It was not the evaluation that said I was a snappy dresser. It was the time fifteen years ago when a student in an introduction to modern history who had identified himself as conservative said that, thanks to our class's discussions of The Communist Manifesto, he wanted to read more Marx. Today, when the notion … Continue reading The Best Compliment I’ve Received on My Teaching
politics
Enlightenment Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Coming fashionably late to the culture-war party, The Economist published a piece this week on the evils of "Critical Race Theory" (CRT), a body of scholarship associated with ideas such as "intersectionality," "white privilege," and (though so far as I am aware it did not originate the phrase, much less create the phenomenon) "systemic racism." Though I … Continue reading Enlightenment Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Men of Their Time, Standards of Ours
It's a common idea that figures of the past -- and what this really means, without exception, is heroic or widely celebrated figures of the past -- should be forgiven what look like misdeeds to us, because they were "men of their time." The claim has several variants, some more specious than others. With respect … Continue reading Men of Their Time, Standards of Ours
Matters of Faith
Tuesday brought news of the latest self-indulgent hoaxing of academic journals by a trio of "academic exiles" intent on establishing that the academy is a at once a hothouse of left-wing ideological orthodoxy and, at the same time, a credulous fantasy-land where anything couched in the language of "theory", however nonsensical, can get published. (How … Continue reading Matters of Faith
Galileo Hates Your “Campus Free Speech” Arguments
"Four centuries after Galileo was silenced", a headline blares, "UK students are still curbing free speech." (At issue was a student union's no-platforming of Julie Bindel and Milo Yiannopoulos.) "Whether it’s Galileo’s heretical rejection of geocentrism, Darwin’s godless theory of creation or the bravery of dissidents resisting oppression all over the world," a Telegraph op-ed against … Continue reading Galileo Hates Your “Campus Free Speech” Arguments
On Mendacious and Shitty Academic Punditry
[I have meant to write a blog post about this almost since my last one went up, but Twitter threads keep coming out instead. What's below is an amplified version of one of them, so apologies in advance to Twitter followers of mine who tire of harangues. The title repurposes, not unfairly I hope, a … Continue reading On Mendacious and Shitty Academic Punditry
Student-Teachers and the Limits of Academic Freedom
The news that this has been a slightly more abysmal year than usual for academic jobs in history has provoked a lot of justified (if impotent) outrage online. An important part of this has centred on the "adjunctification" of the university -- the replacement of tenure-track positions with part-time, temporary gigs -- and with the … Continue reading Student-Teachers and the Limits of Academic Freedom
The Winter of Our Discomfort: Speech, Debate, and Learning on Campus
November approaches, and with it thoughts of #snowflakes. I was called one not too long ago, for arguing that a history magazine should not have published a letter promoting a debunked myth and defaming one of its debunkers. The use of editorial discretion in such a venue, I was told, would be "censorship". As I've … Continue reading The Winter of Our Discomfort: Speech, Debate, and Learning on Campus
History in the Toilet
My last two posts dealt with a troubling letter and article the appeared a peculiar sort of publication: a history magazine. Perched between the worlds of "pop history", an unwieldy category to which both much good work and a good deal of dreck belong, and the often duller and less accessible world of professional scholarship, such … Continue reading History in the Toilet
Crackpot Historicism
The observation that the Trump era is a good time to be a historian is by now cliché. The routine yet outlandish lies that increasingly puncture public discourse; the proliferation of "fake news" and the appropriation by its makers of the label "fake news"; the appeal to "alternative facts" and the self-fulfilling prophecy of "post-truth" … Continue reading Crackpot Historicism
memorious 