HISTORIANS and the PUBLIC: ISTORICALLY PEAKING H S REMATURE BITUARIES BIDING AMENTS November/December Vol
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2 Historically Speaking • November/December 2007 HISTORIANS AND THE PUBLIC: ISTORICALLY PEAKING H S REMATURE BITUARIES BIDING AMENTS November/December Vol. IX No. 2 P O , A L CONTENTS Eric Arnesen Historians and the Public: 2 Premature Obituaries, Abiding Laments Eric Arnesen “Darktown Parade”: African 6 bituaries for individuals usu- Americans in the Berlin Olympics of 1936 ally come once, at the end of David Clay Large Oa lifetime; obituaries for social Recentering the West: A Forum phenomena, cultural trends, or institu- Western Exceptionalism and 9 tions, in contrast, can come often and Universality Revisited enjoy a long shelf life. Let me begin with John M. Headley the former before moving on to the lat- Beyond the Sonderweg 12 ter. The recent passing of historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has occasioned, Recentering the West? 14 appropriately, numerous obituaries in Response to John Headley the press. Given his stature within the Constantin Fasolt profession, his participation in govern- Decolonizing “Western Exceptionalism 16 ment, his role as a public figure, and the and Universality” One More Time John M. Hobson scope of his scholarship, it should hardly be surprising that daily newspapers, Response 18 John M. Headley rarely accustomed to probing or assess- ing the lives and works of those of us in A Tocqueville Tide 20 John Lukacs the history business, run tributes to such a prominent and influential figure. Jeremy Black on George III: 23 An Interview But Schlesinger’s death also af- Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa forded commentators the opportunity British Abolitionism and the Question of Moral to resurrect and recycle a decades-old Progress in History: Further Reflections obituary—an ongoing lament, really— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. in a debate on the David Susskind Show, 1979. for a figure of a different sort: the pub- © Bettmann/CORBIS. Comments on Methodism, Abolitionism, 25 and Popular History lic historian. “America lost its last great David Brion Davis public historian” when Schlesinger died, sociation, rejects Tanenhaus’s “dyspeptic assess- Thoughts on Moral Progress in History 26 declared book review editor Sam Tanenhaus in the Eamon Duffy New York Times. Along with the late Richard Hofs- ment,” arguing that it is “redolent of nostalgia for an era when almost all major historians (not to men- Triumph Forsaken? A Forum on Mark Moyar’s tadter and C. Vann Woodward, Schlesinger “stood Revisionist History of the Vietnam War, 1954- at the forefront of a remarkable generation of aca- tion politicians) were white males, and when it was 1965 demic historians” who penned “classic works that possible to speak with the ‘natural authority’ of a Introduction 29 reanimated the past even as they rummaged in it for privileged sector.” Historians today, she notes, “keep Donald A. Yerxa clues to understanding, if not solving, the most our distance [from political leaders] not out of dis- Review of Triumph Forsaken 30 pressing political questions of the present.” The taste for the rough and tumble world of political de- Qiang Zhai combination of their intellectual weight and engage- bate, or lack of keen insight, but to maintain a critical A Vietnamese War 32 ment with issues of contemporary relevance ensured edge that often gets blunted by too close a relation- Keith W. Taylor that “new books by these historians often generated ship with those we study.” Besides, she insists, Tanenhaus’s “vision of the Lone Brilliant Historian Comment on Triumph Forsaken 33 excitement and conveyed an urgency felt not only by Charles Hill other scholars but also by the broader population of who will ride into Washington, D.C., with intellec- tual guns blazing” misses the “less spectacular but Triumph Impossible 35 informed readers.” Younger historians today no Jim Dingeman longer write with the “authority” found in perhaps more enduring impact of a scholarly move- ment that has helped form the foundation for new Commentary on Triumph Forsaken 36 Schlesinger’s work, according to Tanenhaus, for they 2 Robert F. Turner seem “unable to engage the world as confidently as political actors, local, regional, and national.” On her Legal History Blog, Mary Dudziak wonders “what Response to Triumph Forsaken 38 Mr. Schlesinger did.” Compared to the greats like Michael Lind Schlesinger, historians today have “shrunk”; their Tanenhaus has been reading,” for there have been “so many works of history that speak directly to A Real Debate 39 work cannot be “said to have affected how many of ‘how many of us think about current issues.’” Mark Moyar us think about current issues.”1 Tanenhaus is fundamentally wrong, she insists, for History over the Water: Ages of Faith and 42 The last great public historian? Scholars no Ages of Terror longer writing with authority and unwilling to en- historians have not “shrunk from a national stage”; Derek Wilson gage the world? Shrunken historians? If nothing the “plethora of history blogging is a testament to the efforts of many historians to speak to a public Letters 43 else, Tanenhaus struck a raw nerve; his tribute to Schlesinger and his disparagement of the current beyond their classrooms.” And, she bitingly ob- The Historical Society’s 2008 Conference: 45 historical profession have occasioned sharp rebukes serves, if historians have difficulty finding larger au- Migration, Diaspora, Ethnicity, & diences, Tanenhaus, as editor of the New York Times Nationalism in History from those on the Left and the Right. Barbara Weinstein, president of the American Historical As- book review, may be part of the problem. The Times selects which books to review and which to ignore, November/December 2007 • Historically Speaking 3 who will do the reviewing and who won’t. There suspects had been rounded up and shot. The prob- are “plenty of powerful and eloquent historians lem was that historians aren’t writing about sub- speaking to broader issues . Tanenhaus can help jects the general public finds interesting. Or. The achieve his own aims by giving them a broader problem was that textbooks turn Americans off voice.”3 to history. Or. Historians don’t privilege public his- From the other end of the spectrum, William tory so historians don’t write it.”5 Perhaps Tanen- Voegeli goes after Tanenhaus in the pages of the haus was right: Schlesinger’s death marked the Claremont Review of Books. The last thing Voegeli passing of an era. 656 Beacon Street, Mezzanine Boston, MA 02215-2010 wants is for histori- If so, then ph. 617.358.0260 ans—particularly that era has been fx. 617.358.0250 those of liberal or dying for [email protected] www.bu.edu/historic leftist persua- Exactly two decades ago, decades. The sions—to step memories of PRESIDENT Eric Arnesen onto the political Russell Jacoby published his today’s historians stage. “Like two and their critics EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR The Last Intellectuals: Louis A. Ferleger magnets turned the are short, for the wrong way, the laments of 2007 SECRETARY/TREASURER American Culture in the Age Jeffrey Vanke words ‘public intel- are in no way lectual’ (or ‘popular of Academe. The title said novel. Exactly ASSISTANT DIRECTORS, artist’) resist each two decades ago, EDITORS, HISTORICALLY SPEAKING it all. Jacoby’s starting point Joseph S. Lucas other,” he argues. Russell Jacoby Donald A. Yerxa “There’s a tension published his The between engaging was a question: “Where are Last Intellectuals: ASSOCIATE EDITOR, with public life in American Culture HISTORICALLY SPEAKING the younger intellectuals?” Randall J. Stephens order to influence in the Age of Acad- political outcomes, eme. The title said EDITOR, THE JOURNAL OF and following the it all. Jacoby’s THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY George Huppert evidence wherever it leads in pursuit of truth.” For starting point was a question: “Where are the Voegeli, Schlesinger wrote history in the service younger intellectuals?” He was hard pressed to MANAGING EDITOR, of a political cause, New Deal liberalism, which he find them. (To be sure, Jacoby was talking about THE JOURNAL OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY “spent his life promoting . All of his histories all intellectuals, not just historians). Before the Scott Hovey served polemical purposes.” Voegeli appreciates 1960s, there were intellectuals with a “voice and neither Schlesinger’s politics nor his scholarship. presence”; they wrote with “vigor and clarity” for BOARD OF GOVERNORS Schlesinger “leaves behind a mountain of readable “the educated public” and “intellectuals and sym- Charles Banner-Haley Scott Marler but tendentious books and articles, all of them ad- pathizers anywhere.” Mastering a “public idiom” Martin Burke David Moltke-Hansen vocating a liberalism that retains the ability to buy and a “public prose,” they “all sought and found a Peter Coclanis Paul A. Rahe Georgette Dorn Linda K. Salvucci 4 votes but not to change minds.” larger audience.” “[G]raceful writers, they were Claudia B. Haake Joseph Skelly The defensiveness and hostility of these re- “iconoclasts, critics, polemicists, who deferred to Darryl G. Hart Mark Smith sponses notwithstanding, the simple questions no one.”6 As it turned out, they were, as his title John Higginson Marc Trachtenberg Franklin W. Knight Graydon A. Tunstall about historians and the broader public that declares, “the last” of their kind. No new genera- Harriet Lightman Jon Westling Tanenhaus raise remain. But the Times book review tion emerged to replace them. “An intellectual gen- James Livingston Sean Wilentz editor was hardly the first to raise them; they have eration has not suddenly vanished,” he observed; Pauline Maier John Wilson Joyce Malcolm John Womack been circulating for some time. Shortly before “it simply never appeared.”7 Schlesinger’s death, attendees of the American Jacoby’s favored last intellectuals were sus- Historical Association’s (AHA) annual convention tained by bohemia and small journals and wide- Historically Speaking in January would have heard commentary that circulation magazines.