Theory and The History of Education

The May 2011 issue of History of Education Quarterly (HEQ), a journal published by the History of Education Society, focuses on theory, or philosophy, in educational history. The TOC below provides a taste of the issues discussed. Tamura's full article, "Narrative History and Theory," may be of interest to upcoming USIH conference participants.

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History of Education Quarterly
Volume 51, Issue 2 Pages 145 - 271, May 2011

Guest Editor's Note: Theory in Educational History (pages 145–147)
Eileen H. Tamura

Introduction: Theory in Educational History (pages 148–149)
Eileen H. Tamura, Caroline Eick and Roland Sintos Coloma

Articles

Narrative History and Theory (pages 150–157)
Eileen H. Tamura

Oral Histories of Education and the Relevance of Theory: Claiming New Spaces in a Post-Revisionist Era (pages 158–183)
Caroline Eick

Who's Afraid of Foucault? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjects (pages 184–210)
Roland Sintos Coloma

Responses

Probing the Deep: Theory and History (pages 211–217)
Nancy Beadie

History, Theory, and Education (pages 218–228)
John L. Rury

The Proper Place of Theory in Educational History? (pages 229–238)
Wayne J. Urban

What's Foucault Got to Do with It? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjected (pages 239–246)
Ronald E. Butchart

“What Happens in the Historian's Head?” (pages 247–253)
Kathleen Weiler

A Matter of Class (pages 254–263)
Kathleen A. Murphey

Reflections on History, Education, and Social Theories (pages 264–271)
V. P. Franklin

Theory and The History of Education

The May 2011 issue of History of Education Quarterly (HEQ), a journal published by the History of Education Society, focuses on theory, or philosophy, in educational history. The TOC below provides a taste of the issues discussed. Tamura's full article, "Narrative History and Theory," may be of interest to upcoming USIH conference participants.

------------------------------------------------------------

History of Education Quarterly
Volume 51, Issue 2 Pages 145 - 271, May 2011

Guest Editor's Note: Theory in Educational History (pages 145–147)
Eileen H. Tamura

Introduction: Theory in Educational History (pages 148–149)
Eileen H. Tamura, Caroline Eick and Roland Sintos Coloma

Articles

Narrative History and Theory (pages 150–157)
Eileen H. Tamura

Oral Histories of Education and the Relevance of Theory: Claiming New Spaces in a Post-Revisionist Era (pages 158–183)
Caroline Eick

Who's Afraid of Foucault? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjects (pages 184–210)
Roland Sintos Coloma

Responses

Probing the Deep: Theory and History (pages 211–217)
Nancy Beadie

History, Theory, and Education (pages 218–228)
John L. Rury

The Proper Place of Theory in Educational History? (pages 229–238)
Wayne J. Urban

What's Foucault Got to Do with It? History, Theory, and Becoming Subjected (pages 239–246)
Ronald E. Butchart

“What Happens in the Historian's Head?” (pages 247–253)
Kathleen Weiler

A Matter of Class (pages 254–263)
Kathleen A. Murphey

Reflections on History, Education, and Social Theories (pages 264–271)
V. P. Franklin

A (Non-USIH) Intellectual Historian On The History Of Blogging

In a NYR Blog piece titled "Blogging, Now and Then" and posted today, Robert Darnton explores precedents for the means and content of knowledge passed along in non-standard forms. Here are a few salient passages (bolds mine):

- Blogging brings out the hit-and-run element in communication. Bloggers tend to be punchy. They often hit below the belt; and when they land a blow, they dash off to another target. Pow! The idea is to provoke, to score points, to vent opinions, and frequently to gossip.
- The most gossipy blogs take aim at public figures, combining two basic ingredients, scurrility and celebrity, and they deal in short jabs, usually nothing longer than a paragraph. They often appeal to particular constituencies such as Hollywood buffs (Perez Hilton), political junkies (Wonkette), college kids (Ivy Gate), and lawyers (Underneath Their Robes). Politically they may lean to the right (Michelle Malkin) or to the left (Daily Kos). But all of them conform to a formula derived from old-fashioned tabloid journalism: names make news.
- This subject deserves more study, because for all of their explosiveness, the blog-like elements in earlier eras of communication tend to be ignored by sociologists, political scientists, and historians who concentrate on full-scale texts and formal discourse.
- [Look at a] newspaper from eighteenth-century London. It will have no headlines, no bylines, no clear distinction between news and ads, and no spatial articulation in the dense columns of type, aside from one crucial ingredient: the paragraph. Paragraphs were self-sufficient units of news. They had no connection with one another, because writers and readers had no concept of a news “story” as a narrative that would run for more than a few dozen words. News came in bite-sized bits...
- Two to three hundred years ago, the term anecdote meant nearly the opposite of what it means today. Instead of representing a trivial incident or unreliable hearsay, as in the expression “anecdotal evidence,” it conveyed the notion of “secret history”—episodes concerning the private lives of important personages that had actually taken place but could not be published openly. According to contemporary dictionaries and Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the concept derived from Procopius, the Byzantine historian of the sixth century B.C.E.
- Whether exchanged orally in a café, scribbled on a scrap of paper, or combined as paragraphs in a newssheet, anecdotes operated as the primary unit in a system of communication. Many of them found their way into print. They were picked up by famous writers like Voltaire, but more often they appeared in anonymous tracts known as “libelles.”
- The anecdotes constituted the early-modern equivalent of a blogosphere, one laced with explosives; for on the eve of the Revolution, French readers were consuming as much smut about the private lives of the great as they were reading treatises about the abuse of power. In fact, the anecdotes and the political discourse reinforced each other.

So, is Darnton right in that "names make news" in the blog world? Or is that simply a reflection of the fact that we seek specificity and do not prefer philosophical musing via blogs?

Does Darnton have a real sense of the breadth of knowledge conveyed by blogs today? I mean, there seems to be a lot of narrative in blogs. And many, like USIH, are not based on conveying secret knowledge but rather looking at knowledge from other directions. Blogs "today" seem more about diversity and perspective than any ancient definitions of anecdote or the inability, or lack of desire, to read narrative.

Finally, what of Darnton's ominous warning? Are today's libelles pushing political systems to the brink of revolution? If so, I would offer that USIH is not a part of that movement. I would say that we are trying rather to reform knowledge than revolutionize academia. And the diversity of the blogosphere today, apart from USIH, would seem to make historical comparisons to pre-Revolutionary France tentative at best. - TL

A (Non-USIH) Intellectual Historian On The History Of Blogging

In a NYR Blog piece titled "Blogging, Now and Then" and posted today, Robert Darnton explores precedents for the means and content of knowledge passed along in non-standard forms. Here are a few salient passages (bolds mine):

- Blogging brings out the hit-and-run element in communication. Bloggers tend to be punchy. They often hit below the belt; and when they land a blow, they dash off to another target. Pow! The idea is to provoke, to score points, to vent opinions, and frequently to gossip.
- The most gossipy blogs take aim at public figures, combining two basic ingredients, scurrility and celebrity, and they deal in short jabs, usually nothing longer than a paragraph. They often appeal to particular constituencies such as Hollywood buffs (Perez Hilton), political junkies (Wonkette), college kids (Ivy Gate), and lawyers (Underneath Their Robes). Politically they may lean to the right (Michelle Malkin) or to the left (Daily Kos). But all of them conform to a formula derived from old-fashioned tabloid journalism: names make news.
- This subject deserves more study, because for all of their explosiveness, the blog-like elements in earlier eras of communication tend to be ignored by sociologists, political scientists, and historians who concentrate on full-scale texts and formal discourse.
- [Look at a] newspaper from eighteenth-century London. It will have no headlines, no bylines, no clear distinction between news and ads, and no spatial articulation in the dense columns of type, aside from one crucial ingredient: the paragraph. Paragraphs were self-sufficient units of news. They had no connection with one another, because writers and readers had no concept of a news “story” as a narrative that would run for more than a few dozen words. News came in bite-sized bits...
- Two to three hundred years ago, the term anecdote meant nearly the opposite of what it means today. Instead of representing a trivial incident or unreliable hearsay, as in the expression “anecdotal evidence,” it conveyed the notion of “secret history”—episodes concerning the private lives of important personages that had actually taken place but could not be published openly. According to contemporary dictionaries and Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the concept derived from Procopius, the Byzantine historian of the sixth century B.C.E.
- Whether exchanged orally in a café, scribbled on a scrap of paper, or combined as paragraphs in a newssheet, anecdotes operated as the primary unit in a system of communication. Many of them found their way into print. They were picked up by famous writers like Voltaire, but more often they appeared in anonymous tracts known as “libelles.”
- The anecdotes constituted the early-modern equivalent of a blogosphere, one laced with explosives; for on the eve of the Revolution, French readers were consuming as much smut about the private lives of the great as they were reading treatises about the abuse of power. In fact, the anecdotes and the political discourse reinforced each other.

So, is Darnton right in that "names make news" in the blog world? Or is that simply a reflection of the fact that we seek specificity and do not prefer philosophical musing via blogs?

Does Darnton have a real sense of the breadth of knowledge conveyed by blogs today? I mean, there seems to be a lot of narrative in blogs. And many, like USIH, are not based on conveying secret knowledge but rather looking at knowledge from other directions. Blogs "today" seem more about diversity and perspective than any ancient definitions of anecdote or the inability, or lack of desire, to read narrative.

Finally, what of Darnton's ominous warning? Are today's libelles pushing political systems to the brink of revolution? If so, I would offer that USIH is not a part of that movement. I would say that we are trying rather to reform knowledge than revolutionize academia. And the diversity of the blogosphere today, apart from USIH, would seem to make historical comparisons to pre-Revolutionary France tentative at best. - TL

Tim's Light Reading (3/11/2010)

1. Thinking About Public Intellectuals: Harvard is hosting a conference on public intellectuals next month with the theme "Speaking Truth to Power." In the late afternoon on the first day is a symposium that looks to be a future-oriented reprise of our USIH Wingspread panel from last November. Otherwise, the program looks excellent.

2. A Useful Derrida? Or should I say a Derrida that might become useful to historians? Andrew Dunstall, a USIH 2.0 participant last fall, wonders about a new, materialist approach--a retranslation, if you will---to reading Derrida's writing and thinking.

3. The Meaning of the Tea Party: About a week ago David Brooks the amateur political-intellectual historian (again) paralleled the Tea Party to the New Left of the 1960s. (Aside: I agree with his observation about both ~not~ being conservative movements.) Brooks' column came on the heels of a Michael Lind article in Salon the week before where Lind called Glenn Beck the new Abbie Hoffman. A few days after Brooks' piece, Todd Gitlin refuted him in a post at Talking Points Memo. I don't have a dog in this fight because I have no stake in protecting either the Tea Party or the reputation of the sixties New Left. Still, it's an interesting intellectual history discussion because it speaks to how we define both ideology (e.g. paranoia), anti-intellectualism (e.g. paranoia again, radical anti-statism), and atavism as a historiographical causal issue (cyclical-ness).

4. A New Lead-Off Hitter for Grad School Historiography Courses? All intellectual historians love reading about historiography (right?). With that in mind, Adam Arenson makes the case, at Making History Podcast: The Blog, that Allan Megill’s Historical Knowledge, Historical Error (U of C Press, 2007) should replace Peter Novick's That Noble Dream. Discuss. ...In the meantime, it looks like I have yet another book to add to my infinitely expanding reading list.

5. Off-Topic: It looks like expectations for "treatment" by the nursing profession in Amsterdam are on the rise. Boy oh boy. - TL

Tim's Light Reading (3/11/2010)

1. Thinking About Public Intellectuals: Harvard is hosting a conference on public intellectuals next month with the theme "Speaking Truth to Power." In the late afternoon on the first day is a symposium that looks to be a future-oriented reprise of our USIH Wingspread panel from last November. Otherwise, the program looks excellent.

2. A Useful Derrida? Or should I say a Derrida that might become useful to historians? Andrew Dunstall, a USIH 2.0 participant last fall, wonders about a new, materialist approach--a retranslation, if you will---to reading Derrida's writing and thinking.

3. The Meaning of the Tea Party: About a week ago David Brooks the amateur political-intellectual historian (again) paralleled the Tea Party to the New Left of the 1960s. (Aside: I agree with his observation about both ~not~ being conservative movements.) Brooks' column came on the heels of a Michael Lind article in Salon the week before where Lind called Glenn Beck the new Abbie Hoffman. A few days after Brooks' piece, Todd Gitlin refuted him in a post at Talking Points Memo. I don't have a dog in this fight because I have no stake in protecting either the Tea Party or the reputation of the sixties New Left. Still, it's an interesting intellectual history discussion because it speaks to how we define both ideology (e.g. paranoia), anti-intellectualism (e.g. paranoia again, radical anti-statism), and atavism as a historiographical causal issue (cyclical-ness).

4. A New Lead-Off Hitter for Grad School Historiography Courses? All intellectual historians love reading about historiography (right?). With that in mind, Adam Arenson makes the case, at Making History Podcast: The Blog, that Allan Megill’s Historical Knowledge, Historical Error (U of C Press, 2007) should replace Peter Novick's That Noble Dream. Discuss. ...In the meantime, it looks like I have yet another book to add to my infinitely expanding reading list.

5. Off-Topic: It looks like expectations for "treatment" by the nursing profession in Amsterdam are on the rise. Boy oh boy. - TL

Tim's Light Reading (2/19/2010)

1. Historians As Activists---Against Bad History: The History Channel is at it again---meaning irritating professional historians. InsideHigherEd has relayed that a group of political historians are protesting an upcoming series on the Kennedy family. The show's script writer, however, retorts that their complaints are premature---that the show isn't finished yet. Saying that the show is "not a documentary [but] a dramatization," Steve Kronish actually underscores other important issues in history---popularization versus nuance, public history versus traditional practice, the role of money in distorting exchanges about history, and political families who protect their legacies via manipulating archival access and lording over the work of historians (e.g. Kennedy family protectors fearing the work of Joel Surnow, a friend of Rush Limbaugh). Overall of these fears is the forgetfulness by everyone involved (historians ~and~ their subjects) that history is perspectival, subjective, and has always been a field of competing accounts. But it is also true that the free flow of truth---whether by storytelling or in conversation---is often overwhelmed by unequal concentrations of wealth in the hands of political partisans. In other words, propaganda fed by money can make the truth difficult to discern. In this particular case, it looks like there is enough blame to go around.

2. The State of Academe: Sadly, William Pannapacker gets closer and closer to some truths about academe and the life of the mind today with every column he writes. It's hard for some of us (no matter your position or security within the academy) to distance ourselves from the job situation out there, but there can be no question that a future intellectual historian will have to deal with downside of credentialism in the intellectual life, particularly in humanities graduate studies.

3. Another Important Subfield With Identity Issues: Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey authored a piece for InsideHigherEd that documents an "everywhere and nowhere" identity problem in the history of religion in America. The title of their article mimics precisely a line from Wilfred McClay's assessment of USIH that appeared in Historically Speaking last fall. Here's the Schultz-Harvey thesis:

Religion is everywhere around us, and religious historians have written about it in compelling and exciting ways, but within mainstream historiography it has been basically left behind. In a sense, religion is everywhere in modern American history, but nowhere in modern American historiography.

4. The Myth and Reality of Christianity's Role in America's Founding: Continuing somewhat the theme from point #3, the historical question of the Christian origins of America was recently addressed in the NY Times. Presented in the context of textbook adoption and revision discussions for Texas schools, here's the article's thesis:

[Christian conservative activists] hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.

Tim's Light Reading (2/19/2010)

1. Historians As Activists---Against Bad History: The History Channel is at it again---meaning irritating professional historians. InsideHigherEd has relayed that a group of political historians are protesting an upcoming series on the Kennedy family. The show's script writer, however, retorts that their complaints are premature---that the show isn't finished yet. Saying that the show is "not a documentary [but] a dramatization," Steve Kronish actually underscores other important issues in history---popularization versus nuance, public history versus traditional practice, the role of money in distorting exchanges about history, and political families who protect their legacies via manipulating archival access and lording over the work of historians (e.g. Kennedy family protectors fearing the work of Joel Surnow, a friend of Rush Limbaugh). Overall of these fears is the forgetfulness by everyone involved (historians ~and~ their subjects) that history is perspectival, subjective, and has always been a field of competing accounts. But it is also true that the free flow of truth---whether by storytelling or in conversation---is often overwhelmed by unequal concentrations of wealth in the hands of political partisans. In other words, propaganda fed by money can make the truth difficult to discern. In this particular case, it looks like there is enough blame to go around.

2. The State of Academe: Sadly, William Pannapacker gets closer and closer to some truths about academe and the life of the mind today with every column he writes. It's hard for some of us (no matter your position or security within the academy) to distance ourselves from the job situation out there, but there can be no question that a future intellectual historian will have to deal with downside of credentialism in the intellectual life, particularly in humanities graduate studies.

3. Another Important Subfield With Identity Issues: Kevin Schultz and Paul Harvey authored a piece for InsideHigherEd that documents an "everywhere and nowhere" identity problem in the history of religion in America. The title of their article mimics precisely a line from Wilfred McClay's assessment of USIH that appeared in Historically Speaking last fall. Here's the Schultz-Harvey thesis:

Religion is everywhere around us, and religious historians have written about it in compelling and exciting ways, but within mainstream historiography it has been basically left behind. In a sense, religion is everywhere in modern American history, but nowhere in modern American historiography.

4. The Myth and Reality of Christianity's Role in America's Founding: Continuing somewhat the theme from point #3, the historical question of the Christian origins of America was recently addressed in the NY Times. Presented in the context of textbook adoption and revision discussions for Texas schools, here's the article's thesis:

[Christian conservative activists] hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders. The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society.

Tim's Light Reading (11/2/09)

1.a. The History of the Idea of Political Correctness: With a hat tip to John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, this old NYT story and the Wikipedia entry for political correctness got me thinking about how a history of the idea in the United States would look. It would seem that no history of the Culture Wars could be written without some accounting of the roots of p.c. But would it begin with the linguistic turn, as Quiggin briefly asserts? Or is it a Left political phenomenon, as some conservative thinkers assert, and the Wikipedia and NYT articles support? And while I've brought up Wikipedia, the early historical sample given there in relation to the U.S. (Chisholm versus Georgia, 1793) seems to confuse political theory with language usage. But maybe this is just a case of more context being needed with quote?

1.b. Related Aside: Philosophy of the History of Ideas: Is it just me, or can you turn anything into a form of intellectual history by giving the topic Platonic-like form/idea status and then claim to talk about its history? If so, then historians of ideas are going to run into the same critical problem Aristotle had with Plato: How many forms are there? And if *everything* has a form (which it appears even Plato did not assert), then isn't it more useful to talk about the specifics of the real object in front of you rather than the idea? But I suppose that kind of materialism is an anti-historical line of thought. I mean, if everything is unique, then there is no history. But this goes against our common sense. Even if the number of forms is not infinite, the pool of them is large enough that there is plenty of material with which to work. Perhaps it's necessary to being a historian that we believe there's an underlying-but-similar essence about which we can discuss change. The issue then becomes a well-worn one: how much change? In any case, it appears that a certain amount of Platonism, combined with the possibility of change, buttresses our attraction to the history of ideas.

2. The Creation of a Neoliberal Audit Culture in Higher Education: Decasia's Eli Thorkelson meditates on how Margaret Spellings' ill-fated effort to control/dictate/reform higher education accountability has led to a voluntary regimen of outcomes assessment over the past few years. To quote the post, this has created a new "neoliberal audit culture" in higher education (the phrase might be from Morten Levin or Cornell University's Davydd Greenwood).

3. Jennifer Burns' Competition: After Jennifer Burns received excellent exposure for her new book on The Daily Show (#6 here), another biography of Ayn Rand is now on the market: Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made. Here is a review. I like the present-past connections made in Kirsch's review. And Kirsch does mention Burns' effort. Amazon shows the release of Burns' book as Oct. 19 and Weller's as Oct. 27. Our days in the sun do not last long, do they? [BTW: Here is an excellent combined review of Burns' and Heller's books.]

4. Saul Alinsky and Jacques Maritain: About a month ago I learned that Alinsky and the moderate-to-liberal Catholic Thomistic philosopher Maritain maintained correspondence for almost 30 years, from 1945 until Alinsky's death in 1972. This was sort of a "worlds colliding" moment for me. And there's a book about it, no less: Bernard E. Doering's The Philosopher and the Provocateur. I suppose this is a reiteration of a lesson I've learned many times over: Never the let the *reputation* of person's philosophical commitments and social views (whether Left or Right) dictate your assumptions about her/his connections with the rest of the world.

Tim's Light Reading (11/2/09)

1.a. The History of the Idea of Political Correctness: With a hat tip to John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, this old NYT story and the Wikipedia entry for political correctness got me thinking about how a history of the idea in the United States would look. It would seem that no history of the Culture Wars could be written without some accounting of the roots of p.c. But would it begin with the linguistic turn, as Quiggin briefly asserts? Or is it a Left political phenomenon, as some conservative thinkers assert, and the Wikipedia and NYT articles support? And while I've brought up Wikipedia, the early historical sample given there in relation to the U.S. (Chisholm versus Georgia, 1793) seems to confuse political theory with language usage. But maybe this is just a case of more context being needed with quote?

1.b. Related Aside: Philosophy of the History of Ideas: Is it just me, or can you turn anything into a form of intellectual history by giving the topic Platonic-like form/idea status and then claim to talk about its history? If so, then historians of ideas are going to run into the same critical problem Aristotle had with Plato: How many forms are there? And if *everything* has a form (which it appears even Plato did not assert), then isn't it more useful to talk about the specifics of the real object in front of you rather than the idea? But I suppose that kind of materialism is an anti-historical line of thought. I mean, if everything is unique, then there is no history. But this goes against our common sense. Even if the number of forms is not infinite, the pool of them is large enough that there is plenty of material with which to work. Perhaps it's necessary to being a historian that we believe there's an underlying-but-similar essence about which we can discuss change. The issue then becomes a well-worn one: how much change? In any case, it appears that a certain amount of Platonism, combined with the possibility of change, buttresses our attraction to the history of ideas.

2. The Creation of a Neoliberal Audit Culture in Higher Education: Decasia's Eli Thorkelson meditates on how Margaret Spellings' ill-fated effort to control/dictate/reform higher education accountability has led to a voluntary regimen of outcomes assessment over the past few years. To quote the post, this has created a new "neoliberal audit culture" in higher education (the phrase might be from Morten Levin or Cornell University's Davydd Greenwood).

3. Jennifer Burns' Competition: After Jennifer Burns received excellent exposure for her new book on The Daily Show (#6 here), another biography of Ayn Rand is now on the market: Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made. Here is a review. I like the present-past connections made in Kirsch's review. And Kirsch does mention Burns' effort. Amazon shows the release of Burns' book as Oct. 19 and Weller's as Oct. 27. Our days in the sun do not last long, do they? [BTW: Here is an excellent combined review of Burns' and Heller's books.]

4. Saul Alinsky and Jacques Maritain: About a month ago I learned that Alinsky and the moderate-to-liberal Catholic Thomistic philosopher Maritain maintained correspondence for almost 30 years, from 1945 until Alinsky's death in 1972. This was sort of a "worlds colliding" moment for me. And there's a book about it, no less: Bernard E. Doering's The Philosopher and the Provocateur. I suppose this is a reiteration of a lesson I've learned many times over: Never the let the *reputation* of person's philosophical commitments and social views (whether Left or Right) dictate your assumptions about her/his connections with the rest of the world.