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Written by Jay Ruskin

Published: 14 February 2005

The Rocky Mountain Institute's Winning the Oil Endgame is one of the five books being discussed in February in Digging Deeper III, UFPPC's book discussion group, which this month consists of a study circle on peak oil.  --  The following piece on the media response to the release of Winning the Oil Endgame, was published in the spring newsletter of RMI.  --  Winning the Oil Endgame can be downloaded for free on the web (link below)....

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Written by Henry Adams

Published: 19 January 2005

John Summers of Harvard argues in CounterPunch (Jan. 8-9) that academic historians have banished Noam Chomsky’s works from their journals because of “his intentions,” his “anarchist interpretation of responsibility.”[1]  --  Summers sees academic historians, even “radical historians,” as devoted to the service of hierarchies of power, whereas Chomsky “does not leave a clear idea of power in view, in part because his anarchism teaches him to view social status as a form of domination.”  --  NOTE: Another version of Summers’s essay was published a week later by the History News Network (Jan. 17).[2]  --  In preparing the text, HNN editors struck from his text these three passages:  --  (1) “The review [Reviews in American History] did not take up the question of Kissinger's war crimes.”  --  (2) “The difference between a free professional and a university employee ought to be as wide as possible.”  --  (3) “The question of power also explains why even history journals dedicated explicitly to radical analysis have ignored Chomsky.  The Radical History Review has reviewed exactly one of his books, which it called ‘absurd.’  Whatever else the RHR has achieved since its founding in the 1970s, it represents the triumph of the career radical, the academic historian who is not merely unpunished for radical statements, but actively rewarded with money, prestige, book contacts for ‘radical readers,’ and so on.  It is damnably difficult nowadays to tell the difference between a young business executive and a ‘radical historian.’”  --  What a fine, subtle way for the editors of HNN to corroborate Summers’s argument....

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