Did Conservatives Kill the Liberal Arts?

In a recent Salon article, Katie Billotte, a classics scholar based in Berlin, answers the rhetorical question of my title with an emphatic “yes!” “The conservative movement killed the liberal arts,” she writes, “Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, William F. Buckley and their latter-day heirs.” How? “They have done so through a combination of decreasing access to education and demonizing academic culture and academics. Make no mistake about it: The death of the humanities is an ideologically motivated murder, more like a massacre.”

There are elements of truth in Billotte’s argument. For example, higher education is more expensive, and the liberal arts are underfunded, in part because of an environment of austerity that conservatives have done much to foster. But the good parts of Billotte’s article are lost in a haze of reductionism.

1) Conservatives, or at least Republicans, have not acted alone in implementing economic policies that have made higher education more expensive. Since Clinton, Democrats (albeit, not the same thing as liberals) have been the party of austerity.Austerity limits public subsidies to higher education, one of the main reasons the cost of tuition has risen exponentially. As the cost of college increases, more and more students who do not hail from economically privileged backgrounds opt for vocational or trade majors that they think are more likely to provide them with a job after graduation. It’s not for nothing that “business” (the antithesis of the liberal arts) has been the fastest growing degree since the 1970s and is currently the most popular major in American universities.

2) The cost of education is also rising because of decisions being made by university administrators who might or might not be conservative (chances are the majority of them vote Democratic, for what that’s worth). As Marc Bousquet, among others, has shown, universities operate by the logic of capital. They’re every bit as interested in capital accumulation as are corporations, even though shareholders don’t reap the profits from university accumulation, as with corporations. Capital accumulation in the university works as such: presidents and assorted higher ups make obscene salaries; high-profile football and basketball coaches make even more, and are usually a state’s top paid employee, as the university operates as a sports spectacle; the president uses capital for power and prestige, by funding pet projects; and perhaps most nefariously, capital accumulation in the university has allowed for the growth of a large administrative class. University administration is a career path of its own now. All of this is to say that operating by the logic of capital is bad news for the liberal arts (and also bad news, more central to Bousquet’s point, for the army of adjuncts who are forced to work for little pay and benefits and no job security). I’m not exactly sure how the “conservative movement” is specifically to blame for these developments. Sure, conservatives have a hand in it, but, again, they did not act alone. If the liberal arts were massacred we can’t single out conservatives as the culprits.

3) My last point goes directly to the heart of my research on the culture wars. Has the conservative demonization of professors, which Billotte ritualistically dates to Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, created a context for the death of the liberal arts? It is tough to answer this question one way or the other in empirical fashion. There is little doubt that conservative critics of the academy in the late 1980s and early 1990s succeeded in reorienting many people’s opinions regarding the nation’s institutions of higher learning, reconceptualized as a leftist redoubt, where standards were destroyed and the best of Western Civilization had been replaced by a “politically correct” mish-mash of multicultural nonsense. But to what degree did this create a context for the death of the liberal arts?

In the academic culture wars of the 80s and 90s, the debate often focused on the humanities, specifically the teaching of literature and history. Both sides tended to argue that the humanities were important, though the reasons given for their importance were dramatically at odds. Left-leaning academics argued that learning how to interpret texts would make people better able to think critically about the world around them and to make better political choices. Conservatives argued that the humanities—in Matthew Arnold’s words, “the best which has been thought and said”—were the repository of the values that made America a free nation and thus crucial for young Americans to study. Both sides blamed the other for the diminishing prominence of the humanities. Conservatives like William Bennett, who kick-started the humanities wars with his 1984 report as chairman of the NEH, To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education, contended that students were turned off by the humanities by professors who “present their subjects in a tendentious, ideological manner.” Left-leaning academics, on the other hand, made the same move that Billotte makes in her Salon piece: they blamed conservatives for poisoning the wells, often, they argued, done in bad faith.

The question to you, dear reader, is this: to what extent do you think conservative culture warriors are to blame for the sad state of the liberal arts? I tend to think that my first two points are much more determinative, but I am genuinely curious about what you think.

An Overheard Conversation: Loving History, a Sixteenth Birthday, Blogging, and Youth against the Youth Culture

By Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Yesterday, I suddenly found myself in the position of a fly on the wall in a conversation

between a graduate student in her late twenties and someone who was just about to

turn sixteen--today. It made me think of a different side of the subject of my recent posts

here regarding the drastically increased role of electronics technologies in early twentyfirst-

century life. While I've been voicing my concerns, of necessity, given my focus on

the fate of letter writing, in the more somber registers, I want to sound a different note

here. It's a rather simple one, and hardly new. I just want to add my own hope and

enthusiasm to that of others who see true benefit in some uses of the new medium.

Technology's role is all in how we use it and today some people are using it to

undermine illegitimate hierarchies and unfair limits on aspiration that are placed by the

dominant culture. While there are other examples, I'm thinking of the truly remarkable

blogs--the USIH blog is at the forefront of my mind, of course--that have arisen, outside

of the usual corridors of cultural power and influence. Some of these represent a true

alternative to prevailing practices and, because an alternative is so badly needed, in our

profession as in many others, I want to acknowledge this most emphatically. For all of

the drawbacks, there are heartening developments. One of them is the way in which the

art of blogging can allow people to move forward to fruition of their creative powers even

when the powers that be may never grant them permission or entrance to the club. As

the autodidacts inside and outside of professions prove again and again, industry and

true passion for a subject can constitute their own invitation to the table.

First, the conversation; then just a hint of one of the many reasons why some of the

more penetrating blogs out there today can be so inspiring to someone probably

basically a Luddite at heart (my preference will always be for the real, no matter how

you spin it).

The near sixteen-year-old began by expressing her passion for the liberal arts,

especially history. While to date she had done well at the full range of subjects taught in

school, and cultivated an interest in all aspects of the curriculum, which worked well in

accordance with her aims of doing well, she admitted to being less than excited about

what was on offer in her eleventh-grade science and math classes. She revealed this in

a set of questions revolving around a two-pronged issue for her: what difference there

might be, if any, between the pursuit of science and math, which she saw as lying on

one part of the spectrum, and another part involving history and literature, where she

confessed her greatest interests lay; and whether it was acceptable, at her level, to feel

a strong preference for the history, in particular, over science. Of vital importance in

understanding her tentativeness, perhaps, and the rather turgid response her inquiry

drew, in turn, was that her interlocutor declared herself to be pursuing a doctorate in

chemistry.

The graduate student began with a dubious claim, which maybe you have heard before,

or even hold to be the case. The 15-year old had not heard it before, and, in fact, I too

had been previously spared. It is the idea that the liberal arts has to do with people

whereas science concerns "the world." (The latter words even seemed to be uttered

with a kind of breathlessness that seemed to underscore the limited horizons of the

former, but I could have been hearing things.)

Well, this dichotomy did not sit well with the teenager and I must say, more power to her.

With the utmost respect and even deference, she begged to differ, mostly by means of a

quiet yet persistent line of inquiry. She got across her sense that history, her favorite

subject, also has to do with the world, just as science can have rather a lot to do with

people; in fact, people and the world are so closely entwined as to be difficult to

extricate from one another. The graduate student, conceding nothing, pulled out all the

stops, including referring to the great many people she knew who thought as she did.

The teenager's argument, for it really was one, however cloaked in query, continued to

be conveyed in this deft manner until the topic changed somewhat, along with the tenor

of the conversation, into a question of whether it is really possible to know, at such an

early age, whether one's main interests lay in history and literature or the hard sciences.

The youngster momentarily sought the firmer grounding, usually a sure-fire argument

winner in this age of personal preference, the emotivism Alasdair MacIntyre criticizes,

by reiterating and underscoring the depth of her interest in matters of interpretation over

scientific empiricism, but this was a no go and she soon returned to her style of goodnatured

yet relentless questioning. It was a formidable modus operandi. Her stealth

would have put many a trained rhetorician to shame.

The 15-year-old unfurled a line of reasoning qua inquiry that ran something like this (I'm

paraphrasing for brevity's sake): if she herself already knew that this was where her

greatest passion lay, and that the subject was simply pregnant with potential illumination

and exciting beyond one's wildest imagination, wasn't it okay to go ahead and choose

now, before her own inner judge and jury, securing a verdict that it was fine to cultivate a

vision of a future for herself that involved the liberal arts somehow and did not

necessarily involve math and science? Was it normal and healthy to have this

inclination? It seems to me she was wondering, as teenagers are wont to do, though

often regarding matters less academic, whether her desires were natural and legitimate.

She seemed to be referring to the allowances we tend either to allow or deprive

ourselves regarding the hopes and dreams that populate our hours and days; in the

case of the young, as we desperately await the chance to grow up and enter into adult

work life as equal partners.

The graduate student's response interested and, I admit, surprised me by its certainty.

The years separating the conversation partners couldn't have been much more than

eight or ten. Yet they didn't seem close to seeing eye to eye on this, at least in that

sitting. For the older person, who had clearly now opted for role of advisor, insisted that

the advisee was way too young to cast her lot--that it was premature to bestow her

scholarly affections in this way. Look at me, she said. At your age I thought I would be a

nurse and "now I am a chemist." When asked by her companion whether being a nurse

wasn't also a profession, she was told it is "more of a trade."

There are all sorts of points latent in this rich (for someone in hearing range) exchange,

and you will take from it what you will. But the one that stands out for my purposes is

that here I saw a young person, poised right on the brink of the birthday we often think

of as a kind of landmark or turning point, the onset of adulthood, asking piercing

questions of herself and others about her present and future.

It was impressive.

What was she getting at, really, with this line of questioning? Did she really think she

needed someone else's permission to like some subjects and not others in high school?

Probably not. Did she want confirmation that it was okay not to like science? I doubt it,

as she seemed well aware the graduate student, given her own evident passion for her

own subject, would not provide anything of the sort. What were they arguing over and

why would neither budge?

Maybe it was just an obvious case of love of history coming head to head with love of

science. And the subtext might have been each subject's relative merits in representing

and illuminating "the world."

But also at stake seemed to be the meaning of childhood and adulthood and when and

where the one was to phase into the next. Unconsciously perhaps the fifteen-year-old

was thinking about what it meant to turn sixteen and the twenty-something

unconsciously reminding her that sixteen is not twenty something. We won't know the

inner workings of the unconscious and conscious minds of these incredibly bright and

thoughtful individuals.

It reminded me of the Cat Stevens song from 1970, "Father and Son," that non-duet duet in which the singer-songwriter sings both parts, expressing the tension in the intimate

generational bond, the father's primordial instinct to protect coming up against the son's

desire to be free--to get away from authority, yes, in the sixties' generation gap sort of

way but also to be free to enter full adulthood in that small "r" republican way we study

so much in our field. The song seems to be suggesting that the son wants to be freed

up so he can follow his own dreams in order to find out what unique contribution he can

make. The father counsels patience and conformity:

"It's not time to make a change,

Just relax, take it easy.

You're still young, that's your fault,

There's so much you have to know.

Find a girl, settle down,

If you want you can marry.

Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,

To be calm when you've found something going on.

But take your time, think a lot,

Why, think of everything you've got.

For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not."

It seems to me that the conversation to which I was privy had elements of this same

tension. The dominant culture we have inherited, charted in too-painful detail by recent

historians and social critics, is one that supposedly holds youth in high regard. Yet, as

we know well, by placing youth on a pedestal for people of all ages, as the most

desirable state, it fosters a basic defeatism or nihilism, since our nature, the fortunate

ones among us, is to grow and to age. If we cannot muster enthusiasm for those things,

the very definition of what it is to be alive, can we about anything?

One of the things that is so glorious about bløgging, as I've spelled it elsewhere in order

to distinguish the elegant, deep, worthwhile, and meaningful variety from the not-so, is

that it is, in some cases anyway, turning the mainstream cult of youth on its head, and

along with it some other cultish practices such as a kind of professionalism that

discourages free thought and speech until such time as a person has all of the proper

passports, visas, degrees, tenure and promotion votes--until all of the working papers

are in order. At the foundation of today's culture rests an unquestioned assumption--that

the longer we delay the onset of adulthood the better. This might be partially true

enough when we have an adult world of such dreary predictability as so much of ours

today, which is protected from any serious questioning by elephantine bureaucracies,

protracted credentialing systems, and narrow notions of professionalism that really

mean gatekeeping and homogenization. But it is sure to cut us off from the sustainable

practices and renewable intellectual energies we so badly need in order to marshal

forces against just such stultifying realities. Continually depleting the influx of the sorely

needed powers of new energy and fresh perspectives, all in the name of the protection

and extension of youth, has become a way of life. It never makes sense, but is

especially useless when there aren't even very many credentialized, overprofessionalized

jobs to speak of.

I think high-quality blogging is one of the more exciting things to appear on the

intellectual horizon in recent years. In the case of the contribution of newer scholars,

especially in a time in which the terrible outlook for the future of our field and the

humanities generally is a given, this public intellectual activity has potentially farreaching

ramifications for the prospects of our field and profession--and, to a certain

degree, the state of intellectual, social, and political life more broadly.

I think a lot about that line, the father's charge that you are young and it's your fault. Of

course, that charge is unfair; it goes without saying. How young we are is precisely one

of the only things for which we cannot possibly be held responsible. Then I remember

the wisdom and yearning of that remarkable conversationalist, who turns sixteen this

very day, and I am forced to ask...or can we?

She was quietly insistent on winning the case for at least a hypothetical acceptance that

her scholarly passions and goals might be real ones in the long-term, as if presciently

aware that if she does not press and even win the case now in behalf of her visions of

contribution and fulfillment she might be here tomorrow but her dreams may not. It was

as if she couldn't rest her case until the question was answered in the affirmative.

Happy Birthday, passionate young scholar, wherever you are. I have a feeling your

dreams will still be there with you, wherever you choose to go.

The Foreign Language Requirement

Last week, while I was busy procrastinating revising my conference paper, I became tangentially involved in a minor kerfuffle on Twitter regarding the foreign language requirement for doctoral students in the humanities -- specifically, for PhD students in U.S. history and/or English/American literature. 

The chief interlocutors in the debate were Rosemary Feal of the MLA, Rob Townsend of the AHA, and Erik Loomis, an environmental historian who writes for the blog "Lawyers, Guns & Money."  (Loomis is an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island.)

Feal was touting the MLA's latest recommendation calling for "advanced competence" in a single foreign language for students pursuing PhDs in English, and Townsend seemed to think the same requirement would be a good idea for U.S. history PhDs.  Loomis, on the other hand, decried any foreign language requirement for U.S. history PhDs as an unnecessary bit of academic gatekeeping that smacked of elitism and would alienate students from working-class backgrounds.  He suggested that it would be more useful and valuable for students to learn a programming language.  I will respond to (some of) Loomis's ideas about the needs of working-class students below. 

First, though, I'd like to say a brief word about Twitter -- what it is, and what it ain't.  Twitter is a great medium for making quick synaptic connections -- promoting links, bloggers, blogs, news articles, finding interesting people doing interesting work.  It's a great place for starting conversations, but an infelicitous forum for carrying on a sustained argument.  Generally speaking, a Tweet is less a fully-articulated thought than a place-holder or pointer indicating that one has some Ideas Worth Discussing that Ought to Be Explored in More Depth Elsewhere.  Happily, Erik Loomis has elaborated his ideas on the language requirement in a blog post here. 

Loomis, Feal and Townsend are not the first academics to publicly disagree about the worth or utility of a foreign language requirement.  Indeed, this is a Very Worn Argument.  If you want to have a little fun with JSTOR, do a search for "foreign language requirement" (in quotes) and "history."  Here are the search results, ranked by relevance, and here they are ranked by date (newest to oldest). As you can see, the earliest salvos in this debate are pretty dang old.

Doug Steward's 2006 article, "The Foreign Language Requirement in English Doctoral Programs" (Profession: 203-218), is especially helpful in sketching out a historiography of the debate about the foreign language requirement for literature PhDs.  Steward's assessment of the issue offers a far more nuanced and nicely argued version of the basic idea that informed my incredulous tweet accusing Erik Loomis of advocating provincialism.  Steward writes:

Our linguistic and research biases in the English profession are as "US-centric" as biases usually are in the United States, and that includes a kind of obeisance to the definition of science that obtains here.  Two consequences of such a deference to the scientific research model are narrow specialization...and the utilitarian devaluation of any skill, such as knowing a foreign language, that does not yield quickly tangible research benefits.  These biases also include an unconscionable, if unconscious, complicity in the English language's global hegemony and in the views that language is a transparent medium of communication and that English is the language of the United States....Culturally, English monlingualism means national isolationism and a parochial self-regard.  If this is a problem in the United States English-language population at large, I can think of no good reason to condone such isolationism among the most educated Americans -- those with research degrees... (213-214)

Now, Steward is talking about English (including, of course, American Literature).  Simply substituting "the U.S. history profession" for "the English profession" here would probably represent a wildly inappropriate conflation of one discipline's history and character for another.  So I would be grateful if my colleagues and/or readers who are historians of higher education or have an especially good command of the history of the profession would offer some insights here on whether or not Steward's assessment "in the abstract" might be aptly applied to the particular situation of U.S. history or U.S. historians.  Narrow specialization, complicity in the English language's global hegemony, parochial self-regard -- is this us?  Alternately, if someone can point us to an article that lays out the history of the foreign language requirement (or lack thereof) for U.S. history -- something I was not able to find -- that would be helpful.  Perhaps U.S. history has been less monolingual as a profession or discipline than English or American lit.  And perhaps not.

In the meantime, though, I would like to address one aspect of Loomis's argument.  He writes:

History should be a tool for work. It should be a tool for the work of many of us. And our students are in fact leaving the history major because they don’t see it as valuable for their future. Holding onto the belief that people should major in humanities because they will be smart has its own value, but it’s also not enough to compete in the reality of the 21st century university marketplace, particularly among students with working-class backgrounds. We need to show our students that history does have concrete value for their future, including BUT NOT ONLY, that it will make them more educated and interesting.

It is not clear what Loomis means here by the "reality of the 21st century university marketplace," but I assume he means the academic job market, since he concludes his post with a discussion of the difficulties of finding a tenure-track job.  However -- and regrettably -- the "marketplace" has come to the university in a multitude of ways that reach well beyond the "job market."  I suppose a resigned acknowledgment that the market has triumphed once and for all, that only those skills that are easily instrumentalized and obviously and immediately lucrative are worth the time and money it takes to teach them or learn them, is a sensible and even defensible position.  But it is a presentism with no future -- no future for the academy, and no future for the working-class students about whom Loomis is rightly concerned.

Whatever the degree requirements for getting a PhD in history, the profession of U.S. history as a whole -- I mean the whole field, broadly construed -- requires that there be scholars who are conversant in languages other than English, not only for archival research but also to critically engage with current scholarship.  If the hegemony of "the market" has done anything, it has helped to undermine the paradigm of the singular nation-state with discrete geographic, economic, cultural and epistemic borders.  The field of U.S. history extends far beyond the borders of the United States, and the contours of the field for practitioners within the U.S. seem to be bending towards something like a transnational turn, if that's not already in our rearview mirror.  So the profession will continue to need trained historians who are skilled in languages other than English, and those scholars who do have such language skills might have a competitive edge in "the market."

Besides, if "the market," rather than the profession, is to dictate the skill set that makes for well-trained historians, how are working-class students served by the suggestion that they forgo language training?  It is hard enough to compete for a tenure-track job against star applicants from top-tier programs that will probably not waive the language requirement.  Why make it harder by choosing to further diminish the kind of training offered to PhD students at non-elite institutions?  You do working-class students no favors by telling them to aspire to be less skilled and less prepared than the top tier of their cohort.  If anything, language training should receive more emphasis and support at non-elite schools.  Instead of clamoring to have this requirement waived, PhD students in U.S. history should clamor for more and better language training for undergraduates at their institutions, and more support for intensive language tutoring in their graduate programs.

As a profession, we don't have to stand by and let "the market" decide that a less skilled, less well-trained academic workforce is beneficial.  It's not beneficial to society, and it's not beneficial to the discipline of history.  It's only beneficial to those who seek to deliver education on the cheap.  Working-class students -- and I have been one, and I guess I still am one -- have been shortchanged in so many ways already.  They don't need to be complicit in the further narrowing of their own horizons.  Instead, they -- we -- ought to collaborate with the other disciplines in the humanities -- and especially with the beleaguered foreign language departments -- to contend for a more robust, more rigorous graduate education for all of us.

Tim's Light Reading (3-1-2012): The Information Age, ISIH, Ron Paul, Religious Freedom, And The Minds Of Children

1 (of 5). The History of the Information Age

One could do worse for primary and secondary intellectual history sources on "the information age" (depending on how defines that age) than those listed in this "FiveBooks Interview" with Nicholas Carr. Three of the books Carr recommends are, in fact, histories of some sort. Standage's The Victorian Internet is number one on Carr's list.


2. The Mind of Ron Paul

I noted in the other post that I wasn't interested in writing any more about Rick Santorum. But I didn't promise I wouldn't offer something on history and another contemporary politician. This piece on Ron Paul, for instance, is different. Authored by David Halbfinger for The New York Times, the title signals its historical bent: "Ron Paul’s Flinty Worldview Was Forged in Early Family Life." Here's an excerpt from the articles opening passages:

His father and mother worked tirelessly running a small dairy, and young Ron showed the same drive — delivering The Pittsburgh Press, mowing lawns, scooping ice cream as a soda jerk. He also embraced their politics, an instinctive conservatism that viewed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as villains and blamed Democrats for getting America into wars.

As a young doctor in training, dissecting cadavers or practicing surgery on dogs, he would tell all who would listen about how the country was headed down the wrong path, about the urgency of a strict gold standard and about the dangers of allowing government too much power over people’s lives.

“Once that got ingrained, that became his religion,” said his brother Jerrold, a minister and a psychotherapist. “He says he preaches the ‘gospel of freedom’ — that’s the money quote. Politics became his crusade.”

And the article's thesis: Supporters and detractors often marvel at his consistency since entering politics in 1974, citing it as evidence of either levelheadedness or lunacy. It contrasts sharply with some of the rivals he is trailing in the Republican primaries, including Mitt Romney, who is often accused of ideological flip-flopping.

As the article progresses you learn more about the books he read (e.g. Atlas Shrugged, Doctor Zhivago, The Road to Serfdom), the family roots of his ideology, and his relationship with the Birchers.


3. The ISIH Annual Meeting for 2012

Here's the CFP for the ISIH's 2012 meeting. Here's the title: "The Importance of Learning: Liberal Education and Scholarship in Historical Perspective." Very cool. And the meeting is on U.S. soil!---at Princeton University. Cool. Too bad my travel funds are uncertain for this year because I'd love to go and talk about the great books as liberal learning in a transnational perspective (i.e. jump start my next book project!). Here are the first two sentences from the CFP:

The ideal of liberal education, long a mainstay of Western ideals of higher education, is suddenly under attack the world over. In country after country, the idea that higher education should aim primarily at the cultivation of the intellect and sensibility rather than at preparation for a particular vocation is being swept vigorously aside by more exclusively utilitarian understandings.


4. The Freedoms of Individuals v. The Freedoms of Religious Institutions

Janine Giordano Drake applies historical thinking to the topic at Religion in American History. Here's the big question: Can Catholic social service agencies have it both ways? Can a private, religious organization both manage social services on behalf of the public and also be immune from the checks and balances of that public which invested them with that worldly power?

And here's a taste of her conclusion: We’ve been through all this before. A hundred years ago, Catholics were protesting the overreaching power of Protestant schools, hospitals, and insurance companies in the civic realm. Protestants maintained that this was their “public witness,” even though Catholics held that nobody had the right to a public witness which overshadowed the right of others to follow their alternate Christian conscience.

Check it out.


5. The Minds Of Children and the Role Ideology in Children's Libraries

Writing for The Millions, Alan Levinovitz dissects the issues around the late twentieth-century, and early twenty-first, censorship of certain children's books. The occasion for the article is tomorrow's film opening of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. In the course of reading the article I learned that Tim LaHaye published an iteration of his "Left Behind" for children (of which Levinotvitz rightly observes that the book has never been the object of a censorship drive by Left-leaning parents).

Tim's Light Reading (2-9-2012): History as Philosophical Method, the Philosophy of History, Defending the Liberal Arts, and New Research of Interest

1 (of 7). The History of Philosophy?

The history of philosophy is, strangely to historians, both a subject and a method. As historians (i.e. USIH folks) we only engage the first. Philosophy and philosophers are objects of study, especially to the non-history of ideas crowd in the general category of intellectual history. I've noticed that history of ideas folks are more willing to see themselves as philosophers, at least those who work closest to the Lovejovian tradition. A great many philosophers, however, use history as a means toward understanding present-day philosophical problems. This is particularly prominent in the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. Points 2 and 4 of this recent NEW APPS post by Eric Schliesser go toward my point about history-of-philosophy as method. Here's a reaction to Schliesser from Mohan Matthen.


2. The Philosophy of History

Speaking of philosophy, we should all examine this entry for the "Philosophy of History" in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). I was intrigued by its posing the distinction between an Anglo-American and European philosophy of history. Since we've referred to the SEP here a number of times, we ought to return the favor by offering criticisms of their entry. Perhaps this should be another entry? In any case, here's the opening paragraph as a teaser:

The concept of history plays a fundamental role in human thought. It invokes notions of human agency, change, the role of material circumstances in human affairs, and the putative meaning of historical events. It raises the possibility of “learning from history.” And it suggests the possibility of better understanding ourselves in the present, by understanding the forces, choices, and circumstances that brought us to our current situation. It is therefore unsurprising that philosophers have sometimes turned their attention to efforts to examine history itself and the nature of historical knowledge. These reflections can be grouped together into a body of work called “philosophy of history.” This work is heterogeneous, comprising analyses and arguments of idealists, positivists, logicians, theologians, and others, and moving back and forth over the divides between European and Anglo-American philosophy, and between hermeneutics and positivism.


3. Defending the Liberal Arts for the 21st Century

I know that defenses of the liberal arts are a dime a dozen, but I liked this one by Nannerl Keohane [right] that appeared recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Keohane provides five answers to this question: "How do we defend liberal education against the skeptics—parents, potential students, the media, the marketplace, even some trustees and students?" And then the author provides three ways that "college presidents today [can] best go about making the case for the liberal arts." Keohane forgot the liberal arts sometimes have to be defended from college presidents---tinker toy presidents more interested in buildings that human capital.


4. More on the Alinsky-Obama-Newt Triangle

Two weeks ago I wrote on a new iteration of the culture wars involving Alinsky, Obama, and Newt. This is already old news. But just a few days ago I discovered that two other historians had written on the topic: Michael Kazin one day before me for The New Republic, as well as Thomas Sugrue [right] on February 7 for Salon.com. I appended both of these to my post, but I want to say I was surprised at myself after reading both. Kazin and Sugrue underscored the point about subsidiarity that I should've caught. Shame on me. It takes a village, I guess, to get the history right.


5. America in France

A few days ago Andrew Hartman asked us about the literature on, or histories of, the reception of various foreign intellectuals in the United States. This "Five Books Interview" at The Browser turns the question around and broadens it out. In the piece Richard Kuisel [right], a Georgetown University professor who specializes in Franco-American relations, is asked to list five works that enlighten us on French attitudes toward America. We could probably use a book on this topic for every country in the world, but certain countries stand out presently: Russia, Iran, Pakistan, China, etc. And not only do we need more studies on this, but every world history curriculum in U.S. institutions should have a class covering the topic.


6. Things I Want to Read

From the new Journal of the History of Ideas (73, no. 1):

a. Review-Essay: Learn This Forward but Understand It Backward
NEIL JUMONVILLE

...Who is this "Neil Jumonville" character? ;)

b. Identity and Diversity in the History of Ideas: A Reply to Brian Tierney
S. ADAM SEAGRAVE

...I think I'm going to need to read Tierney to get this one, though I'm intrigued by the title.


7. New Research of Interest--From My JAH-RSO Feed

These are things I _might_ want to read, but am not sure yet (except for one, noted below).

a. McVicar, Michael J., "Reconstructing America: Religion, American Conservatism, and the Political Theology of Rousas John Rushdoony" (PhD Diss, Ohio State University, 2010).

...Is this the definitive work on Rushdoony?

b. Porter, Patrick, "Beyond the American Century: Walter Lippmann and American Grand Strategy, 1943-1950," Diplomacy and Statecraft, 22 (no. 4, 2011), 557-77.

...For you Lippmann fans

c. Sizemore, Michelle R., "National Enchantment: Sovereignty, History, and the Making of U.S. Imperialism, 1790-1850" (PhD Diss, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2010).

...I wonder who directed this? Cronon?

d. Creed, J. Bradley, "The Education Demanded by the People of the United States: Francis Wayland and the Future of American Higher Education," Baptist History & Heritage, 46 (Summer 2011), 7-22.

...Intriguing title, though I can't imagine Wayland philosophizing about higher education in a way that is inclusive of all U.S. citizens.

e. Loss, Christopher P., Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

...This looks like a must read/must review for USIH folks.

f. Maxwell, Donald William, "Unguarded Border: The Movement of People and Ideas between the United States and Canada during the Vietnam War Era" (PhD Diss, Indiana University, 2010).

...Having recently taught a course on the transnational American Midwest, wherein Canada (esp. via the Great Lakes) figured prominently, this is really intriguing to me.

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What do you think of making a separate post of the SEP entry? - TL