Required Reading

Not Master Harvard

In an article in the recent Atlantic Monthly Dinesh D'Souza writes of the difficult issues confronting the evolving concept of a liberal education. D'Souza presents a case study of Duke University, and, in a discussion of Black scholars, quotes heavily from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.--the Afro-Am scholar who is leaving Duke to come to Harvard next semester. D'Souza writes:

...Consequently, Gates said, people of color seek not a melting but an affirmation of difference. "That's why most black scholars study something black--we have to study ourselves, to find out what makes us different, and what is most valuable about that experience"...

Gates also discusses his recent history of switching from one university job to another (when the article was written, Gates had moved to Duke from Cornell. Now, after only a year at Duke, he is coming to Harvard):

Breaking into a smile, Gates said, "We black scholars are enjoying our new marketability. Don't tell me about Cornell's loss and Duke's gain. I'm not going from Master Cornell to Master Duke, you know. I am free to make my own choices."

...The reason for the shortage of black Ph.D.'s, Gates said, is that "we don't have a long tradition of academic families." Yet, at the same time, "I don't think white people are trained to see black intelligence. The only way I've seen it happen is through affirmative action." If preferential treatment results in substandard appointments on occasion, Gates isn't concerned. "We have the right to have mediocre scholars, you know. Just like white people. It's racist to say that all blacks have to qualify for the Nobel prize to be hired by universities."

* * *

Somewhere In Between

Joseph S. Nye, speaking on "hard" and "soft" power in a recent edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, before the ground war began:

...Security scholars who said military power didn't matter would be foolish, but those who said it was all military would not have the whole picture either.

* * *

Networkers vs. Calvinists

Charles S. Maler '60, professor of history and a frequent writer on the ethical implications of the Holocaust, offers the following, from the recent New Republic, on ways of writing about history:

Historians can be divided according to their preferences for explanation. On one side are the "networkers"--often more conservative, and generally more influential in Britain--who are intrigued by elites and attribute great events to individuals or small groups. They are especially attuned to psychological explanations, personal or national. They are usually more responsive to the picturesque or the atmospheric. They value style (and hence they often know how to write). On the other side--often more "left," and usually more at home in American or German historiography today--are "systems analysts" who explain outcomes in terms of social and economic (or, increasingly, discursive) processes. They are the profession's Calvinists, more austere and usually less fun to read.