Neil--

Let's look at the three kinds of "politicization" you (following David Mayer) allege contaminate AGR's latest book.

I do not dispute that there is bias in the historical profession.  As a conservative intellectual, I see it all the time.  In my class room, however, I am well protected by the standards of academic freedom.  My more leftist colleagues have never tried to coerce me to teach in ways that fit with their political agendas.  Contrary to what Mayers says, below, I have never felt any pressure to agree that Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson had a sexual relationship--no pressure there one way or the other, despite the fact that I maintain a studied agnosticism on the issue and insist that the available evidence permits us no certain conclusions.  In my writing and teaching, I am protected by the academic freedom that so many right wing political hacks today decry. My leftist colleagues, at least at JMU, exert no pressure at all on what I do or say or write. (I purposely avoid describing these colleagues as "liberal."   That is because I consider myself to be a liberal, in the sense!
!
 that I am, in my own politics, concerned to maximize human liberty to the extent that ordered liberty permits.  "Ordered liberty" is the operative term here--the modern Republican party no longer concerns itself with this notion, and thus, to my view, no longer deserves to be called "conservative."  I am, unlike, for example, Mr. South, conservative because I do not believe that unfettered democracy is a good thing.  For my reasoning here, I will refer you to the writings of Alexis De Toqueville, and to the less well developed by nonetheless compelling arguments of John Adams, in his 1813 correspondence with Jefferson.)

But I think there is a real sloppiness in the way many people who make the argument you have advanced below move so easily from the general to the particular.  To be clear, I mean this criticism for you, but you are hardly alone in making the error.  There is a name for this--its called the "ecological fallacy."  You and I can share the observation that many modern academics are, very loosely, more concerned to criticize the unjust consequences of political power than to analyze why political power is necessary, or the circumstances that permit it to endure.  Such an orientation of course has political consequences--especially if you believe that humanity is prone to moral and intellectual error, and by nature prone to ethical egoism--flaws that are accentuated by the hyper democratic culture in which we live (that's Toqueville), and even further accentuated by consumer capitalism (see for example Bork, SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH; Bloom, CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND; or Lasch,!
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 CULTURE OF NARCISSISM).  But such a shared observation tells us very little about the book that AGR has actually written.  If we want to claim that *her* book is political, we need to analyze carefully what her book says, and what she asserts her analysis demonstrates.

So here is the challenge.  Please show me how, *IN THE BOOK UNDER DISCUSSION* AGR is "politically correct," "multi-cultural," or "post-modern."  I do not think you can do that, because in fact, when you actually read the work, you will discover that it is none of these things.

We can dismiss the last category out of hand.  Post-modernism is a species of nihilism, and there is nothing the least bit nihilistic about AGR's work.  Quite the contrary--AGR, however flawed her assumptions may be, really does believe she is getting at the truth.  She may be wrong about that--but in her error, she is aspiring to something that is quite evidently not the least bit post-modern.

Nor is her work "multi-cultural."  Multiculturalism is a species of cultural relativism.  And as I argued earlier, AGR is not making the claim that all cultures are morally equal.  Quite the contrary, she is making the claim that some cultures are morally evil, and that this is an objective fact grounded in human essentialism.  In particular, she wants to argue that cultures predicated on chattel slavery are morally evil, because they corrupt human nature.  This argument is incompatible with multi-culturalism.  AGR's argument, in this regard, has conservative implications, not leftist.

Political correctness is the least precise of the three terms you have (following Mayer) introduced to criticize AGR.  As I understand it--and I am open to your thoughts here--political correctness amounts to the claim that some analysts and scholars are ideologically motivated.  If that is an acceptable notion of political correctness, then of course AGR is "politically correct."  But the ideology that motivates her is not leftist.  As I suggested in my earlier post, she is suggesting that the heart and soul of American identity is defined not by ethnicity or class or gender, but by our collective adherence to a body of political ideas.  Moreover, as I read her work--and I would welcome your thoughts here too--she is quite conservative indeed about how she defines those ideas.  They are not culturally relative, linguistically and discursively negotiated claims, but rather *natural* truths, grounded in human essentials.  There is, as I read her, an implicit natural law foundat!
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ion to her argument.  If that is the case, then she can hardly be condemned as a doctrinaire leftist.

Of course, if you want to take issue with me on any of these three points, you will have to read her book.  I would urge you to do so--when you look past the evidentiary claims she makes to the moral argument she is proposing, I suspect you will like what you see.  

All best,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:41:54 -0500
>From: macbd1 <[log in to unmask]>  
>Subject: Re: FW: Censorship and the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings Controversy  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Dr. Hardwick and all,
>
>As so well presented by David N. Mayer, a professor of law and history and member of the Scholars' Commission on the Jefferson-Hemings Matter, there is indeed a politicization of the TJ-SH Myth, which is widespread in the American History world beyond that.  It permeates your profession, due to "...the rise of three related phenomena in higher education -- the 'political correctness' movement, multiculturalism, and post-modernism -- (that) helps explain why the TJ-SH myth has become so readily accepted today, not only by the American general public but also by scholars who should know better."
>
>Among other topics, Mayer goes on to address how many American historians have resigned their memberships in historians' professional organizations (AHA and OAH) due to the growing political radicalism mentioned above.  In fact, Mayer says, and I quote due to its importance: "...scholars feel pressured to accept the Jefferson-Hemings myth as historical truth. White male scholars in particular fear that by questioning the myth -- by challenging the validity of the oral tradition "evidence" cited by some of the Hemings descendants -- they will be called racially "insensitive," if not racist....and, among many proponents of the Jefferson paternity claim there has emerged a truly disturbing McCarthyist-like inquisition that has cast its pall over Jefferson scholarship today." 
>
>Continuing: "Questioning the validity of the claim has been equated with the denigration of African Americans and the denial of their rightful place in American history. In this climate of scholarly and public opinion, it requires great personal courage for scholars to question the Jefferson paternity thesis and to point out the dubious historical record on which it rests."
>
>And, "In both the preface and conclusion to her book, Professor Gordon-Reed quite directly admits that her mission is to expose the "troubling, --i.e., racist -- assumptions made by historians who have denied "the truth of a liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.""
>
>So, with this knowledge, why would anyone wish to read her latest book.  It's yet another one of a series, a 'team' effort intended to tear down Thomas Jefferson's image and legacy, piece by piece.  As to further politicization, it is self-admittance when Joseph Ellis (as at least once-leader of the Monticello Foundation historians' group) says that tearing down Jefferson is paramount as "the dead-white-male who matters most" and the "most valued trophy in the cultural wars."  How more clearly political can this be...!!
>
>How well must this politicization be hid from some scholars, for it not to be readily recognized and openly discussed.
>
>I recommend viewers read Mayer's entire presentation here, it's very informing and only requires a few minutes:
>
>http://www.ashbrook.org/articles/mayer-hemings.html
>
>Mayer doesn't speak alone, there are many more articles by prominent historians in the history journals.
>
>
>Neil McDonald
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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