Friday Notes

by Cliopatria

The Carnival of Genealogy #45 is up at Creative Gene, Indian History Carnival #4 is up at DesiPundit, and Military History Carnival #13 is up at The Cannon's Mouth/Par la Bouche de nos Canons.

David A. Bell,"The Mirror of History," Slate, 14 April, reviews John Burrow's A History of Histories.

In the NYRB, 1 May, Tony Judt asks"What Have We Learned, If Anything?" from the 20th century. Hat tip to AHA Today.

Public Culture devotes its Winter issue to"The Public Life of History." Its introductory essay is by Bain Attwood, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Claudio Lomnitz. There are online excerpts from Achille Mbembe's"Passages to Freedom: The Politics of Racial Reconciliation in South Africa", Faisal Devji's"Red Mosque", George Chauncey's"How History Mattered: Sodomy Law and Marriage Reform in the United States", and Claudio Lomnitz's"Narrating the Neoliberal Moment: History, Journalism, Historicity". At Chapati Mystery, Manan Ahmed takes issue with Devji's"Red Mosque".

Jane Kramer,"The Petition," New Yorker, 14 April, revisits the tenure battle of the controversial anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj for tenure at Columbia.

Finally, farewell to Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), distinguished Martiniquan poet, playwright, politician, and biographer of Toussaint L'Ouverture.

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Robert Zimmerman - 4/19/2008

Fair enough. I appreciate the feedback.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/19/2008

I don't see anything to delete in what you've said here. Your late interest in Duke lacrosse doesn't give KC the credit he's due for spotting the bogus charges against the team players and the dubious accusations of many Duke faculty members very early on in the case. So your interest focuses exclusively on KC's use of the Duke lacrosse to illustrate his general critique of higher education. It is controversial and we've been through several blog wars over other instances of it here at Cliopatria, so you may have to excuse my ennui over yet another bout of it. Historians commonly debate whether a quotation adequately represents a subject's point of view, whether ellipses have misconstrued it, etc.

Robert Zimmerman - 4/19/2008

It was also my impression that Abu El-Haj's detractors are acting on little more than a reflexive belief that there's a straightforwardly political stand embedded in her critique of Israeli archeology. On the other hand, the political aspects of the faculty reaction at Duke are undeniable. What's common to the two, maybe, is how the real or imagined political element is treated as a self-sufficient explanation and justification.

Your last few sentences get right to the heart of my problem, albeit unintentionally. Johnson is your "most extensively and prestigiously published historian," Silverglate and FIRE are "respectable voices." As far as I can tell neither is living up to their billing in this particular controversy, and that's all I'm claiming to judge. I don't think any of my criticism can fairly be called demeaning, though. If I'm wrong about that I'd appreciate a little more specificity in pointing it out. And I've never written about the rape allegations as anything but false, so I don't know where the "still denying" comes from.

I think it's a fine idea for blog comments to be managed, and I trust your judgment about what's appropriate and constructive. If you don't see a connection between my original observation and the New Yorker article you brought up in your post, or you feel that I have inappropriate ulterior motives, please delete my comments.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/19/2008

I don't understand why Abu El-Haj is automatically assumed to be "of the Left." Her critics have apparently characterized her as such, but I don't see her work as fitting any coherent left/right continuum.
As for KC's position in the Duke lacrosse case, are you still denying that the charges brought against the players were false charges? In that sense, KC certainly was vindicated. Beyond that, your comment isn't addressed to anything he's said at Cliopatria. Most of us are, in fact, tired of the case. KC has faced criticism here a number of times and that criticism is a part of on-going discussions that keep this blog vital. But using comments here on posts that have nothing to do with KC or Duke lacrosse to direct attention to other blogs and other sites that demean his work is a dubious enterprise. You're certainly welcome to take a look at his scholarship and criticize it, if you can. He is probably the most extensively and prestigiously published historian who contributes here regularly. You're welcome to your attack on Harvey Silverglate and FIRE, but they are respectable voices. FIRE's done some very valuable work in attacking speech codes on our campuses. Check it out.

Robert Zimmerman - 4/19/2008

I'm sorry if my comment seemed to be nothing more than an objection to this blog. That wasn't what I had in mind at all. In fact I admired Cliopatria even before you added Claire Potter to the roster. And if I thought there was only a single acceptable point of view about either case it would be foolish of me to stick my neck out here--I expect that between the bloggers and the readers here there are plenty whose point of view is better informed and articulated than mine, on this or any other academic matter. I'm a relative latecomer to the controversy, and I can easily imagine that everyone else is sick to death of it. But I'm interested in is perspective. I was struck by significant parallels between two crusades against professors who are seen as dangerously left-wing. The situations are different in all sorts of ways, and I know far less about the one at Barnard. But the type and quality of the attacks in both cases seem to me to be of a piece.

I've read through a number of posts and exchanges--here, on Acephalous, and elsewhere--that hash out Johnson v. Duke. I haven't come across either attacks or defenses that quite get to the heart of the matter, much less anything that seemed like a vindication. What I've found after going through some of Johnson's posts point by point is reasoning and attention to evidence that is so agenda-driven that there's only one place it can lead. I suspect I'd find the same kind of narrow-minded elaborations of foregone conclusions in the attacks on Abu El-Haj. Isn't it fair to expect analysis from an academic to meet the basic intellectual standards we hold undergraduates to, even when it's advancing one side of a public, partisan debate?

Here is a relatively succinct example of what I'm talking about--criticism that falls short of basic academic and journalistic norms. If I'm missing something, I'd love to hear what it is.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/18/2008

Mr. Zimmerman, I'm familiar with your own blogging about the Duke lacrosse case. Your objection, apparently, has to do with the fact that KC Johnson began his blogging interest in the case here at Cliopatria. Did you bother to learn that KC's point of view was both a) commonly contested here at Cliopatria, most often by me, and b) ultimately largely vindicated? We are a group blog, where dialogue takes place among historians of different points of view. That kind of dialogue was, for too long, lacking on the Duke campus. Beyond that, you might notice that one of KC's critics in the Duke lacrosse case has recently joined Cliopatria. Unless you really think that there's only a single acceptable point of view in matters so conflicted as Duke lacrosse or Abu El-Haj, I'm not at all sure what your complaint with us could be.

Robert Zimmerman - 4/18/2008

Boy does the saga of Nadia Abu El-Haj sound familiar after spending some time immersed in the academic controversy down here at Duke. It's has not only the "blog hooligans" but the academic experts they lean on, who render judgment on the quality and value of the work of other academics that are perfectly aligned with their ideological objections.

I don't want to draw too many conclusions from one article--I'm sure it has its biases and limitations--but it suggests that at Barnard there could and should have been a constructive debate that didn't happen. It seems that there were legitimate issues and grievances that fed the campaign against tenure for Abu El-Haj's. There certainly were legitimate issues and grievances behind criticism of Duke's faculty. They were treated not as grounds for debate or reasoned criticism but as an ideological crowbar.

One of the most sustained and vociferous attacks was launched from this blog. I've looked at it in quite a bit of detail and found that it's not an attack on real people but on self-serving, one-dimensional reductions--little more than ideological automatons. The attacks on Abu El-Haj seem to have been along the same lines. It seems to me that, no matter how righteous the cause, there's absolutely no excuse for this kind of reasoning coming from an academic.