Posts

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Intellectual Silos in Academia

Farm with two silos

Last fall I discussed a debate over colonialism. Bruce Gilley,  a political scientist at  Portland State University  wrote an article titled “The Case For Colonialism.” The reaction was so negative that the article was retracted and the publisher of Gilley’s forthcoming book decided not to publish it. [1]

The response was painfully unfair. Yet in spite of the retraction (the article was re-published in Academic Questions ) his argument sparked debate. The adversarial positions were made clear.

All too often in academia, however, one intellectual viewpoint simply ignores another.

In 1994, Joseph Stiglitz wrote the book Whither Socialism? [2] At the time, Stiglitz chaired President Clinton‘s Council of Economic Advisors; in 2001 he received the Nobel Prize. In other words, he was (and is) a leading economist. Continue reading “Intellectual Silos in Academia”

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Can Historians Save Us from ‘Woke’ Culture?

New York Public Library

These days, many people are claiming that the United States is composed of two groups, oppressors and victims.

We see this in university  “whiteness studies,” which treat white people as inevitable oppressors and black people as inevitable victims. We see it in the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which claims that the true founding of the United States was not 1776 but 1619, when the first African slaves (or possibly indentured servants) arrived at Jamestown, Virginia. Much of “cancel culture” is based on the ideas that white people are guilty for the sins of their ancestors and people of color remain victimized today.

Yet academic historians, by and large, do not look at race this way. And I am not talking just about conservative historians. I mean historians of all perspectives, including historians on the Left.

Why? Because historians direct their attention to “agency.” Continue reading “Can Historians Save Us from ‘Woke’ Culture?”

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A Magnificent Discovery and What It Means to Me

Statue of Abraham Lincoln and freed slave.

Last year, during the height of agitation over whether or not to tear down statues, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park came under scrutiny. The statue, dedicated in 1876, shows Abraham Lincoln freeing a slave who is crouched below him.

The statue’s subordination of the slave to a white man has spurred calls for its removal. And those calls led to the discovery of a previously  unknown letter from  famed orator Frederick Douglass.

The debate over the statue continues, but my purpose here is to discuss the discovery of Douglass’s letter and how it reflects, if I may say so, a bias of historians. Continue reading “A Magnificent Discovery and What It Means to Me”

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My Wishful Thinking, Deflated

Castle on a hill

Some research projects just don’t pan out. I’m going to tell you about one of mine.

Several years ago, for a course on the High Middle Ages, I decided to study primogeniture—the custom of handing property and titles down to the elder son (if there is a son). Primogeniture expanded across Europe in the Middle Ages. In many cases it replaced  partible inheritance, in which property was divided among offspring, with daughters sometimes included.

My hypothesis was that primogeniture contributed to Europe’s distinctive development and thus to the Industrial Revolution. Continue reading “My Wishful Thinking, Deflated”

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War Was the Backdrop of the Western Canon

Roman soldier

This nation, like much of the world, owes an enormous debt to ancient Greece and Rome. Our political framework, our political philosophies, even our government buildings reflect theirs. Many of our noblest ideas descend from the thinking of Greek philosophers, and Latin words and concepts pervade our language. The epic and lyric poetry of the ancients, their public rhetoric, their art, their musings, their values, and their histories have shaped the way we think and write and govern.

That said, we tend to ignore an unpleasant fact: The ancients were almost constantly at war. To a large extent these societies were designed for war. (They also relied heavily on slavery, but that is a topic for another day.).

Just as words like stoicism and sophistry come from the Greeks, so do the terms Pyrrhic victory and Achilles’ heel. Continue reading “War Was the Backdrop of the Western Canon”