I wouldn't know about Radosh's inability to get a job, and maybe he was blackballed by leftists who ought to have known better. But I do know something about the politics of academia, having been fired from a medium-rank state university for being a red, and then being unable to find an academic job despite a stack of publications in all the standard, mainstream places.
Not all of my travails were due to my politics: I was (at 36 and 6 years out of grad school) too old, too published, and I guess not properlu connected among thes tring pullers. The first two affected Radosh too, and, oddly enough, the way it works is that the more good publications you get, the less employable you are. Moreover in Radosh's cases, having taught for years at a community college was probably enough of a disqualification in itself for him to ever get a job at a major university, however good he was or wasn't.
The sorry fact is that academics are total snobs and sheep animals. If you are not no more than a couple years out of a first rate graduate program with no black marks (having been fired, having taught at a community college, having writen something controversial), then you are fucked, hang it up, goodbye. (So I went into law.)
Finally, I will say that the idea that humanities academe is run bya left wing cabal is absurd. Maybe in English. In philosophy, forget it. History, forget it. jks
> Radosh, as the historian Martin Sklar told me, is a victim of "left-wing
McCarthyism." McCarthy attempted to discredit liberals by labeling them
communists. He sometimes succeeded in getting them fired--not necessarily
because their employers believed they were communists, but because they
feared the publicity. It's an apt analogy but not one that would occur to
the academic zealots of today's left, who, like their distant predecessors,
are blinded by the light of their own self-righteousness.
JOHN B. JUDIS
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