah and Talmud - a far cry from his secular childhood. On moving to Oxford in the 1970s, he and his wife, Miriam (they married in 1951), regularly attended Sabbath services at the community's Jericho Street synagogue. Without knowing Hebrew or the mooring posts of Jewish religious identity, he argued, any scholar of Jewish history would be as lost as a medieval European historian lacking Latin.
Kochan grew fascinated - some say obsessed - with the implications of the second commandment, the stricture on idolatry. In Jews, Idols and Messiahs: the Challenge from History (1990) and Beyond the Graven Image (1999), he wrestled with almost every conceivable aspect: theological, aesthetic, neuro-logical, lexicographical, musical.
Why, he asked, was the Israelite religion the first to value "hearing God" above seeing him? And what did this rift with the pagan past signify for Jewish and world history? The "transgression of idolatry" persists in new guises, Kochan recently told an Australian television interviewer. He condemned as "reprehensible" those Israelis whose "unthinking attachment to soil has taken precedence" over core Jewish values.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 18:52
SOURCE: P. David Hornik at frontpagemag.com (11-1-05)
[P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem who has contributed recently to The Jerusalem Post, The American Spectator Online, and Israeli news-views websites.]
In a recent issue of the far-Left web magazine Counterpunch, Neve Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, again comes to the defense of his admired author Normal Finkelstein, professor of political science at DePaul University. Gordon favorably reviews Finkelstein’s new book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press).
Finkelstein is a strange figure for an Israeli academic to be praising. Back on November 18, 2002, Finkelstein gave a lecture at Georgetown University. Four days later the Anti-Defamation League, in a letter to the president of Georgetown, said it was “shocked and troubled” that the university had “sponsored a lecture by a known Holocaust denier and anti-Israeli propagandist, Norman Finkelstein. [The] lecture was a one-sided program, intended to promote hatred of Israel and perpetuate classic anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
ADL’s letter went on to note that “in his highly publicized book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein argues that the Holocaust ‘has become a straight-out extortion racket.’ Finkelstein is well known for his anti-Israel rhetoric and his claims that Jews have exploited the Holocaust to make money. He has said that he ‘truly honored’ Hezbullah fighters from Lebanon for ‘having inflicted an exceptional and deserving defeat on their foreign occupiers,’ and that, ‘I can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison to the Gestapo.’”
ADL could have added, among other things, that the New York Times called The Holocaust Industry “a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; that historian Peter Novick called it “trash”; and that Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of The Return of Anti-Semitism, labeled Finkelstein’s views as “crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.” ADL could also have mentioned that Finkelstein appeared on the official Hezbollah television network al-Manar, and that he is a popular speaker among German neo-Nazis, one of whom, the wife of the notorious Ernst Zundel, called him the “Jewish David Irving.”
Gordon and Finkelstein have, of course, some things in common, including an attraction to anti-Israeli terrorists. On February 3, 2002, Israel’s ynet reported that “250 left-wing activists violated the Israeli army’s orders and entered Ramallah for a meeting with Arafat. . . . Neve Gordon . . . was photographed with Arafat with hands clasped [see picture]. . . . In reply to the question of whether he felt comfortable hugging the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, responsible according to Israel for acts of terror, he replied: ‘I don’t know who’s responsible for the terror attacks, that’s what the media says. . . . ’ ”
Gordon, who has written that “Israel’s gravest danger today is not the PA or even Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism,” and whom Ma’ariv columnist Ben-Dror Yemini accused (along with Haifa University’s Ilan Pappe) of “spread[ing] their articles dripping with anti-Zionist poison all over the world, some of which appear on anti-Semitic websites,” also shares with Norman Finkelstein a Zundel connection.
Ernst Zundel, a pamphleteer who has been jailed several times for hate literature, was deported this year from Canada to his native Germany to stand trial for Holocaust denial. On October 27, 2000, his Zundelsite.org posted Gordon’s glowing review in The Nation of Finkelstein’s earlier book, The Holocaust Industry, in which Gordon opined that “[Finkelstein], and not the Jewish organizations he criticizes, is following the example set by the great Jewish prophets.” Zundel prefaces the review by remarking: “I think it is pretty balanced, even though there are a few politically correct hiccoughs.” And on November 23, 2002, Zundel approvingly posted another Gordon article from The Nation.
In his Counterpunch review of Finkelstein’s latest opus—which the publisher demanded that Finkelstein revise after Alan Dershowitz complained and proved that it libeled him—Gordon demurs from “an odd and troubling conclusion: the Jews, Finkelstein implies, are also to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism.” But Gordon goes on to praise Finkelstein’s attempt to debunk Dershowitz’s defense of Israel’s human rights record in his The Case for Israel. Finkelstein, in trying to pillory Israel for alleged violations, relies on human rights NGOS like Physicians for Human Rights Israel, whose “crude propaganda,” wrote Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, “is seen by many as anti-Semitic, and has prompted the Israeli Medical Association to end all cooperation with this group.”
Nowhere in the review, of course, does Gordon mention that Finkelstein sympathizes with terrorists and has himself won neo-Nazi admiration, and indeed it would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
As always, Neve Gordon retains his carte blanche from Ben-Gurion University to conduct his “research” and to “teach” Israeli students.
In a recent issue of the far-Left web magazine Counterpunch, Neve Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, again comes to the defense of his admired author Normal Finkelstein, professor of political science at DePaul University. Gordon favorably reviews Finkelstein’s new book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press).
Finkelstein is a strange figure for an Israeli academic to be praising. Back on November 18, 2002, Finkelstein gave a lecture at Georgetown University. Four days later the Anti-Defamation League, in a letter to the president of Georgetown, said it was “shocked and troubled” that the university had “sponsored a lecture by a known Holocaust denier and anti-Israeli propagandist, Norman Finkelstein. [The] lecture was a one-sided program, intended to promote hatred of Israel and perpetuate classic anti-Semitic stereotypes.”
ADL’s letter went on to note that “in his highly publicized book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein argues that the Holocaust ‘has become a straight-out extortion racket.’ Finkelstein is well known for his anti-Israel rhetoric and his claims that Jews have exploited the Holocaust to make money. He has said that he ‘truly honored’ Hezbullah fighters from Lebanon for ‘having inflicted an exceptional and deserving defeat on their foreign occupiers,’ and that, ‘I can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a comparison to the Gestapo.’”
ADL could have added, among other things, that the New York Times called The Holocaust Industry “a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; that historian Peter Novick called it “trash”; and that Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of The Return of Anti-Semitism, labeled Finkelstein’s views as “crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world.” ADL could also have mentioned that Finkelstein appeared on the official Hezbollah television network al-Manar, and that he is a popular speaker among German neo-Nazis, one of whom, the wife of the notorious Ernst Zundel, called him the “Jewish David Irving.”
Gordon and Finkelstein have, of course, some things in common, including an attraction to anti-Israeli terrorists. On February 3, 2002, Israel’s ynet reported that “250 left-wing activists violated the Israeli army’s orders and entered Ramallah for a meeting with Arafat. . . . Neve Gordon . . . was photographed with Arafat with hands clasped [see picture]. . . . In reply to the question of whether he felt comfortable hugging the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, responsible according to Israel for acts of terror, he replied: ‘I don’t know who’s responsible for the terror attacks, that’s what the media says. . . . ’ ”
Gordon, who has written that “Israel’s gravest danger today is not the PA or even Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism,” and whom Ma’ariv columnist Ben-Dror Yemini accused (along with Haifa University’s Ilan Pappe) of “spread[ing] their articles dripping with anti-Zionist poison all over the world, some of which appear on anti-Semitic websites,” also shares with Norman Finkelstein a Zundel connection.
Ernst Zundel, a pamphleteer who has been jailed several times for hate literature, was deported this year from Canada to his native Germany to stand trial for Holocaust denial. On October 27, 2000, his Zundelsite.org posted Gordon’s glowing review in The Nation of Finkelstein’s earlier book, The Holocaust Industry, in which Gordon opined that “[Finkelstein], and not the Jewish organizations he criticizes, is following the example set by the great Jewish prophets.” Zundel prefaces the review by remarking: “I think it is pretty balanced, even though there are a few politically correct hiccoughs.” And on November 23, 2002, Zundel approvingly posted another Gordon article from The Nation.
In his Counterpunch review of Finkelstein’s latest opus—which the publisher demanded that Finkelstein revise after Alan Dershowitz complained and proved that it libeled him—Gordon demurs from “an odd and troubling conclusion: the Jews, Finkelstein implies, are also to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism.” But Gordon goes on to praise Finkelstein’s attempt to debunk Dershowitz’s defense of Israel’s human rights record in his The Case for Israel. Finkelstein, in trying to pillory Israel for alleged violations, relies on human rights NGOS like Physicians for Human Rights Israel, whose “crude propaganda,” wrote Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, “is seen by many as anti-Semitic, and has prompted the Israeli Medical Association to end all cooperation with this group.”
Nowhere in the review, of course, does Gordon mention that Finkelstein sympathizes with terrorists and has himself won neo-Nazi admiration, and indeed it would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
As always, Neve Gordon retains his carte blanche from Ben-Gurion University to conduct his “research” and to “teach” Israeli students.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 18:34
SOURCE: The Independent (London) (10-31-05)
P. J. Honey was the first person to hold a lectureship in Vietnamese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University; in the course of a productive career he became the first Reader in Vietnamese Studies, and later also the Head of the Department of South East Asia and the Islands. His knowledge of the language, first-hand experience of the country and above all his interest in current affairs led to his opinions being sought by government agencies when Vietnam was going through a most turbulent phase of its history.
Patrick James Honey was born in Ireland, in Navan, County Meath, in 1922. He went to Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London, and entered Birkbeck College, London, in 1940 to read Classics. When called up in 1941, he chose to enlist in the Royal Navy and saw active service on the Atlantic convoys, on the Russian convoys, in the Italian campaign and finally in the Far East. After the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon, a small British force under General Douglas Gracey was charged with maintaining civil order, and it was as a young lieutenant with this force that Paddy Honey had a first brief encounter with Vietnam.
After being demobilised in 1946 he resumed his studies in London and graduated in Classics from University College in 1949. He was persuaded to take up Vietnamese by the 1947 Scarbrough Report, which drew attention both to the importance that increasing contacts between countries would assume after the Second World War, and to the serious lack of expertise across Oriental and African languages that the war had revealed. Classics graduates were believed to have a special aptitude for mastering 'difficult' languages and the Linguistics Department at Soas, under Professor J.R. Firth, was asked to recruit and train, among others, scholars to cover the languages of South East Asia.
Honey was recruited and appointed to a newly created post of Lecturer in Annamese (as Vietnamese was then known) in 1949, given 16 months' preliminary language and linguistics training and then sent out on his first year- long study tour of Vietnam. He arrived in Saigon in February 1951, at a time when the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, were waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the French colonial regime.
With difficulty and at considerable risk, he made his way to Hanoi, where he set up a safe base from which to carry out his planned research and his study of the local language. In the event this proved to be Honey's only opportunity to visit Hanoi. The country was partitioned under the terms of the 1954 Geneva Agreement and, when he next went to Vietnam in 1958, it was only to visit South Vietnam, and a Saigon 'full of Americans'.
Patrick James Honey was born in Ireland, in Navan, County Meath, in 1922. He went to Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London, and entered Birkbeck College, London, in 1940 to read Classics. When called up in 1941, he chose to enlist in the Royal Navy and saw active service on the Atlantic convoys, on the Russian convoys, in the Italian campaign and finally in the Far East. After the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon, a small British force under General Douglas Gracey was charged with maintaining civil order, and it was as a young lieutenant with this force that Paddy Honey had a first brief encounter with Vietnam.
After being demobilised in 1946 he resumed his studies in London and graduated in Classics from University College in 1949. He was persuaded to take up Vietnamese by the 1947 Scarbrough Report, which drew attention both to the importance that increasing contacts between countries would assume after the Second World War, and to the serious lack of expertise across Oriental and African languages that the war had revealed. Classics graduates were believed to have a special aptitude for mastering 'difficult' languages and the Linguistics Department at Soas, under Professor J.R. Firth, was asked to recruit and train, among others, scholars to cover the languages of South East Asia.
Honey was recruited and appointed to a newly created post of Lecturer in Annamese (as Vietnamese was then known) in 1949, given 16 months' preliminary language and linguistics training and then sent out on his first year- long study tour of Vietnam. He arrived in Saigon in February 1951, at a time when the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, were waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the French colonial regime.
With difficulty and at considerable risk, he made his way to Hanoi, where he set up a safe base from which to carry out his planned research and his study of the local language. In the event this proved to be Honey's only opportunity to visit Hanoi. The country was partitioned under the terms of the 1954 Geneva Agreement and, when he next went to Vietnam in 1958, it was only to visit South Vietnam, and a Saigon 'full of Americans'.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 16:39
SOURCE: The Boston Globe (10-31-05)
Barrington Moore Jr. was a Harvard sociologist who helped change the way many academics studied social and political history.
Posing questions about how human behavior led to various political outcomes and then offering his own answers, Dr. Moore's books became essential reading in sociology and political science courses.
To scholars nationwide, "his name conjures up great respect," said former student Theda Skocpol, dean of Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Many "really think of him as a leader in comparative history and the study of politics."
Dr. Moore died in his Cambridge home Oct. 16 from complications of pneumonia. He was 92.
In his seminal work, "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," published in 1966, he focused largely on the role social class plays as how countries modernize. His explanation of how different countries evolved politically was key in helping to open up a new stream of questioning by social scientists.
"Almost everyone acknowledged that it's great because it's original and it is powerful and therefore it shaped the discussion of these issues to the present days," Timothy J. Colton, director of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said of the book.
Posing questions about how human behavior led to various political outcomes and then offering his own answers, Dr. Moore's books became essential reading in sociology and political science courses.
To scholars nationwide, "his name conjures up great respect," said former student Theda Skocpol, dean of Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Many "really think of him as a leader in comparative history and the study of politics."
Dr. Moore died in his Cambridge home Oct. 16 from complications of pneumonia. He was 92.
In his seminal work, "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," published in 1966, he focused largely on the role social class plays as how countries modernize. His explanation of how different countries evolved politically was key in helping to open up a new stream of questioning by social scientists.
"Almost everyone acknowledged that it's great because it's original and it is powerful and therefore it shaped the discussion of these issues to the present days," Timothy J. Colton, director of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said of the book.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 16:34
SOURCE: BBC (10-31-05)
History seems more popular than ever. There are scores of best-selling history books.Historians-turned-broadcasters Simon Schama and David Starkey are household names. And televised docu-dramas play out events ranging from the Blitz to the search for Tutankhamen.
But what historian David Cannadine says can be lacking is an historical perspective on contemporary events as they unfold - a sense of making history now, of understanding that what happens today shapes the future. For the next three months, he hopes to explore this as the new host of the BBC Radio 4 opinion column A Point of View, which is also available on the BBC News website.
But what historian David Cannadine says can be lacking is an historical perspective on contemporary events as they unfold - a sense of making history now, of understanding that what happens today shapes the future. For the next three months, he hopes to explore this as the new host of the BBC Radio 4 opinion column A Point of View, which is also available on the BBC News website.
"I'm a professional historian by training and I specialise in modern Britain, modern British empires and modern America. I try to throw light on not just past events but modern circumstances, and this is a marvellous chance to try to do more of that."
This awareness of our history is important, he says, and he has always been eager to satisfy his intellectual curiosity about what happened next.
"All children believe the world they grow up in is the way the world has always been and the way it will always will be. This is our bit and our go and our time, but we're part of a constant process of change which we need to be aware of - not least because it helps us get in a better, more humbling perspective."
He does not, however, believe that we can learn from the lessons of the past, as each event is unique to its time and place. "Comparisons are at best suspect and at worst very dangerous. What we do need is the sense that we're part of an unfolding human continuum."
While there is undoubtedly an appetite to understand the events of the past, Cannadine believes history is a subject ill-served by formal education.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 - 08:51
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