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: http://www.pulitzer.org (4-20-09)
History - The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton & Company)
Biography - American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
General Nonfiction - Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday)Annette Gordon-Reed for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family in History Jon Meacham for American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House in Biography Douglas A. Blackmon for Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II in General Nonfiction
Biography - American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
General Nonfiction - Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday)
Ralph Luker at HNN Blog Cliopatria
Congratulations to the winners of Pulitzer Prizes for 2009:and to: Mary Elizabeth Berry of UC, Berkeley, Robert A. Caro, William Chester Jordan and James M. McPherson of Princeton, Rashid Khalidi of Columbia, T. J. Jackson Lears of Rutgers, Matthew S. Santirocco of NYU, Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis, Steven Shapin of Harvard, Sanjay Subramanyam of UCLA, Donald E. Worster of the University of Kansas, Itamar Ravinovich of Tel Aviv, and Romila Thapar of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who are newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 - 00:45
Comments
SOURCE: John Gray in the Guardian (4-18-09)
During the Soviet era it used to be joked that Russia was the only country in which the past was unpredictable. When the secret police chief Lavrenti Beria was shot in 1953, libraries were ordered to cut out the pages of the Soviet encyclopedia that dealt with him and expand the section on the Bering Strait. As far as official Soviet history was concerned Beria had never existed and the events in which he had played a part had to be rewritten.
In the former Soviet Union history was repeatedly revised to reflect the changing pattern of power and the shifting party line, but rewriting the past is not a practice confined to totalitarian states. It goes on in regimes of all kinds, not least liberal democracies. Churchill's history of the second world war, Margaret Macmillan observes [ in her new book, The Uses and Abuses of History], is "a sweeping and magisterial account which glossed over many awkward issues". There is no mention in it of cabinet discussions in May 1940, when the issue of seeking peace through the mediation of Mussolini was actively debated. Fortunately for the future of civilisation the idea that peace could be made with the Nazis was rejected and Churchill prevailed; but his claim that the issue was never seriously deliberated is contrary to fact. The decision whether to fight on could easily have gone the other way, with unthinkable consequences for the world.
The official history that exaggerates British unity in 1940 is only one of many examples discussed by Macmillan, but it encapsulates one of the conclusions that emerge from her wise and enlightening book. While there will always be different perspectives on the past, we are not adrift in a sea of relativism. There are facts of the matter, which historians can sometimes establish. As Macmillan writes: "Memory is not only selective; it is malleable." For example, when writing his memoirs Dean Acheson remembered sitting in President Roosevelt's office with secretary of state Cordell Hull on the day in 1941 when the US froze Japanese assets and edged closer to war. Acheson's secretary checked the record, and found that Hull was not in Washington on the day. Memory is unreliable, but that does not mean the truth cannot be known....
In the former Soviet Union history was repeatedly revised to reflect the changing pattern of power and the shifting party line, but rewriting the past is not a practice confined to totalitarian states. It goes on in regimes of all kinds, not least liberal democracies. Churchill's history of the second world war, Margaret Macmillan observes [ in her new book, The Uses and Abuses of History], is "a sweeping and magisterial account which glossed over many awkward issues". There is no mention in it of cabinet discussions in May 1940, when the issue of seeking peace through the mediation of Mussolini was actively debated. Fortunately for the future of civilisation the idea that peace could be made with the Nazis was rejected and Churchill prevailed; but his claim that the issue was never seriously deliberated is contrary to fact. The decision whether to fight on could easily have gone the other way, with unthinkable consequences for the world.
The official history that exaggerates British unity in 1940 is only one of many examples discussed by Macmillan, but it encapsulates one of the conclusions that emerge from her wise and enlightening book. While there will always be different perspectives on the past, we are not adrift in a sea of relativism. There are facts of the matter, which historians can sometimes establish. As Macmillan writes: "Memory is not only selective; it is malleable." For example, when writing his memoirs Dean Acheson remembered sitting in President Roosevelt's office with secretary of state Cordell Hull on the day in 1941 when the US froze Japanese assets and edged closer to war. Acheson's secretary checked the record, and found that Hull was not in Washington on the day. Memory is unreliable, but that does not mean the truth cannot be known....
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 22:07
SOURCE: Press Release (4-21-09)
College faculty and administrators are invited to participate in the ninth annual “Reacting to the Past” Institute at Barnard College (New York), June 11-14, 2009. Featured tracks:
-
“The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.”
-
“Greenwich Village, 1913: Suffrage, Labor and the New Woman”
-
“Charles Darwin, the Copley Medal, and the Rise of Naturalism, 1862-64”
-
“The Josianic Reform: Deuteronomy, Prophecy, and Israelite Religion, 622 BCE”
-
“Beware the Ides of March: Rome in 44 BCE”
-
“Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791”
-
“Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of the Wanli Emperor, 1587”
- “Acid Rain in Europe, 1979-1989”
“Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles with “victory objectives” informed by seminal texts in the history of ideas. The curriculum seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big questions in the humanities and sciences, and improve speaking, writing, and leadership skills. An alternative approach to general education, RTTP was honored with the 2004 Theodore Hesburgh Award (funded by TIAA-CREF) as the nation’s outstanding pedagogical innovation in undergraduate teaching and learning.
Participants will learn about the curriculum by engaging in intensive two-day workshops on particular games, listed above. In addition to game sessions, concurrent sessions will provide an opportunity to discuss issues and concerns related to the classroom experience, general education, assessment, and the problems and possibilities of the RTTP approach.
For further information, visit http://www.barnard.edu/reacting/conference/annual or email reacting@barnard.edu . Online registration will begin May 1, 2009.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 20:04
SOURCE: Politico.com (4-21-09)
There aren’t any sex scenes or vampires, and it won’t help you lose weight.
But House Republicans are tearing through the pages of Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man” like soccer moms before book club night.
Shlaes’ 2007 take on the Great Depression questions the success of the New Deal and takes issue with the value of government intervention in a major economic crisis — red meat for a party hungry for empirical evidence that the Democrats’ spending plans won’t end the current recession.
“There aren’t many books that take a negative look at the New Deal,” explained Republican policy aide Mike Ference, whose boss, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, invited Shlaes to join a group of 20 or so other House Republicans for lunch earlier this year in his Capitol suite.
“Republicans are gobbling it up — and so are other lawmakers — because it tells you what they did, what worked and what didn’t.”
“It’s been suggested as required reading for all of us, I think,” said Erica Elliott, press secretary for Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) — who himself notes that his chief of staff “stole” his hardback copy, so he had to purchase a paperback.
Garrett said the book “is a good read” that details, among other things, “how FDR engaged in vitriolic demonizing of Wall Street and Big Business to advance his agenda.”
Also, he jokes, “it had good pictures when you get to the middle.”
“The Forgotten Man” is currently out of stock at The Trover Shop, the bookstore closest to the House side of the Capitol. Co-owner Al Schuman said sales haven’t been off the charts but added: “If all my books sold that well, I’d be a rich man.”
It’s not hard to see what Republicans find compelling about the book. Shlaes, a columnist at Bloomberg, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editorial board member at The Wall Street Journal, presents a vision of the Great Depression that challenges the conventional wisdom that casts Herbert Hoover as a goat, FDR as a hero and the New Deal as the country’s salvation....
But House Republicans are tearing through the pages of Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man” like soccer moms before book club night.
Shlaes’ 2007 take on the Great Depression questions the success of the New Deal and takes issue with the value of government intervention in a major economic crisis — red meat for a party hungry for empirical evidence that the Democrats’ spending plans won’t end the current recession.
“There aren’t many books that take a negative look at the New Deal,” explained Republican policy aide Mike Ference, whose boss, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, invited Shlaes to join a group of 20 or so other House Republicans for lunch earlier this year in his Capitol suite.
“Republicans are gobbling it up — and so are other lawmakers — because it tells you what they did, what worked and what didn’t.”
“It’s been suggested as required reading for all of us, I think,” said Erica Elliott, press secretary for Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) — who himself notes that his chief of staff “stole” his hardback copy, so he had to purchase a paperback.
Garrett said the book “is a good read” that details, among other things, “how FDR engaged in vitriolic demonizing of Wall Street and Big Business to advance his agenda.”
Also, he jokes, “it had good pictures when you get to the middle.”
“The Forgotten Man” is currently out of stock at The Trover Shop, the bookstore closest to the House side of the Capitol. Co-owner Al Schuman said sales haven’t been off the charts but added: “If all my books sold that well, I’d be a rich man.”
It’s not hard to see what Republicans find compelling about the book. Shlaes, a columnist at Bloomberg, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editorial board member at The Wall Street Journal, presents a vision of the Great Depression that challenges the conventional wisdom that casts Herbert Hoover as a goat, FDR as a hero and the New Deal as the country’s salvation....
Related Links
HNN Hot Topics: The New Deal
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 15:55
SOURCE: http://www.pjstar.com (4-18-09)
Carl Adams is feeling vindicated these days. As an amateur historian who's followed Abraham Lincoln's career as a lawyer in Illinois since the mid-1990s, Adams has made a point of researching a case that originated in Pekin involving slavery.
But other historians didn't think the little-known case that came before the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841 was all that significant, said Adams, referring to reactions to a presentation he made 10 years ago.
But Adams got a different response when he spoke at a Lincoln program last year at Millikin University in Decatur. Eileen McMahon, a history professor at Lewis University in Romeoville, who also serves as editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, approached Adams after his talk.
"She said that it was the only story she's heard about Lincoln that was really new. She asked me to write about it for the journal," he said.
Adams' article appeared in the journal's Lincoln bicentennial issue that was just published, detailing how Lincoln helped free an African-American girl named Nance in the David Bailey-versus-Nathan Cromwell case 25 years before the signing of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.
The case, significant because it details how a little-known lawyer was able to record such a decisive victory in Illinois, a state not known for its liberal ideas on slavery, comes to radio this summer.
Nathan Irwin, program director for WCBU-FM 89.9, Peoria's public radio outlet, traveled to Springfield with Adams to record hours of interviews with historians on the case and on Lincoln's various legal battles.
"We're preparing a half-hour documentary to run this summer - probably July," Irwin said. In addition to the WCBU effort, the station plans to air a number of other Lincoln radio programs produced by Springfield public radio station WUIS-FM, he said.
But other historians didn't think the little-known case that came before the Illinois Supreme Court in 1841 was all that significant, said Adams, referring to reactions to a presentation he made 10 years ago.
But Adams got a different response when he spoke at a Lincoln program last year at Millikin University in Decatur. Eileen McMahon, a history professor at Lewis University in Romeoville, who also serves as editor of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, approached Adams after his talk.
"She said that it was the only story she's heard about Lincoln that was really new. She asked me to write about it for the journal," he said.
Adams' article appeared in the journal's Lincoln bicentennial issue that was just published, detailing how Lincoln helped free an African-American girl named Nance in the David Bailey-versus-Nathan Cromwell case 25 years before the signing of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.
The case, significant because it details how a little-known lawyer was able to record such a decisive victory in Illinois, a state not known for its liberal ideas on slavery, comes to radio this summer.
Nathan Irwin, program director for WCBU-FM 89.9, Peoria's public radio outlet, traveled to Springfield with Adams to record hours of interviews with historians on the case and on Lincoln's various legal battles.
"We're preparing a half-hour documentary to run this summer - probably July," Irwin said. In addition to the WCBU effort, the station plans to air a number of other Lincoln radio programs produced by Springfield public radio station WUIS-FM, he said.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 12:09
SOURCE: NYT (4-18-09)
NOW that colleges have created gender-neutral housing and bathrooms, and gay couples can be married in Iowa and Connecticut, it may be hard to understand the uproar that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s work caused when it first appeared in the mid-1980s.
Ms. Sedgwick, who died of breast cancer last week at age 58, found subterranean homoerotic impulses in the work of Henry James, Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Dickens. In the decorous novels of Jane Austen, she unearthed hidden references to masturbation.
These analyses and others helped form the basis of an entirely new scholarly field, queer studies, a kitchen-sink sort of enterprise that proposed a groundbreaking way of looking at art and culture.
Drawing on literature, psychology, law, politics, sociology and the work of Michel Foucault, Ms. Sedgwick argued that assigned categories like “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” not to mention “male” and “female,” don’t begin to capture reality. Sexual desire and sexual identity exist on a continuum, spilling over the neat labels we create to contain them.
What’s more, she asserted, the failure to openly acknowledge these flawed definitions impairs “an understanding of virtually any aspect of Western culture.”...
Ms. Sedgwick, who died of breast cancer last week at age 58, found subterranean homoerotic impulses in the work of Henry James, Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Dickens. In the decorous novels of Jane Austen, she unearthed hidden references to masturbation.
These analyses and others helped form the basis of an entirely new scholarly field, queer studies, a kitchen-sink sort of enterprise that proposed a groundbreaking way of looking at art and culture.
Drawing on literature, psychology, law, politics, sociology and the work of Michel Foucault, Ms. Sedgwick argued that assigned categories like “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” not to mention “male” and “female,” don’t begin to capture reality. Sexual desire and sexual identity exist on a continuum, spilling over the neat labels we create to contain them.
What’s more, she asserted, the failure to openly acknowledge these flawed definitions impairs “an understanding of virtually any aspect of Western culture.”...
Monday, April 20, 2009 - 21:21
SOURCE: NYT (4-18-09)
Samuel H. Beer, a leading American expert on British government and politics who was a longtime professor of government at Harvard and who led the liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action from 1959 to 1962, died April 7 at his home in Washington. He was 97 and lived in Washington and Cambridge, Mass.
The death was confirmed by his wife, Jane K. Brooks. For 30 years, Mr. Beer taught “Western Thought and Institutions,” a legendary course that combined history, political theory and comparative government, to generations of Harvard undergraduates. In the wider world, he was known for several books on politics and government in Britain and the United States noteworthy for their timeliness and the elegance of their arguments.
In his first book, “The City of Reason” (1949), he articulated a liberal political philosophy based on the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead. It was followed by “Treasury Control” (1956), a study of how the British government coordinates financial and economic policy, and the highly regarded “British Politics in the Collectivist Age” (1965), an inquiry into the conflict between conservative and radical impulses in postwar Britain.
In 1982, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government gathered steam, he published “Britain Against Itself: The Political Contradictions of Collectivism.” He later turned his attention to American political theory in “To Make a Nation: The Rediscovery of American Federalism” (1993)....
The death was confirmed by his wife, Jane K. Brooks. For 30 years, Mr. Beer taught “Western Thought and Institutions,” a legendary course that combined history, political theory and comparative government, to generations of Harvard undergraduates. In the wider world, he was known for several books on politics and government in Britain and the United States noteworthy for their timeliness and the elegance of their arguments.
In his first book, “The City of Reason” (1949), he articulated a liberal political philosophy based on the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead. It was followed by “Treasury Control” (1956), a study of how the British government coordinates financial and economic policy, and the highly regarded “British Politics in the Collectivist Age” (1965), an inquiry into the conflict between conservative and radical impulses in postwar Britain.
In 1982, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government gathered steam, he published “Britain Against Itself: The Political Contradictions of Collectivism.” He later turned his attention to American political theory in “To Make a Nation: The Rediscovery of American Federalism” (1993)....
Monday, April 20, 2009 - 20:42
SOURCE: Jonathan Schanzer at Campus Watch (4-19-09)
[The writer, an adjunct scholar at www.Campus-Watch.org, is director of policy for the Jewish Policy Center and author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave). JPC intern Samara Greenberg contributed to this article.]
Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman-turned Columbia University professor, is convinced that Israel has constructed a "matrix of control" in the Middle East. Khalidi once cited books and articles to back up his skewed views of Middle East history. Now he cites obscure Internet claims of an "occupation settlement industrial complex."
On April 1, Khalidi gave a one-hour phone briefing to Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) - a leftist organization based in Chicago. While occasionally sounding balanced and insightful, he launched into short rants throughout the call.
Notably, about eight minutes in, he began to froth about a "network of interests which is bound up with the maintenance of this matrix of control. The occupation settlement industrial complex - a network of companies that an Israeli Web site called 'whoprofits' put together." Based on this site, which published a disclaimer about the "accuracy, completeness, usefulness of any information and/or documents disclosed," along with input from radical leftists like Jeff Halper and Palestinian apologists like Amira Haas, Khalidi claimed there are "hundreds of companies, hi-tech companies, that keep the databases on which Israel manages... the four million Palestinians... The telephone databases to the security companies that manage the checkpoints to the companies that build the roads... the settler-only roads." And so on and so forth.
This assertion is outrageous on several levels. The Palestinians constitute a never-ending financial and political burden for the Jewish state. From within the Palestinian population also comes a constant terrorist threat which requires millions of dollars in training and resources each year to counter. To imply that Israel prospers from this albatross is preposterous.
Khalidi must also be called out for attempting to further the canard of "settler-only roads." Media analyst Tamar Sternthal pointed out in 2003 that such roads do not exist. "There are no roads in the West Bank or Gaza which are open only to settler traffic." Khalidi, who claims to be an expert on the Palestinians, should know better.
He should also know better than to assert, as he did, that the United States is responsible for the Palestinian civil war between Hamas and Fatah. Khalidi called the internecine conflict "a function of external powers like the United States... doing all they can to split the Palestinians in service of their own narrow objectives."
To his credit, Khalidi also includes Iran among those "external powers." But his swipe at Washington is far off the mark. The Obama administration desperately seeks to reconcile these two factions in its effort to establish an interlocutor for future Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.
KHALIDI THEN launched into a harangue about the influence of a right-wing Jewish lobby, echoing the dangerous sentiments of the discredited book The Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer: "If you look at where AIPAC, say, stands, or at where the Conference of Presidents stands, or at where the American Jewish Committee stands, or at where the ADL stands, I mean, they're sort of to the right of Genghis Khan. They're somewhere between Likud and... I don't know... Avigdor Lieberman."
Khalidi again misses by a wide margin. These organizations are almost monolithically liberal and Democratic in outlook, and warmly embrace the notion of a negotiated two-state solution. Yet, Khalidi asserted, based on nothing he could possibly cite as proof, that "most of the people who head these organizations voted for [Arizona Sen. John] McCain." He concluded his thoughts about the Jewish lobby in this way: "The leadership - which is to the right of McCain - represent, you know, a bunch of people who are in another universe."...
Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman-turned Columbia University professor, is convinced that Israel has constructed a "matrix of control" in the Middle East. Khalidi once cited books and articles to back up his skewed views of Middle East history. Now he cites obscure Internet claims of an "occupation settlement industrial complex."
On April 1, Khalidi gave a one-hour phone briefing to Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) - a leftist organization based in Chicago. While occasionally sounding balanced and insightful, he launched into short rants throughout the call.
Notably, about eight minutes in, he began to froth about a "network of interests which is bound up with the maintenance of this matrix of control. The occupation settlement industrial complex - a network of companies that an Israeli Web site called 'whoprofits' put together." Based on this site, which published a disclaimer about the "accuracy, completeness, usefulness of any information and/or documents disclosed," along with input from radical leftists like Jeff Halper and Palestinian apologists like Amira Haas, Khalidi claimed there are "hundreds of companies, hi-tech companies, that keep the databases on which Israel manages... the four million Palestinians... The telephone databases to the security companies that manage the checkpoints to the companies that build the roads... the settler-only roads." And so on and so forth.
This assertion is outrageous on several levels. The Palestinians constitute a never-ending financial and political burden for the Jewish state. From within the Palestinian population also comes a constant terrorist threat which requires millions of dollars in training and resources each year to counter. To imply that Israel prospers from this albatross is preposterous.
Khalidi must also be called out for attempting to further the canard of "settler-only roads." Media analyst Tamar Sternthal pointed out in 2003 that such roads do not exist. "There are no roads in the West Bank or Gaza which are open only to settler traffic." Khalidi, who claims to be an expert on the Palestinians, should know better.
He should also know better than to assert, as he did, that the United States is responsible for the Palestinian civil war between Hamas and Fatah. Khalidi called the internecine conflict "a function of external powers like the United States... doing all they can to split the Palestinians in service of their own narrow objectives."
To his credit, Khalidi also includes Iran among those "external powers." But his swipe at Washington is far off the mark. The Obama administration desperately seeks to reconcile these two factions in its effort to establish an interlocutor for future Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.
KHALIDI THEN launched into a harangue about the influence of a right-wing Jewish lobby, echoing the dangerous sentiments of the discredited book The Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer: "If you look at where AIPAC, say, stands, or at where the Conference of Presidents stands, or at where the American Jewish Committee stands, or at where the ADL stands, I mean, they're sort of to the right of Genghis Khan. They're somewhere between Likud and... I don't know... Avigdor Lieberman."
Khalidi again misses by a wide margin. These organizations are almost monolithically liberal and Democratic in outlook, and warmly embrace the notion of a negotiated two-state solution. Yet, Khalidi asserted, based on nothing he could possibly cite as proof, that "most of the people who head these organizations voted for [Arizona Sen. John] McCain." He concluded his thoughts about the Jewish lobby in this way: "The leadership - which is to the right of McCain - represent, you know, a bunch of people who are in another universe."...
Monday, April 20, 2009 - 15:33
SOURCE: Joseph Nye Jr. in the WaPo (4-13-09)
President Obama has appointed some distinguished academic economists and lawyers to his administration, but few high-ranking political scientists have been named. In fact, the editors of a recent poll of more than 2,700 international relations experts declared that "the walls surrounding the ivory tower have never seemed so high."
While important American scholars such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski took high-level foreign policy positions in the past, that path has tended to be a one-way street. Not many top-ranked scholars of international relations are going into government, and even fewer return to contribute to academic theory. The 2008 Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) poll, by the Institute for Theory and Practice in International Relations, showed that of the 25 scholars rated as producing the most interesting scholarship during the past five years, only three had ever held policy positions (two in the U.S. government and one in the United Nations). The fault for this growing gap lies not with the government but with the academics.
Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers. A survey of articles published over the lifetime of the American Political Science Review found that about one in five dealt with policy prescription or criticism in the first half of the century, while only a handful did so after 1967. Editor Lee Sigelman observed in the journal's centennial issue that "if 'speaking truth to power' and contributing directly to public dialogue about the merits and demerits of various courses of action were still numbered among the functions of the profession, one would not have known it from leafing through its leading journal."
While important American scholars such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski took high-level foreign policy positions in the past, that path has tended to be a one-way street. Not many top-ranked scholars of international relations are going into government, and even fewer return to contribute to academic theory. The 2008 Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) poll, by the Institute for Theory and Practice in International Relations, showed that of the 25 scholars rated as producing the most interesting scholarship during the past five years, only three had ever held policy positions (two in the U.S. government and one in the United Nations). The fault for this growing gap lies not with the government but with the academics.
Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers. A survey of articles published over the lifetime of the American Political Science Review found that about one in five dealt with policy prescription or criticism in the first half of the century, while only a handful did so after 1967. Editor Lee Sigelman observed in the journal's centennial issue that "if 'speaking truth to power' and contributing directly to public dialogue about the merits and demerits of various courses of action were still numbered among the functions of the profession, one would not have known it from leafing through its leading journal."
Sunday, April 19, 2009 - 21:23
SOURCE: Ruth Rosen at her blog at TPMCafe (4-17-09)
The memos about torture released by the Obama administration are horrifying to read. Nothing new, here, but they are like a punch in the stomach all over again. This is my country? This is the nation that stands for freedom and decency?
I understand why President Obama doesn't want to prosecute those who believed they were acting under laws written by the Office of Legal Counsel. But that is not the only policy he and other Democrats can pursue.
First, the men who wrote those memos should be investigated for disbarment. They acted in ways that are unconscionable and unprofessional, to put it mildly.
Second, neither the President nor Congress should investigate these crimes. They must be pursued by a special independent investigator who has no political ax to grind. Now you may well ask, who approves of torture? Well, hardly anyone, except those in the Bush administration who justified or directed these war crimes.
Third, how can we allow a sitting federal judge to remain on the bench--for life-- when he provided legal justification for torture? I speak here, of course, of Jay.Bybee, who should resign or be impeached.
Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because the country I care so much about has breached some of the most important international conventions in modern history and yet no major leaders have been held accountable. If the investigation goes straight to Vice-President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush, then so be it.
Remember the date over whether President Ford should have pardoned President Nixon for his violations of the constitution? The best argument for that pardon was that Nixon HAD been held accountable and had to resign his office. He had, in short, received a serious punishment.
President Obama's instincts are right to avoid a drawn-out partisan conflict over the past. But if we are truly a nation of laws, committed to the decency and morality we embrace, we cannot let people who justify or commit torture and other war crimes to escape prosecution. Those who agree should make their voices loud, joining Amnesty International, the ACLU and many thousands of other Americans who will not allow war crimes to be committed in their name.
I understand why President Obama doesn't want to prosecute those who believed they were acting under laws written by the Office of Legal Counsel. But that is not the only policy he and other Democrats can pursue.
First, the men who wrote those memos should be investigated for disbarment. They acted in ways that are unconscionable and unprofessional, to put it mildly.
Second, neither the President nor Congress should investigate these crimes. They must be pursued by a special independent investigator who has no political ax to grind. Now you may well ask, who approves of torture? Well, hardly anyone, except those in the Bush administration who justified or directed these war crimes.
Third, how can we allow a sitting federal judge to remain on the bench--for life-- when he provided legal justification for torture? I speak here, of course, of Jay.Bybee, who should resign or be impeached.
Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because the country I care so much about has breached some of the most important international conventions in modern history and yet no major leaders have been held accountable. If the investigation goes straight to Vice-President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush, then so be it.
Remember the date over whether President Ford should have pardoned President Nixon for his violations of the constitution? The best argument for that pardon was that Nixon HAD been held accountable and had to resign his office. He had, in short, received a serious punishment.
President Obama's instincts are right to avoid a drawn-out partisan conflict over the past. But if we are truly a nation of laws, committed to the decency and morality we embrace, we cannot let people who justify or commit torture and other war crimes to escape prosecution. Those who agree should make their voices loud, joining Amnesty International, the ACLU and many thousands of other Americans who will not allow war crimes to be committed in their name.
Sunday, April 19, 2009 - 21:13
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed (4-17-09)
Six years ago this month, the National Museum of Iraq was extensively looted amid the chaos of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. Among the stolen objects was the Mask of Warka, a 5,100-year-old Sumerian artifact that is believed to be one of the earliest surviving representations of a human face. The mask was found buried on an Iraqi farm five months later — but thousands of other precious objects were destroyed or disappeared into the black market.
"We do not know, and we may never know, a great many lessons about how human civilization first arose, because of this disaster," says Lawrence Rothfield, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and a former director of the university's Cultural Policy Center.
In his new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum (University of Chicago Press), Rothfield examines the sacking of the museum and the "slow-motion disaster" of the looting of archaeological sites across Iraq since 2003.
Rothfield recently spoke with The Chronicle's David Glenn. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
Q. Why should the world care about Iraqi antiquities? Doesn't this issue pale in comparison to the war's political struggles and tens of thousands of deaths?
I hear that question sometimes: Why should we care? Why should we worry that all of this material is being brought onto the black market? After all, isn't this making available to the rest of the world the beauty of all these objects that otherwise would not have been available for us to see?
One reason to worry is that this material is being ripped out of its context. The individual intact pieces that fall into the hands of collectors might be beautiful. But most of what we know about the origins of civilization has come from piecing together fragments and reconstructing contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from fragments that looters today would have crushed underfoot....
"We do not know, and we may never know, a great many lessons about how human civilization first arose, because of this disaster," says Lawrence Rothfield, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and a former director of the university's Cultural Policy Center.
In his new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum (University of Chicago Press), Rothfield examines the sacking of the museum and the "slow-motion disaster" of the looting of archaeological sites across Iraq since 2003.
Rothfield recently spoke with The Chronicle's David Glenn. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
Q. Why should the world care about Iraqi antiquities? Doesn't this issue pale in comparison to the war's political struggles and tens of thousands of deaths?
I hear that question sometimes: Why should we care? Why should we worry that all of this material is being brought onto the black market? After all, isn't this making available to the rest of the world the beauty of all these objects that otherwise would not have been available for us to see?
One reason to worry is that this material is being ripped out of its context. The individual intact pieces that fall into the hands of collectors might be beautiful. But most of what we know about the origins of civilization has come from piecing together fragments and reconstructing contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from fragments that looters today would have crushed underfoot....
Friday, April 17, 2009 - 19:08
SOURCE: Jeff Biggers at Huffington Post (4-17-09)
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has just posted a Blair Mountain Battlefield petition, which calls on the state of West Virginia and private property owners to keep the site of one of the most important and historic American labor conflicts on the National Register.
Why is Blair Mountain important today?
Threatened by possible mountaintop removal strip mining operations, Blair Mountain is the historic site of the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, when the United Mine Workers and World War I veterans marched to liberate Logan County in West Virginia from the clutches of ruthless coal companies, who had denied their miners the right to organize. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act into law in 1933, granting all miners and workers the legal right to belong to a union without any repercussions, "a wave of mountainous proportions" swept through the coalfields of Appalachia, whose battle at Blair Mountain was finally vindicated.
The Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 marked a turning point in our country; when the nation rose up to demand that long-term jobs and the safety and health of coal miners and coal mining communities must be placed above the profit interests of outside coal companies.
That sentiment is needed now more than ever in the coalfields, and the nation.
For more information on Blair Mountain, please see The Friends of Blair Mountain:
http://www.friendsofblairmountain.org/
Or, the National Memorial to the Mountains website:
http://www.ilovemountains.org/memorial/c260/
Here's the petition:
TAKE ACTION - Sign our Petition to the State of West Virginia
Join our efforts in opposing strip-mining of the historic Blair Mountain Battlefield in Logan County, West Virginia. Site of the 1921 Miners' March, in which approximately 10,000 armed miners clashed with "defenders" assembled by the anti-union coal companies, Blair Mountain represents a unique and bloody chapter in America's labor history. This month, the National Park Service recognized the extraordinary importance of the site by listing it in the National Register.
Preservationists are not opposed to mining on the mountain, but believe that every effort should be made to preserve the nationally significant battlefield. There are alternatives to strip-mining, including underground mining, that may not destroy the site.
The undersigned urge the State of West Virginia to work with Blair Mountain property owners and permit applicants to reach a solution that will allow both mining and preservation of the site.
Why is Blair Mountain important today?
Threatened by possible mountaintop removal strip mining operations, Blair Mountain is the historic site of the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, when the United Mine Workers and World War I veterans marched to liberate Logan County in West Virginia from the clutches of ruthless coal companies, who had denied their miners the right to organize. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act into law in 1933, granting all miners and workers the legal right to belong to a union without any repercussions, "a wave of mountainous proportions" swept through the coalfields of Appalachia, whose battle at Blair Mountain was finally vindicated.
The Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 marked a turning point in our country; when the nation rose up to demand that long-term jobs and the safety and health of coal miners and coal mining communities must be placed above the profit interests of outside coal companies.
That sentiment is needed now more than ever in the coalfields, and the nation.
For more information on Blair Mountain, please see The Friends of Blair Mountain:
http://www.friendsofblairmountain.org/
Or, the National Memorial to the Mountains website:
http://www.ilovemountains.org/memorial/c260/
Here's the petition:
TAKE ACTION - Sign our Petition to the State of West Virginia
Join our efforts in opposing strip-mining of the historic Blair Mountain Battlefield in Logan County, West Virginia. Site of the 1921 Miners' March, in which approximately 10,000 armed miners clashed with "defenders" assembled by the anti-union coal companies, Blair Mountain represents a unique and bloody chapter in America's labor history. This month, the National Park Service recognized the extraordinary importance of the site by listing it in the National Register.
Preservationists are not opposed to mining on the mountain, but believe that every effort should be made to preserve the nationally significant battlefield. There are alternatives to strip-mining, including underground mining, that may not destroy the site.
The undersigned urge the State of West Virginia to work with Blair Mountain property owners and permit applicants to reach a solution that will allow both mining and preservation of the site.
Friday, April 17, 2009 - 17:51
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-17-09)
Dr David Starkey, the historian, has compared a proposal to build a 'zero-carbon house' near the remains of Richmond Palace to a "snotty-nosed punk in an elegant drawing room".
On Thursday planners at Richmond council approved construction of the solar powered, triple-glazed, two-storey house near the site of the palace, which was built by Henry VIII’s father Henry VII.
Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn there and spent Christmases there, as did their daughter Elizabeth I. It was demolished after Charles I's execution in 1649.
Only remnants still exist on the site, near present-day Richmond Green. They were incorporated into later buildings which lie yards from the proposed house. All sit within a formal conservation area.
Dr Starkey said of the futuristic home, proposed by a couple who have lived in Richmond-upon-Thames for 40 years: "To give it planning permission almost to the day of the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Richmond's most famous inhabitant, Henry VIII, would add insult to a grievous injury to the surviving historic fabric and setting of Tudor England."
In a sharp attack on what he believed to be a misplaced piece of modern architecture, he said: "The proposed new building is like a snotty-nosed punk in an elegant drawing room: wilfully and self-indulgently out of keeping with its surroundings – in form, colour and materials."
On Thursday planners at Richmond council approved construction of the solar powered, triple-glazed, two-storey house near the site of the palace, which was built by Henry VIII’s father Henry VII.
Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn there and spent Christmases there, as did their daughter Elizabeth I. It was demolished after Charles I's execution in 1649.
Only remnants still exist on the site, near present-day Richmond Green. They were incorporated into later buildings which lie yards from the proposed house. All sit within a formal conservation area.
Dr Starkey said of the futuristic home, proposed by a couple who have lived in Richmond-upon-Thames for 40 years: "To give it planning permission almost to the day of the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Richmond's most famous inhabitant, Henry VIII, would add insult to a grievous injury to the surviving historic fabric and setting of Tudor England."
In a sharp attack on what he believed to be a misplaced piece of modern architecture, he said: "The proposed new building is like a snotty-nosed punk in an elegant drawing room: wilfully and self-indulgently out of keeping with its surroundings – in form, colour and materials."
Friday, April 17, 2009 - 17:40
SOURCE: Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria (4-10-09)
Congratulations to historians who have won Guggenheim Fellowships for 2009:
That would be three Guggenheims to Rutgers historians.Robert Beachy, Goucher College Jeffrey Bortz, Appalachian State University Kate Brown, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University Pierre Force, Columbia University Peter Galison, Harvard University Risa L. Goluboff, University of Virginia Law School Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Law School/ Rutgers University Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University Karen Halttunen, University of Southern California Benjamin Carter Hett, Hunter College/Graduate Center, CUNY Noel Lenski, University of Colorado Theodore J. Lewis, Johns Hopkins University Charles Marsh, University of Virginia Roderick A. McDonald, Rider University Mae M. Ngai, Columbia University Tara Nummedal, Brown University Leslie Peirce, New York University Carla Gardina Pestana, Miami University Jacob Soll, Rutgers University Deborah Gray White, Rutgers University
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 21:27
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune (4-15-09)
Franklin Rosemont, a surrealist poet and labor historian, maintained Chicago's long history of leftist activism through prolific writing and his stewardship of 123-year-old radical publishing house Charles H. Kerr.
Mr. Rosemont, 65, died Sunday, April 12, in the University of Illinois Medical Center, after possibly suffering a stroke or an aneurysm, said his wife, Penelope. He was a resident of Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood.
The son of a printers union activist, Mr. Rosemont joined the Industrial Workers of the World, a leftist trade group nicknamed the Wobblies, when he was 7, adopting a faith from which he never wavered....
His books included "Joe Hill, the IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture," a study of the early 20th Century labor movement, and "Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism," a biography of a surrealist pioneer. He edited and wrote introductions for "The Rise & Fall of the Dil Pickle," a history of an early 20th Century nightspot, and "From Bughouse Square to the Beat Generation."
"His book on Joe Hill is the best model of all the things labor history can be," said David Roediger, a University of Illinois history professor who co-edited "Haymarket Scrapbook," an illustrated labor history, with Mr. Rosemont.
Mr. Rosemont was also editing a series on surrealism for the University of Texas.
Many of his books were published by Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., where he essentially served as editor-in-chief. He and his wife enlisted a younger generation to write and work for the company, many drawn by Mr. Rosemont's infectious personality.
Mr. Rosemont, 65, died Sunday, April 12, in the University of Illinois Medical Center, after possibly suffering a stroke or an aneurysm, said his wife, Penelope. He was a resident of Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood.
The son of a printers union activist, Mr. Rosemont joined the Industrial Workers of the World, a leftist trade group nicknamed the Wobblies, when he was 7, adopting a faith from which he never wavered....
His books included "Joe Hill, the IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture," a study of the early 20th Century labor movement, and "Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism," a biography of a surrealist pioneer. He edited and wrote introductions for "The Rise & Fall of the Dil Pickle," a history of an early 20th Century nightspot, and "From Bughouse Square to the Beat Generation."
"His book on Joe Hill is the best model of all the things labor history can be," said David Roediger, a University of Illinois history professor who co-edited "Haymarket Scrapbook," an illustrated labor history, with Mr. Rosemont.
Mr. Rosemont was also editing a series on surrealism for the University of Texas.
Many of his books were published by Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., where he essentially served as editor-in-chief. He and his wife enlisted a younger generation to write and work for the company, many drawn by Mr. Rosemont's infectious personality.
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 21:07
SOURCE: Times-Picayune (4-15-09)
Tulane University history professor Judith Kelleher Schafer loves uncovering the truth, whether it be pleasant or not.
"I need history to tell me what to write," she said. "I couldn't make up this stuff. The truth is so wonderful."
Schafer's third book came about by happy accident. While researching archives of the First District Court of New Orleans and the Daily Picayune from 1846-1862 for her award-winning book, "Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862," she kept noticing all these charges for "keeping a brothel."
"And 99 percent of them were dropped before they went to trial," she said.
She began to keep track of these cases, taking notes as she went, thinking she had an idea for a book. The result is "Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans," a revelatory look at the pre-Civil War period to the Union occupation.
"No one's ever looked at this period, and it was so wide-open," she said. "I think it was a wide-open port town. There were characters like Delia Swift who kept running around and stabbing men.
"New Orleans must have been something else. You could buy liquor in a grocery store by the glass. And the politicians are all in it up to their necks, and the landlords were the ones making the money. The police were totally underpaid and understaffed. They didn't even have uniforms. They had badges, but no uniforms."...
"I need history to tell me what to write," she said. "I couldn't make up this stuff. The truth is so wonderful."
Schafer's third book came about by happy accident. While researching archives of the First District Court of New Orleans and the Daily Picayune from 1846-1862 for her award-winning book, "Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862," she kept noticing all these charges for "keeping a brothel."
"And 99 percent of them were dropped before they went to trial," she said.
She began to keep track of these cases, taking notes as she went, thinking she had an idea for a book. The result is "Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans," a revelatory look at the pre-Civil War period to the Union occupation.
"No one's ever looked at this period, and it was so wide-open," she said. "I think it was a wide-open port town. There were characters like Delia Swift who kept running around and stabbing men.
"New Orleans must have been something else. You could buy liquor in a grocery store by the glass. And the politicians are all in it up to their necks, and the landlords were the ones making the money. The police were totally underpaid and understaffed. They didn't even have uniforms. They had badges, but no uniforms."...
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 21:04
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed (4-16-09)
Six years ago this month, the National Museum of Iraq was extensively looted amid the chaos of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. Among the stolen objects was the Mask of Warka, a 5,100-year-old Sumerian artifact that is believed to be one of the earliest surviving representations of a human face. The mask was found buried on an Iraqi farm five months later — but thousands of other precious objects were destroyed or disappeared into the black market.
"We do not know, and we may never know, a great many lessons about how human civilization first arose, because of this disaster," says Lawrence Rothfield, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and a former director of the university's Cultural Policy Center.
In his new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum (University of Chicago Press), Rothfield examines the sacking of the museum and the "slow-motion disaster" of the looting of archaeological sites across Iraq since 2003.
Rothfield recently spoke with The Chronicle's David Glenn. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
Q. Why should the world care about Iraqi antiquities? Doesn't this issue pale in comparison to the war's political struggles and tens of thousands of deaths?
I hear that question sometimes: Why should we care? Why should we worry that all of this material is being brought onto the black market? After all, isn't this making available to the rest of the world the beauty of all these objects that otherwise would not have been available for us to see?
One reason to worry is that this material is being ripped out of its context. The individual intact pieces that fall into the hands of collectors might be beautiful. But most of what we know about the origins of civilization has come from piecing together fragments and reconstructing contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from fragments that looters today would have crushed underfoot...
"We do not know, and we may never know, a great many lessons about how human civilization first arose, because of this disaster," says Lawrence Rothfield, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and a former director of the university's Cultural Policy Center.
In his new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum (University of Chicago Press), Rothfield examines the sacking of the museum and the "slow-motion disaster" of the looting of archaeological sites across Iraq since 2003.
Rothfield recently spoke with The Chronicle's David Glenn. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
Q. Why should the world care about Iraqi antiquities? Doesn't this issue pale in comparison to the war's political struggles and tens of thousands of deaths?
I hear that question sometimes: Why should we care? Why should we worry that all of this material is being brought onto the black market? After all, isn't this making available to the rest of the world the beauty of all these objects that otherwise would not have been available for us to see?
One reason to worry is that this material is being ripped out of its context. The individual intact pieces that fall into the hands of collectors might be beautiful. But most of what we know about the origins of civilization has come from piecing together fragments and reconstructing contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from fragments that looters today would have crushed underfoot...
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 20:33
SOURCE: Email from Princeton University Press to HNN (4-15-09)
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, established at Princeton University, is preparing the authoritative and comprehensive edition of the correspondence and papers of our nation’s third president. Jefferson’s letters are the largest component of the more than 70,000 document copies that have been assembled from over 900 repositories and private collections worldwide. Through the publication of letters and papers received as well as those written by Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson supplants earlier editions of Jefferson’s writings.
The digital edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson currently contains volumes 1-33 of the print volumes, which are published by Princeton University Press. New volumes, including the Retirement Series, will continue to be added upon publication.
Smaller collections of digitized images of Jefferson documents, especially those from the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the University of Virginia, are available on the web sites of those institutions. Researchers will want to rely on the comprehensive chronological, indexed and searchable Princeton University Press print edition and Rotunda digital edition for full transcriptions, explanatory annotation, and contextual information relating to these documents.
The digital edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson currently contains volumes 1-33 of the print volumes, which are published by Princeton University Press. New volumes, including the Retirement Series, will continue to be added upon publication.
Smaller collections of digitized images of Jefferson documents, especially those from the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the University of Virginia, are available on the web sites of those institutions. Researchers will want to rely on the comprehensive chronological, indexed and searchable Princeton University Press print edition and Rotunda digital edition for full transcriptions, explanatory annotation, and contextual information relating to these documents.
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 17:14
SOURCE: China Beat (blog) (4-16-09)
Philip J. Cunningham was a participant and observer of the events in Beijing in 1989. Now Cunningham has a forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989 (Rowman & Littlefield, May 2009) that details his story of the events.
###
If getting caught up in a popular uprising in China has taught me anything, it is that the past, present and future flow together as one with ferocious intensity. Looking back now at the eventful uprising at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 makes it all the more clear that what happened there was shaped by things that came before; and today’s China, basking in a post-Olympic glow and new-found national strength, is still profoundly haunted by the seminal events of 1989, though the topic is strictly taboo in the media and still feared by influential people in the leadership.
I initially got involved in the demonstrations because of my interest in Chinese history, the abstract study of which I had pursued at college and in graduate school. Then I moved to China. Trying to be a little more Chinese and a little less foreign, I immersed myself in Beijing campus life and cultural activities, mostly with Chinese friends. In the time it takes for a new moon to grow full and then wane back into blackness again, I was pulled so deeply into the vortex of living, breathing history-in-the-making that my life would never be the same.
More than any history book I ever read, or any period film I ever worked on, being on the streets of Beijing as history was being made was the most profoundly moving and eye-opening experience of all.
The Tiananmen demonstrations were crushed, cruelly, breaking the implicit pact that the People’s Liberation Army would never turn its guns on the people and burying student activism for many years to come, but not before inspiring millions in China and around the world to push for reform and change, heralding the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The uprising at Tiananmen, though highly controversial in China to this day, would shape many of the choices of the Chinese leadership and has been an unacknowledged inspiration for much of the change that has swept China ever since.
While residing on a Beijing campus in the late 1980’s I found myself up against the rigid social rules, regulations and racial exclusions that dampened the joy of living in an otherwise cordial and engaging environment. In times of stress, I found cycling to Beijing’s most central location a great way to get away from it all. Especially memorable was a bitterly cold winter night in early 1987 when I discovered the beauty of Tiananmen in the moonlight.
The evening started at a local dance hall. I had bicycled there in the company of someone I was fond of but didn’t get to see often. She and I happily danced the night away, sipping nothing more potent than orange soda pop, every fast dance followed by a slow one, as mandated by the cultural commissars of the time, until eleven PM, when we raced back to campus to beat curfew. We got through the side gate of the Shida campus without trouble but by the time we reached our respective dorms they were closed for the night, padlocked shut....
###
If getting caught up in a popular uprising in China has taught me anything, it is that the past, present and future flow together as one with ferocious intensity. Looking back now at the eventful uprising at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 makes it all the more clear that what happened there was shaped by things that came before; and today’s China, basking in a post-Olympic glow and new-found national strength, is still profoundly haunted by the seminal events of 1989, though the topic is strictly taboo in the media and still feared by influential people in the leadership.
I initially got involved in the demonstrations because of my interest in Chinese history, the abstract study of which I had pursued at college and in graduate school. Then I moved to China. Trying to be a little more Chinese and a little less foreign, I immersed myself in Beijing campus life and cultural activities, mostly with Chinese friends. In the time it takes for a new moon to grow full and then wane back into blackness again, I was pulled so deeply into the vortex of living, breathing history-in-the-making that my life would never be the same.
More than any history book I ever read, or any period film I ever worked on, being on the streets of Beijing as history was being made was the most profoundly moving and eye-opening experience of all.
The Tiananmen demonstrations were crushed, cruelly, breaking the implicit pact that the People’s Liberation Army would never turn its guns on the people and burying student activism for many years to come, but not before inspiring millions in China and around the world to push for reform and change, heralding the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The uprising at Tiananmen, though highly controversial in China to this day, would shape many of the choices of the Chinese leadership and has been an unacknowledged inspiration for much of the change that has swept China ever since.
While residing on a Beijing campus in the late 1980’s I found myself up against the rigid social rules, regulations and racial exclusions that dampened the joy of living in an otherwise cordial and engaging environment. In times of stress, I found cycling to Beijing’s most central location a great way to get away from it all. Especially memorable was a bitterly cold winter night in early 1987 when I discovered the beauty of Tiananmen in the moonlight.
The evening started at a local dance hall. I had bicycled there in the company of someone I was fond of but didn’t get to see often. She and I happily danced the night away, sipping nothing more potent than orange soda pop, every fast dance followed by a slow one, as mandated by the cultural commissars of the time, until eleven PM, when we raced back to campus to beat curfew. We got through the side gate of the Shida campus without trouble but by the time we reached our respective dorms they were closed for the night, padlocked shut....
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 16:09
SOURCE: Jay Parini in the Atlantic (5-1-09)
ONE SEEDY BAR on a side street in Key West advertised its wares on a scrawled sign: LIVE GIRLS UPSTAIRS. Beats the alternative, I suppose.
With its invariable August weather and (usually more discreet) invitations to decadence, this tiny island—the southernmost point of the continental United States—has lured countless writers over the years. Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop lived there, and their houses still attract tourists. (Hemingway had the best house, as he would; it’s a museum now, crawling with cats that may be distant relatives of Papa’s own pets.) Novelists, playwrights, and poets continue to hide out from northern winters among the island’s leafy palms and clapboard conch houses, largely ignoring the bawdy revels that take place every night on Duval Street.
And so this year at the Key West Literary Seminar, now well into its third decade, some heavy hitters in the world of historical fiction met for something like pre-spring training. The likes of Gore Vidal, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Matthiessen, Russell Banks, William Kennedy, Marilynne Robinson, and Barry Unsworth were joined by historians such as Eric Foner and David Nasaw to sit in the sun for a week or so and talk about making history.
History is, of course, a made thing. It does not exist by itself in anything like a recognizable form. Indeed, we might all forget where we have been, if we didn’t have somebody to assemble and arrange the little blocks called facts from which history is constructed, artfully or less so. As Foner put it in his keynote address, “Works of history are first and foremost acts of the imagination.” And yet, while history itself has attained the status of social science—though not in the mind of Foner, who has campaigned at Columbia to have his department moved to the humanities—historical fiction has, in the past, been snubbed. The term historical novel was slightly derogatory, summoning visions of pageantry, as in the works of Sir Walter Scott or, more recently, Georgette Heyer or Herman Wouk. History served as a kind of brocade curtain, against which ordinary people (for the most part) strutted their stuff....
With its invariable August weather and (usually more discreet) invitations to decadence, this tiny island—the southernmost point of the continental United States—has lured countless writers over the years. Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop lived there, and their houses still attract tourists. (Hemingway had the best house, as he would; it’s a museum now, crawling with cats that may be distant relatives of Papa’s own pets.) Novelists, playwrights, and poets continue to hide out from northern winters among the island’s leafy palms and clapboard conch houses, largely ignoring the bawdy revels that take place every night on Duval Street.
And so this year at the Key West Literary Seminar, now well into its third decade, some heavy hitters in the world of historical fiction met for something like pre-spring training. The likes of Gore Vidal, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Matthiessen, Russell Banks, William Kennedy, Marilynne Robinson, and Barry Unsworth were joined by historians such as Eric Foner and David Nasaw to sit in the sun for a week or so and talk about making history.
History is, of course, a made thing. It does not exist by itself in anything like a recognizable form. Indeed, we might all forget where we have been, if we didn’t have somebody to assemble and arrange the little blocks called facts from which history is constructed, artfully or less so. As Foner put it in his keynote address, “Works of history are first and foremost acts of the imagination.” And yet, while history itself has attained the status of social science—though not in the mind of Foner, who has campaigned at Columbia to have his department moved to the humanities—historical fiction has, in the past, been snubbed. The term historical novel was slightly derogatory, summoning visions of pageantry, as in the works of Sir Walter Scott or, more recently, Georgette Heyer or Herman Wouk. History served as a kind of brocade curtain, against which ordinary people (for the most part) strutted their stuff....
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 13:39
SOURCE: HAW website (4-9-09)
To members and friends of Historians Against the War,
The HAW Steering Committee has endorsed a new basic statement for HAW, which would replace the 2003 statement that focused on ending the occupation of Iraq. The proposed new statement appears at the end of this message.
We are grateful to all those who gave feedback on a draft of this statement. We are submitting the final statement for ratification by people who are on our "HAW-Info" email list. This is the same process we use to elect HAW's Steering Committee every year.
A YES vote on the new statement is a vote for the following:
-- The new statement would supersede the 2003 statement (available at
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org) in defining broadly HAW's position.
-- It would create a new membership category consisting of people who indicate that they are in substantial agreement (however broadly defined) with the new statement. A list of those who self-identify as HAW members would be maintained for purposes of voting for the Steering Committee and other HAW business.
-- Others who choose not to sign, or neglect to sign, would still get informational mailings.
A NO vote on the new statement is a vote to retain the 2003 statement as an expression of HAW's identity. If NO votes are in the majority, the new statement will stand as an expression by the Steering Committee, not a basic statement of the organization.
Please vote on this statement by April 15 by replying to statement@historiansagainstwar.org. This new statement is posted on our blog, and those who so wish can discuss it at
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/blog/2009/04/haw-info-vote-on-new-haw-statement.html
Are you in favor of adopting the following statement as the new basic statement of HAW? (Please mark an X next to one of the following)
___ Yes
___ No
Statement by Historians Against the War
As historically minded activists, scholars, students, and teachers, we stand opposed to wars of aggression, military occupations of foreign lands, and imperial efforts by the United States and other powerful nations to dominate the internal life of other countries.
In particular, we continue to demand a speedy end to US military involvement in Iraq, and we insist on the withdrawal, not the expansion, of US and NATO military forces in Afghanistan. We also call for a sharp reduction of US military bases overseas, and an end to US financial and military support of regimes that repress their people, or that occupy the territories of other peoples. We favor as well a drastic redirection of national resources away from military spending and toward urgently needed domestic programs.
We deplore the secrecy, deception, and distortion of history, the repeated violation of international law, and the attack on civil liberties
domestically that have accompanied US policies of war and militarism—policies that became especially belligerent in the aftermath of September 11.
We fear that the current, rapidly escalating crisis of global capitalism, which is creating suffering worldwide, will lead to escalating wars abroad and intensifying repression at home. We support solutions to this crisis that seek to enrich the lives and increase the power of people globally, and protect their fundamental human rights. We are unalterably opposed to any attempts to solve the crisis at their expense.
We are aware that, in the words of the late historian William Appleman Williams, "empire as a way of life" has long characterized the United States and is not easily changed. However, we are mindful as well that the current conjunction of international and domestic crises offers an opportunity to alter longstanding destructive patterns. As historians, we
believe that we can and must make a contribution to the broad, international movements for peace, democracy, and environmental and social justice. In pursuing our objectives, we look toward building and joining alliances with a wide variety of intellectual and activist groups that share our concerns.
The HAW Steering Committee has endorsed a new basic statement for HAW, which would replace the 2003 statement that focused on ending the occupation of Iraq. The proposed new statement appears at the end of this message.
We are grateful to all those who gave feedback on a draft of this statement. We are submitting the final statement for ratification by people who are on our "HAW-Info" email list. This is the same process we use to elect HAW's Steering Committee every year.
A YES vote on the new statement is a vote for the following:
-- The new statement would supersede the 2003 statement (available at
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org) in defining broadly HAW's position.
-- It would create a new membership category consisting of people who indicate that they are in substantial agreement (however broadly defined) with the new statement. A list of those who self-identify as HAW members would be maintained for purposes of voting for the Steering Committee and other HAW business.
-- Others who choose not to sign, or neglect to sign, would still get informational mailings.
A NO vote on the new statement is a vote to retain the 2003 statement as an expression of HAW's identity. If NO votes are in the majority, the new statement will stand as an expression by the Steering Committee, not a basic statement of the organization.
Please vote on this statement by April 15 by replying to statement@historiansagainstwar.org. This new statement is posted on our blog, and those who so wish can discuss it at
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/blog/2009/04/haw-info-vote-on-new-haw-statement.html
Are you in favor of adopting the following statement as the new basic statement of HAW? (Please mark an X next to one of the following)
___ Yes
___ No
Statement by Historians Against the War
As historically minded activists, scholars, students, and teachers, we stand opposed to wars of aggression, military occupations of foreign lands, and imperial efforts by the United States and other powerful nations to dominate the internal life of other countries.
In particular, we continue to demand a speedy end to US military involvement in Iraq, and we insist on the withdrawal, not the expansion, of US and NATO military forces in Afghanistan. We also call for a sharp reduction of US military bases overseas, and an end to US financial and military support of regimes that repress their people, or that occupy the territories of other peoples. We favor as well a drastic redirection of national resources away from military spending and toward urgently needed domestic programs.
We deplore the secrecy, deception, and distortion of history, the repeated violation of international law, and the attack on civil liberties
domestically that have accompanied US policies of war and militarism—policies that became especially belligerent in the aftermath of September 11.
We fear that the current, rapidly escalating crisis of global capitalism, which is creating suffering worldwide, will lead to escalating wars abroad and intensifying repression at home. We support solutions to this crisis that seek to enrich the lives and increase the power of people globally, and protect their fundamental human rights. We are unalterably opposed to any attempts to solve the crisis at their expense.
We are aware that, in the words of the late historian William Appleman Williams, "empire as a way of life" has long characterized the United States and is not easily changed. However, we are mindful as well that the current conjunction of international and domestic crises offers an opportunity to alter longstanding destructive patterns. As historians, we
believe that we can and must make a contribution to the broad, international movements for peace, democracy, and environmental and social justice. In pursuing our objectives, we look toward building and joining alliances with a wide variety of intellectual and activist groups that share our concerns.
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 13:33
SOURCE: Shlomo Avineri in a letter to the editor of the NYT (4-16-09)
[The writer is a professor of political science at Hebrew University.]
In “Hamas Comes Out of Hiding” (Op-Ed, April 13), Paul McGeough writes that when he asked Khalid Mishal, the Hamas leader, if his organization would consider changing its charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction, Mr. Mishal answered, “Not a chance.”
What Mr. McGeough did not mention is that Hamas views all Jews, not just Israel or Zionism, as its enemies.
Its charter goes to some length to state that the Jews (together with the Masons) were responsible for the French and the Communist revolutions; that they instigated World War I to destroy the Ottoman caliphate; that they instigated World War II to make money out of commerce in war materials; that they control world finance and the media; and that they have established numerous secret organizations to achieve world domination.
Some of this is straight out of the anti-Semitic literature of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and some of it — especially the references to the two world wars — is the original contribution of Hamas ideologues.
No Western democracy would tolerate an organization with such views. These are the issues that have to be raised with Hamas leaders by anyone who cares for peace in the Middle East.
Shlomo Avineri
Jerusalem, April 13, 2009
In “Hamas Comes Out of Hiding” (Op-Ed, April 13), Paul McGeough writes that when he asked Khalid Mishal, the Hamas leader, if his organization would consider changing its charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction, Mr. Mishal answered, “Not a chance.”
What Mr. McGeough did not mention is that Hamas views all Jews, not just Israel or Zionism, as its enemies.
Its charter goes to some length to state that the Jews (together with the Masons) were responsible for the French and the Communist revolutions; that they instigated World War I to destroy the Ottoman caliphate; that they instigated World War II to make money out of commerce in war materials; that they control world finance and the media; and that they have established numerous secret organizations to achieve world domination.
Some of this is straight out of the anti-Semitic literature of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and some of it — especially the references to the two world wars — is the original contribution of Hamas ideologues.
No Western democracy would tolerate an organization with such views. These are the issues that have to be raised with Hamas leaders by anyone who cares for peace in the Middle East.
Shlomo Avineri
Jerusalem, April 13, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 13:07
SOURCE: Press Release (4-15-09)
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced today that one of four 2009 Bradley Prizes will be awarded to Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill and one of the world’s most distinguished historians of modern times.
Sir Martin Gilbert will be presented the award during a ceremony to be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, June 3. Each award carries a stipend of $250,000.
“The Bradley Foundation selected Sir Martin Gilbert for his compelling work in historical research and his commitment to freedom,” said Michael W. Grebe, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bradley Foundation. “Sir Martin Gilbert’s seminal work in history has been widely acclaimed, and his work is considered the standard in its field.”
Sir Martin Gilbert was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 for “services to British history and international relations.” He is an Honorary Fellow at Merton College, Oxford and a Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College.
Sir Martin Gilbert is the author of seventy books, as well as twelve historical atlases. His books include Churchill: A Life; Churchill and America; The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy; First World War; and Second World War. He lectures before civic groups, government agencies, and at universities in Great Britain, Canada, Israel, and the United States.
The selection was based on nominations solicited from more than 100 prominent individuals across the country and chosen by a Selection Committee, which included Terry Considine, Pierre S. du Pont, Martin Feldstein, Michael W. Grebe (Bradley Prizes Committee Chair), Charles Krauthammer, Heather Mac Donald, San W. Orr, Jr., Dianne J. Sehler, and Shelby Steele.
“Through the Bradley Prizes, we recognize individuals like Sir Martin Gilbert who have made outstanding contributions, in hopes that others will strive for excellence in their respective fields,” said Mr. Grebe.
Founded in 1985, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it. Its programs support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of American ideas and institutions. Recognizing that responsible self-government depends on enlightened citizens and informed public opinion, the Foundation supports scholarly studies and academic achievement.
Sir Martin Gilbert will be presented the award during a ceremony to be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, June 3. Each award carries a stipend of $250,000.
“The Bradley Foundation selected Sir Martin Gilbert for his compelling work in historical research and his commitment to freedom,” said Michael W. Grebe, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bradley Foundation. “Sir Martin Gilbert’s seminal work in history has been widely acclaimed, and his work is considered the standard in its field.”
Sir Martin Gilbert was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 for “services to British history and international relations.” He is an Honorary Fellow at Merton College, Oxford and a Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College.
Sir Martin Gilbert is the author of seventy books, as well as twelve historical atlases. His books include Churchill: A Life; Churchill and America; The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy; First World War; and Second World War. He lectures before civic groups, government agencies, and at universities in Great Britain, Canada, Israel, and the United States.
The selection was based on nominations solicited from more than 100 prominent individuals across the country and chosen by a Selection Committee, which included Terry Considine, Pierre S. du Pont, Martin Feldstein, Michael W. Grebe (Bradley Prizes Committee Chair), Charles Krauthammer, Heather Mac Donald, San W. Orr, Jr., Dianne J. Sehler, and Shelby Steele.
“Through the Bradley Prizes, we recognize individuals like Sir Martin Gilbert who have made outstanding contributions, in hopes that others will strive for excellence in their respective fields,” said Mr. Grebe.
Founded in 1985, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it. Its programs support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of American ideas and institutions. Recognizing that responsible self-government depends on enlightened citizens and informed public opinion, the Foundation supports scholarly studies and academic achievement.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - 20:09
SOURCE: Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Ed (4-15-09)
I've lauded the piece here before, and was glad to see it in the table of contents for The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills, a volume published last year by Oxford University Press and edited by John H. Summers, a visiting scholar at the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. But on closer examination, I saw that the editor hadn't simply reprinted the appendix. This version of "On Intellectual Craftsmanship" was rather different: it was taken from the text that Mills had mimeographed for his students in the mid-1950s.
This evidence of digging around in the archives left me eager to read more of the editor's own writings about Mills, listed in the bibliography, to see what insights he might have reached while excavating. And as luck would have it, we were introduced a short time later by a mutual friend. This somewhat expedited things, since Summers was just about to publish Every Fury on Earth (The Davies Group), a far-ranging collection of essays, including several on Mills.
Something of the maverick sociologist's feeling for intellectual craftsmanship runs throughout Summers' work. I don't recall the last time I read anything so ardent about scholarship as a means to soul-making -- or, for that matter, so angry at how academic life can distort that process. One of the remarkable things about Summers as a writer is that his frustration never runs to sarcasm -- no small accomplishment.
We recently exchanged a few rounds of e-mail about his work. A transcript of that exchange follows.
Q: You identify yourself as an anarchist and quote passages in which both James Agee and C. Wright Mills did, too. But it's not clear from your work (or theirs, for that matter) just how much this is a matter of feeling an affiliation with some strand of the anarchist movement, and how much it is a matter of personal temperament. What sort of anarchist are you?
A: May I split the difference between temperament and historical exemplars? Politically, anarchism is a democratic method for criticizing power; philosophically, a rough synonym for pragmatism, especially in William James's effort to defend the creativity of perception against the lure of abstraction and intellectualism.
Several years ago I began to notice writers and scholars whom I admired calling themselves anarchists; not only James, Mills, and Agee, but Dwight Macdonald, who called himself a conservative anarchist. What I did not notice, and still have not found, was a serious discussion of these impulses. (As Macdonald said, most educated Americans mistakenly believe anarchism means chaos). So I was drawn to anarchism out of frustrated curiosity. Sensibility had something to do with it, but that's only to say the same thing twice: I don't discover such things about myself but by reading....
This evidence of digging around in the archives left me eager to read more of the editor's own writings about Mills, listed in the bibliography, to see what insights he might have reached while excavating. And as luck would have it, we were introduced a short time later by a mutual friend. This somewhat expedited things, since Summers was just about to publish Every Fury on Earth (The Davies Group), a far-ranging collection of essays, including several on Mills.
Something of the maverick sociologist's feeling for intellectual craftsmanship runs throughout Summers' work. I don't recall the last time I read anything so ardent about scholarship as a means to soul-making -- or, for that matter, so angry at how academic life can distort that process. One of the remarkable things about Summers as a writer is that his frustration never runs to sarcasm -- no small accomplishment.
We recently exchanged a few rounds of e-mail about his work. A transcript of that exchange follows.
Q: You identify yourself as an anarchist and quote passages in which both James Agee and C. Wright Mills did, too. But it's not clear from your work (or theirs, for that matter) just how much this is a matter of feeling an affiliation with some strand of the anarchist movement, and how much it is a matter of personal temperament. What sort of anarchist are you?
A: May I split the difference between temperament and historical exemplars? Politically, anarchism is a democratic method for criticizing power; philosophically, a rough synonym for pragmatism, especially in William James's effort to defend the creativity of perception against the lure of abstraction and intellectualism.
Several years ago I began to notice writers and scholars whom I admired calling themselves anarchists; not only James, Mills, and Agee, but Dwight Macdonald, who called himself a conservative anarchist. What I did not notice, and still have not found, was a serious discussion of these impulses. (As Macdonald said, most educated Americans mistakenly believe anarchism means chaos). So I was drawn to anarchism out of frustrated curiosity. Sensibility had something to do with it, but that's only to say the same thing twice: I don't discover such things about myself but by reading....
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - 18:32
SOURCE: Columbia Spectator (4-9-09)
Reported rumors have spread that Middle East and Asian languages and cultures professor Joseph Massad will be granted tenure.
Yet despite the chatter, most notably reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education on Wednesday, the outcome of the controversial Palestinian scholar’s tenure process remains to be seen and the review has not concluded. The Chronicle’s blog stated that a “professor in the department who did not want to be named said word on the grapevine within the department is that Mr. Massad will be awarded tenure.”
Columbia officials would not confirm, deny, or comment on the status of the confidential tenure process. The committee of faculty responsible for reviewing Massad’s tenure petition—none of whom, according to University policy, are members of his own department—were unavailable to or declined to speak.
Massad, who is in his second round of tenure review consideration, is currently abroad in Egypt and could not be reached for comment. Other members of the MEALAC department declined to comment or were unavailable.
Related Links
Martin Kramer: Why it's not too late to stop Massad from getting tenure
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - 18:29
To the Editor:
David M. Darlington writes, “The 1968 [AHA] annual meeting was moved from Chicago to New York City in protest of the police riot at the Democratic Convention that summer (“123 in 125: A Brief History of AHA Annual Meetings,” Perspectives in History, March 2009). Not really. The AHA was so ardent about guarding what it presented as its political neutrality that it described the change of venue as a matter of convenience, and definitely not protest. Mayor Richard Daley’s cops had teargassed protestors (including me) in the streets of Chicago in August. In December, at its New York meeting, the AHA held a special session on “Professional Organizations and Political Issues,” which put out the “convenience” argument. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. lectured us on the need for “civility,” while Richard Wade explained the impropriety of historians identifying their institutions with their individual political activities (ignoring the fact that he had allowed the use of his name and a photo of himself teaching a University of Chicago class in “Faculty for Daley’s” 1967 campaign literature).
Meantime, upstairs and downstairs in the meeting hotel, two different radical caucuses were meeting. All this was laying the groundwork for the conflicts at the 1969 AHA meeting.1
—Jesse Lemisch
New York City
Note
1. For accounts of 1968 and 1969 in the AHA, see Jesse Lemisch, On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession (Toronto, 1975); Lemisch, “Radicals, Marxists and Gentlemen: A Memoir of Twenty Years Ago,” Radical Historians Newsletter(November 1989).
David M. Darlington writes, “The 1968 [AHA] annual meeting was moved from Chicago to New York City in protest of the police riot at the Democratic Convention that summer (“123 in 125: A Brief History of AHA Annual Meetings,” Perspectives in History, March 2009). Not really. The AHA was so ardent about guarding what it presented as its political neutrality that it described the change of venue as a matter of convenience, and definitely not protest. Mayor Richard Daley’s cops had teargassed protestors (including me) in the streets of Chicago in August. In December, at its New York meeting, the AHA held a special session on “Professional Organizations and Political Issues,” which put out the “convenience” argument. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. lectured us on the need for “civility,” while Richard Wade explained the impropriety of historians identifying their institutions with their individual political activities (ignoring the fact that he had allowed the use of his name and a photo of himself teaching a University of Chicago class in “Faculty for Daley’s” 1967 campaign literature).
Meantime, upstairs and downstairs in the meeting hotel, two different radical caucuses were meeting. All this was laying the groundwork for the conflicts at the 1969 AHA meeting.1
—Jesse Lemisch
New York City
Note
1. For accounts of 1968 and 1969 in the AHA, see Jesse Lemisch, On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession (Toronto, 1975); Lemisch, “Radicals, Marxists and Gentlemen: A Memoir of Twenty Years Ago,” Radical Historians Newsletter(November 1989).
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - 12:23
