Cross-posted to Cliopatria
Dear John,
Thanks for nothing.
“Sounding Taps,” your September 26 article in National Review Online, is on the surface a sympathetic lament for the supposed marginalization of academic military history. But it is constructed so tendentiously, and overlooks so many relevant facts, that it is really quite misleading.
So misleading, in fact, that you may have done more to harm academic military history than any bunch of “tenured radicals” has managed to do in many years, if ever.
Take, for example, your starting point: Wisconsin’s failure to run a search to fill the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair. You say that “more than $1 million” sits in the endowment. That sounds like a lot, but it isn’t. At Ohio State, the minimum needed to fund an endowed chair is $1.5 million, and even then internal funds are routinely needed to top off the chairholder’s salary. Two million dollars is a more realistic figure nowadays.
You could have started with Ohio State. We do have $1.5 million sitting in a bank to fund an endowed chair in military history, and guess what? My department, which includes numerous historians of gender, class, race, and culture — and even a historian of fashion — voted unanimously to run a search to fill the position at the earliest possible moment. To do less, everyone understood, would have been an insult to the benefactor, General Raymond E. Mason.
Got it? Not just an endowed chair in military history, but one endowed by, and named for, a retired Army general.
That’s how radical my “tenured radical” colleagues are.
Oh, I nearly forgot: a second endowed chair in military history is coming online over the next five years, through the generosity of a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. Not because they’re ashamed of military history, I feel obliged to add, given your genius for subtle distortion of anything that doesn’t fit your agenda, but because they’re modest. Fancy that.
It will not surprise you to know that many wealthy people who wish to give something back to their society are both politically conservative and often fascinated by military history. But they didn’t become wealthy by making bad investments, and your article conveys the distinct message that giving money to support academic military history would be a bad investment.
Again, thanks for nothing.
My field’s professional organization, the Society for Military History, has plans afoot to approach benefactors and “marry them” to receptive history departments in order to create more military history positions.
I sure hope those potential benefactors don’t read National Review Online. You’ve given them good reason for pause. We’ll urge the opportunity, they’ll wave “Sounding Taps” in our face.
Thanks. For Nothing.
You concede that a few military history programs do exist, but their existence hurts the point you want to make, so you blat out the names and hurry on. One name you don’t blat out is Duke University. Another is the University of North Carolina. I wonder why not? Could it be that Duke and UNC are too well known as bastions of liberalism? It’s kinda awkward for your thesis that Duke and UNC have jointly created — actually revived — one of the best military history programs in the country. In fact, since unlike you I like to be honest in my presentation, the Duke-UNC program is as good as ours at Ohio State and arguably even a little better.
But it gets no mention at all from you. I wonder why?
Happen to have heard of COL H.R. McMaster, the Army officer who during Desert Storm won the battle of the 73 Easting and nowadays regularly makes headlines for his tough-minded, innovative approach to the Iraqi insurgency? He got his PhD from UNC, after study in the Duke-UNC military history program.
I could go on, and believe me, I will. That’s the great thing about blogging — I could never win an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel, but I have access to as many electrons as National Review Online.
Let’s face it, pal. You don’t give — as my drill sergeants used to say — a lusty crap about academic military history. Yours are crocodile tears. You’d love to see us disappear, because it would make a nice talking point in the increasingly stupid culture wars.
Well, sorry to disappoint you. Our graves ain’t dug yet. And right now, the only one I see wielding a shovel is you.
Thanks. For. Nothing.
4 Comments
Oddly enough, i’d a different serving of stupid from the nro this morning, on something i’ve experience with.
gad they are worthless.
There are some genuinely very smart people at NRO.
Unfortunately, it also hosts some of the worst echo chamber drivel and partisan hackery I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. I believe the magazine itself is much better, but I’m not particularly inclined to spend money finding out.
I’m having a little trouble understanding your point here. I agree whole heartedly with you concerning Miller’s agenda here and his “tenured radicals” comment was certainly uncalled for but I am completely unconvinced that Miller has “done more to harm academic military history than any bunch of ‘tenured radicals’ has managed to do in many years, if ever.” How so? By not talking about OSU’s decision to fill the position of a faculty member who JUST retired in one, if not the, most renowned military history programs in the country? By not discussing the Duke-UNC program because you claim Miller views them as “bastions of liberalism,” a totally unsupported accusation? I understand that Miller may be painting an excessively dark picture here, which might discourage endowments but lets face it, there is a bias here and there are thousands, including seasoned veterans of the academy, who have no idea what’s occurring. It’s great that OSU, Duke-UNC, A&M, Temple, KSU, and other schools still have strong programs but because they are so few it’s almost impossible for graduates to get academic jobs when they receive their degrees and, as I am well aware, its very difficult to get into these bastions of military history. You’ve been discussing this situation, much more effectively I might add, for years, why are you so bitter when the situation gets some publicity even if it might be a bit partisan? Please tell me it’s more than the “tenured radicals” comment.
Will, you have a lot more confidence in the good will of Mr. Miller than I do.
I’m not bitter with Mr. Miller. I sincerely think his article is pernicious and not in the best interest of my field. You don’t have to share my opinion, but I think I have earned the right to make that assessment.
Don’t insult me by implying that the phrase “tenured radical” could set me off. You’ve read my blog long enough to know better.
If I haven’t convinced you that “Sounding Taps” is intentionally constructed so as to make it sound as if academic military history is already past saving, and that the existing military history programs are like prisoners in the dark, awaiting our turn to be executed, then so be it. But your response doesn’t even begin to give me pause. I have had enough exposure to fund-raising to know that this sort of article, if it goes unchallenged, can easily become a conventional wisdom that will indeed deter benefactors from investing in academic military history.
And it really is appalling in its intellectual dishonesty. The omission of Duke-UNC can hardly be unintentional; it is such a major program that every historian to whom Miller spoke would have mentioned its existence, and Richard H. Kohn at UNC is one of the pillars of academic military history. That he went unquoted in this piece also raised my eyebrows.
But the Wisconsin opener is the real giveaway that Miller was not going to let good reporting get in the way of an ideologically driven fairy tale.
I’ve made a few phone calls today — calls that Miller could easily have made if he were a responsible reporter — and I have a much better understanding of the University of Wisconsin’s situation than Miller supplies.
As I wrote in a comment under my cross-post at Cliopatria:
If the bias against military history is as intense as you believe, and Miller wants to aver, then why the need to be so selective in the use of facts? Why the need to construct the piece so tendentiously? The most convincing arguments are those that play fair with the evidence. “Sounding Taps” has no interest in playing fair.