I have been following the Churchill affair sporadically for some time now and have posted occasionally on it. Churchill is an exotic creature -- an inhabitant of some of the fringier precincts of the academic left -- and is not representative of most academic thought. That being said, he is hardly alone. There is a hard-core, anti-American left that is represented in a number of academic departments. What is more, some of the positions he takes are not completely indefensible and are recognized as such by most responsible scholars. Moderates who would disagree with many things Prof. Churchill says, and who by no means buy into his broad-scale condemnation of America and western culture, are therefore forced to defend at least some of his assertions and in doing so risk being associated with him.
Unfortunately the excesses of Prof. Churchill and his defenders have attracted the attention of equally exotic creatures of the right. What has ensued is a mud-slinging match that would be amusing if it were on some TV show, but which involves real people and has real-world consequences. In this mess all nuance and fine distinctions are washed out and issues are presented in stark terms that, while emotionally satisfying, preclude honest analysis. The perception is fostered that Churchill accurately represents academic culture and this perception in turn is used to justify political intrusion into academic affairs.
One of the recent volleys in this contratemps was issued by Front Page magazine, a right-wing organ. This is the post to which Rob Kleine directed me, asking for comment. It is titled OSU's Churchill Clones and it discusses some of the participants in Ohio State's "Peace Studies" program. It is too long, and too incoherent, to summarize adequately in this forum. Read the whole thing here. Mostly it's a cut-and-paste job that presents some of the scholars at OSU as being "Churchill Clones" who indoctrinate radical left-wing perspectives into their students. Its conclusion is:
as in the case of dozens of other Peace Studies programs on academic campuses across the country, it’s transparently clear what this program is really about: indoctrinating students with anti-American hatred.
Certainly some of the quotes cherry-picked for the article could be seen as anti-American, but that's the problem. These quotes were selected for their shock value and do not always represent the complete thinking of the writer. To be sure the author of the article, Thomas Ryan, provides several links that an interested reader could follow to gain a better perspective on the program, but let's be real; how many readers are going to bother to do that?
It happens that one of the people attacked in this article is Mark Grimsley, a respected military historian whose work I have seen and with whom I have briefly corresponded. His politics are, so far as I can tell, moderately left of center, but he is hardly the man of the left the article makes him out to be. No matter, he is lumped in with far-left colleagues as a "Churchill clone."
Prof. Grimsley, like me, has been struggling to understand the meaning of the Churchill affair and its implications for academic inquiry. He writes:
I continue to wrestle with the issue of whether the “little Eichmanns” metaphor can be made coherent. As I have said, a major problem with the Ward Churchill essay is that the essay fails to deploy the metaphor effectively, at least as an aid to analysis. As an aid to incitement, it has proven to be quite effective.
This quote, cited in the Front Page article is taken as evidence that Prof. Grimsley agrees with Churchill and only wishes that he had argued his point better. It indicates nothing of the kind! Prof. Grimsley is trying to "wrestle" with Churchill's Eichmann metaphor, which he recognizes has no value as an aid to analysis, and is trying to see if there is a coherent point that can be drawn from it. [Parenthetically, I think not unless you are willing to suspend all standards of moral judgment.] It then charges that Mark is defending Churchill when he writes: “There are those, like me, who think opinions can be valuable especially if they seem dangerous or disagreeable.” This is absurd. Any thinking person recognizes that dangerous and disagreeable opinions can have great heuristic value. You learn by refuting them. In the end, what seems to have steamed Front Page is that Prof. Grimsley has on a number of occasions criticized the magazine and its editor, David Horowitz. Nuf sed.
If you probe deeper into Prof. Grimsley's website you will find a wide range of opinions expressed on several matters. Go ahead and do it -- you'll enjoy it and feel better for it. I'll wait. Here's the link.
Did you notice how reasonable and well-informed the comments were? This is reasoned dialogue. This is what is notably absent in the brouhaha over Churchill. I'll close with a citation from one of Mark's commenters, who signed himself "anonymous."
I would say that the academic discourse (wow! big jargony words! :) )tends to push things towards shades of gray. To quantify and qualify those shades of gray. And rarely if ever admit that black or white, good/evil is out there. In an extreme example you cite, to "understand" what drove the 9/11 attackers rather than condemn them.
The popular political stuff (on both left and right BTW) is big on black/white and not so interested in the gray. The academic approach does give a fuller understanding of the nuances and detail of a topic. That is very good. But its weakness is that it often fails to see that sometimes, there IS a good/evil scenario out there.
Now there is a reasonable assessment of the state of the dialogue. The political and ideological polemics on all sides obscure the gray area wherein scholars seek understanding, perhaps at the expense of moral clarity. There is a real difference between a polemicist like Prof. Churchill and a serious scholar like Prof. Grimsley. The problem with Front Page is that it is so blinded by moral fervor that it cannot see the difference.
Hope that answers your question, Rob.
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