I believe that science has become too political and dissent regarding the evolutionary position is muzzled by proponents of atheism. This article on atheism shows that the most prominent proponents of atheism in recently history have been atheist.

My comment vis a vis the content of the Declaration course (re: “ok, I suppose this is a beginning. so, are you implying that the very focus or emphasis on marginal subjects (texts by blacks, women, etc) is in itself problematic in the course? If this is so, then there is not much room for a productive discussion”

was an attempt to press for more transparency about the underlying terms that were said and yet left unsaid. I was beginning to feel mute.

Thank you for an articulate reading of the discussion.

I repeat the phrase “aspiration to transcendance”; also the Renaissance idea that the recognition of subjectivity is the means by which we aspire to objectivity. Failure to achieve transcendance is human, but at least may give the students shadows on the wall of the truth. Not even trying for transcendance or objectivity, mere complaisant wallowing in subjectivity–yes, that does strike me as shameful. And liable progressively (!) to curdle; unadulterated subjectivity degenerating into narcissism.

I could teach “conservative history” on the philosophical grounds Tim is offering–and I suppose perforce I might, were I stuck in a department of Churchills, to provide some sort of balance–but I would prefer to try to teach “history.” Which also includes some honest attempt to transcend my own partisan viewpoint–you will note, for example, my suggestion elsewhere to Tim to offer an article by Inga Clendinnen in later versions of his World History course, though I find it “hairpullingly misguided.”

(What *I* want to assign on race is George MacDonald Fraser’s novel *Black Ajax*. A flawed book in spots, but I think it’s brilliantly evocative and, yes, truthful. Worth reading.)

I like to think that any history worth teaching can be taught with an aspiration to objectivity. If OsoRaro is unwilling to make that aspiration, then I suppose I am dubious about the content of his course. If he is willing to make that aspiration, with regards to history he considers important, well and fine. When we engage in the mutual aspiration to objectivity, we contract also to mutual scrutiny, and to mutual justification. I will endure any restriction he does; I believe that this will result in conversation, not silence.

As to the politics of it all … I do rather think the transcendant aspiration to objectivity will result in history looking more like my own particular take on it–but I endeavor to remain capable of surprise. Indeed, I rather think that you are more likely to be surprised out of your narrower self by a commitment toward objectivity than by a luxuriance in the self.

I am reminded at this point that the Geyl essay on Ranke (I believe) that I mentioned to Tim elsewhere talks about how Ranke semi-sublimated a love of God into a love of objective history; I would be interested to know if attitudes toward God still color attitudes toward history. E.g., “Indeed, I rather think that you are more likely to be surprised out of your narrower self by a commitment toward God than by a luxuriance in the self.” It would be interesting to trace back through this conversation and see how many such substitutions would be made by the various participants.

The second is the resurrection in a lot of the conservative complaints about academe of the myth of objectivity, which I thought Novick did a good job of reading last rites over. I do think good scholarship and good teaching should strive to be fair, but fair is not objective. I think all of us in this conversation could use with a re-reading of Garry Wills’ Nixon Agonistes on the “objective” mainstream intellectual of the late 1960s. I had to deal with someone like that in graduate school: a person convinced he was objective, everyone else had opinions or biases. I could see why he thought that, but everyone’s got a politics, everyone’s got a slant, everyone’s got an opinion. Being embarassed to have a politics is like being embarassed to have a nose on the end of your face. The moment you make a statement about why your scholarship matters, or what should be studied, you’re making a political statement. There is nothing shameful in saying so. The shame comes elsewhere: from being seriously unfair, from being flagrantly dishonest in your intellectual standards, from failing to make the classroom an exploratory space, from failing to treat the world like it still has surprises left to show us. The shame comes from being a pompous ass or an officious little bureaucrat. The shame comes from treating the joy and transcendence of knowing as if it’s the daily grind of assembling widgets on the line. When academics are tedious or unimaginative or churlish, then that’s what they are: those words are not synonyms for “being political”.

WW’s critique of the banality of academic “agit-prop” (et al) is cogent, and some of the examples ACTA digs up are indeed egregious, to which ED also speaks. But, there is something about this whole thread that is bothering me, like the tag on the back of a shirt, chaffing. And that, at the risk of sounding like a polemist, is the fact of race in the middle of the entire conversation. And not only race, per se, but fear as well, the fear of change, of different perspectives, of debate, of argument, of the delegitimation of long-accepted myths of who we are as a people. Behind all the talk of professionalism, professional ethics, and standards, are all the lurking and pressing postmodern questions which, seemingly, WW and the angry men and women of the Right dismiss out of hand as irrelevant, unprofessional, *subjective*.

I do not think it an accident that most of this conversation has revolved around an extensive examination of the purported content of a course on the Declaration of Independence. For this is what we are truly speaking of: the meaning and promise of American identity, and the contestation of that not-dead history, the challenge to long-accepted approaches which worked hand-in-hand with the violent suppression of communities of colour in this country.

Not to be too unreconstructed about it (and also because I am a bit tired, I taught tonight and have to attend a seminar early tomorrow, and quite frankly have been pushed a bit by this conversation and am cranky), but I think what strikes me as the true problem here is that for the last forty years, people of colour, women, lesbians and gay men (both communities and academics alike, and yes, that’s right, NOT homosexuals) have not been content to believe the myth of objectivity, especially when it comes to living in a society deeply deformed by white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Buzzwords? Sure, why not? So are “standards” and “professionalism,” which as far as I can tell function in this vein as a polite version of “Shut your pie hole!”

One could read the whole rightward trend in American society as a reaction against the broad changes in American society in the last forty years, especially around WW’s bugaboos of race, gender and sexuality (or as WW put it so nicely, “*much less* … homosexuality”). And while it may indeed be laudable to attempt to understand the eighteenth century mind on its own terms, quite frankly we are living in the 21st century, and neither students nor professors leave their selves (“personhoods,” not an ugly word if you’ve just recently attained it) at the classroom door.

I’m sorry, teaching is not an appendectomy, it’s not filing the court paperwork to enrich the already enriched, and anyone who believes that is, in my humble opinion, not only a fool but also undoubtedly a poor teacher. Such contrasts to other professions might sound good on Fox News, but anyone who actually has thought about being in the classroom should reject them easily out of hand.

What’s funny and pathetic and sad is that as Americans act out their resentments and fears and terrors in conversations like this, this whole (and yes, arguably great) country is going to Hell in a handbasket, not at the hands of “radical” professors with their pet theories and underpaid sinecures, but rapacious plutocrats and an unimaginative and parochial Babbitry with fascist pretensions. How about a report on that?