On Fri, 26 May 2006 23:35:22 -0700 (PDT) andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
> A very strange view, Carrol. We should ignore a
> well-documented expose of a purported scholar's shoddy
> work, and treat that work as if the evidence of fraud,
> fabrication, misrepresentation, etc. did not exist,
> because the investigation was initially motivated
> --improperly, I agree -- by revulsion against the
> purported scholar's political views?
I think that Carrol's point is that we only delude ourselves to think that what is going on here is a disinterested pursuit of the truth concerning American Indian history and the quality of WC's scholarship on it. What is going on is an attempt to revive McCarthyism. In other words what is going on is a political powerplay against progressive academics. I would submit that for us to throw WC overboard will not put a stop to this. On the contrary, the smell of blood will simply draw in more of the rightwing sharks who will simply go after more targets, including people whose scholarship is much less questionable than WC's. WC has been singled out because he was seen as being especially vulnerable. If he goes down, I can guarantee you that the rightwing hit machine will not stop with him.
You may recall that back in the 1950s, Sidney Hook waged attacks against other scholars that were not dissimilar with the kinds of attacks being waged against WC. For example, Hook went after philosopher, John Somerville, the author of the book, *Soviet Philosophy*. Hook penned a, then famous, attack in the pages of the Nation in which he went full-throttle against Somerville, questioning his academic and scholarly credentials. And indeed, Somerville's book was problematic in certain significant respects (like ignoring Stalin's liquidation of many Soviet philosophers). Given the political climate of the times, do you think that progressives should have then joined Hook's lynch mob against Somerville? After all, Hook went on record as arguing that those academics who were engaged in what he lableled as "conspiracy," such as maintaining membership in the CPUSA should be denied academic freedom.
> But all
> knowledge is interested, driven by some agenda, that
> is a basic principle of Marxism. You write as if only
> investigations motivated by a disinterested love of
> truth merit our attention. I suppose there may be such
> a thing, but it's not very common (certainly not in
> history or the social sciences), and for inquiries so
> motivated to gain any traction they typically have to
> be hooked to some kind of extra-academic interest. In
> fact, on your principle, we can ignore Churchill to
> begin with, because his entire body of work is
> motivated by political, extra-academic interests. I
> don't see anything wrong with that, myself,a s long as
> the work is good.
>
> Maybe you say that it's different because the initial
> basis for investigating WC was itself suspect, an
> attempt to discredit him because of his political
> views. Well, if his work had been really solid, if he
> hadn't been a liar, he wouldn't have gotten into the
> sort of scholarly trouble he's in because of of those
> views. Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein (to name two
> solid controversial scholars) have been pissing off
> people for years, but because their work is honest it
> is their critics who have to lie, distort, and
> misrepresent. Would that we could have said the same
> in the case of WC. Or Bellisides, for that mater.
Well, as I think you know, Finkelstein has struggled for years to get any sort of decent academic position, and had to survive doing adjunct teaching wherever he could since he couldn't get into any sort of a tenure track job. And you, more than anyone here, should be aware that one can publish in the most respectable professional journals, being careful "to cross one's t's and dot one's I's," and still be denied tenure because of your political views. Even if WC's scholarship did not have the kinds of problems it seems to have, he still would be the subject of a political attack that is aimed to deprive him of his job. And the last time that I checked, over at Harvard Law School, Larry Tribe, Charles Ogletree and Alan Dershowitz, were still not in danger of losing their jobs despite their having committed academic misconduct (which the first two have admitted to, and Dershowitz denying having done anything wrong).
>
> Me, well, I'm the leftist that likes Judge Posner and
> Hayek, so I appreciate that real insight can come from
> all sorts of dubious places and questionable
> motivations. Sure, I agree that we ought to oppose
> witchhunts based on people having unpopular views.
> That doesn't mean that people with bad motivations and
> investigations with foul beginnings can't turn up real
> dirt, as this one did. And it maters. As Kelly says,
> WC lied to _us_, he damaged _our_ standing and _our_
> work. He reduces smart people to saying, well, you
> shouldn't treat him worse than other cheats and liars,
> Some defense. Whatever the initial motivations of the
> inquiry, WC has been weighed in the scales and found
> wanting, and that is something we can't pretend we
> don't know.
>
>
> > I'm utterly uninterested in the details of the case
> > because, from the
> > viewpoint of either academic freedom or left
> > politics those details are
> > irrelevant.
> >
> > Here is the principle that the case establishes, and
> > it is a vicious
> > principle:
> >
> > The _origin_ of an investigation, no matter how
> > illegitimate, no matter
> > how poisonous nd contrary to all concepts of
> > academic freedom, is
> > irrelevant.
> >
> > That is the line we have to defend. No Academic
> > investigations triggered
> > by outside political interference.
> >
> > I am somewhat ashamed of the posters on this list
> > and on lbo-talk who
> > have utterly ignored the poisoned roots of this
> > investigation and have
> > contented themselves with the details of the
> > investigation itself. But
> > those details should be thrown out as irrelevant by
> > anyone who believes
> > in academic freedom. They should be thrown out
> > particularly by anyone
> > who accepts the liberal emphasis on procedural
> > legitimacy. The
> > procedures in this case were an outrage from the
> > beginning.
> >
> > ---
>
>