BOOKS: Post 9/11, American historians are not serving their country well
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- Written by Henry Adams
A colleague tells me that this critique of current trends in American popular history is by "a rising star in the British historical profession." ...
BOOKS: Media reception for 'Winning the Oil Endgame'
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- Written by Jay Ruskin
COMMENTARY: Noam Chomskys work is excluded from academic history because of its intention
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- Written by Henry Adams
John Summers of Harvard argues in CounterPunch (Jan. 8-9) that academic historians have banished Noam Chomskys 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 Summerss 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 Summerss argument....