Debating the Causes of the Civil War---Pedagogy style

I've been rereading The Metaphysical Club in preparation for teaching US Intellectual History next semester and I noticed something--Menand argues that slavery was not the cause of the civil war, though it became central to the conflict as the war progressed. In African American history, whether or not you consider slavery to be the primary cause of the civil war reflects upon your seriousness of purpose and dedication to the field (i.e. it is argued that slavery was most definitely the cause of the Civil War). I've decided to use The Metaphysical Club as a jumping off point for a debate about this with my class.

But, hmmmm, what is "this"--is it the history of the way that the cause of the Civil War have been debated, or the causes themselves? Which is more important to discuss with students? When we teach intellectual history, does it behoove us to talk about the birth of an idea and its aftermath all in one day, or stretch it out across the semester? (I ask, because I am contemplating playing this episode of "Backstory" about "Evolution and Creation" in America for my students, but it discusses centuries of science in one hour, rather than discussing the first introduction of Darwin to the US as I had planned.)

To decide which "this" (causes or debate of causes) to discuss, let me first quote Menand:

Post-Civil Rights Intellectual Ferment

In the book I am writing on the history of culture wars, I place the late-twentieth-century controversies about race in the context of the larger war for the soul of America. This includes the ongoing debate about affirmative action, which came to the surface in 1978 with Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court decision that left affirmative action weakened but intact. It also includes the shouting matches over race, poverty, and public policy, intellectual skirmishes carried over from the Moynihan Report conflagration of the 1960s.

That race helped shape the culture wars is hardly surprising, given the degree to which the nation’s racial landscape had been transformed. Racial politics were persistently perplexing, despite the successes of the civil rights movement, largely because, as President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed in a Howard University speech on June 4, 1965, “equality as a right and a theory” was not the same thing as “equality as a fact and as a result.” In other words, the equal rights codified by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not entail actual equality between the races. This fact was made horrifyingly apparent by the numerous riots that plagued American cities in the 1960s, beginning with the riot that exploded in the predominantly black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in August of 1965, resulting in 34 deaths, thousands of injuries, and untold millions in property damage. That this riot occurred only a few days after the Voting Rights Act outlawed discriminatory voting practices highlighted the vast discrepancy between equality as a right and equality as a fact.

2011 3QD PRIZE IN POLITICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Vote for your favorite USIH blogger in the 3QuarksDaily Prize for Best Blog Post in Politics and Social Science.

USIH nominees:

48. Lauren: Going beyond the "Racial Protocol"
49. Tim: Great Books Liberalism
50. Ben: : Leo Strauss, Common Sense, and American Conservatism 
51. Ray: War and the "We"
52. Andrew: “When the Zulus Produce a Tolstoy We Will Read Him”: Charles Taylor and the Politics of Recognition

Top "Global Thinkers" in the U.S.

Two Top Thinkers

The journal Foreign Policy has named its "Top 100 Global Thinkers" for 2011 [h/t 3 Quarks Daily].  Lists like this tend to be arbitrary and even a bit silly. Nevertheless, compared to, e.g., TIME magazine's list of 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, about which I blogged back in August, FP's list is--and might be in the future--of somewhat more interest in U.S. intellectual historians.  FP is a far more intellectually serious publication than TIME. At the very least, FP is closely enough connected to the foreign policy establishment that a list like this probably tells us something about who that policy elite is paying (or perhaps will be paying) attention to.

Rather than review the entire list, I'm going to focus on the U.S. "thinkers" who appear on it (in the interest of inclusivity, I've counted some foreign nationals who permanently reside in the U.S.).

Below the jump you'll find their rankings and links to their FP blurbs....

David Montgomery, 1927-2011

David Montgomery, one of the leading labor historians of his generation, passed away this morning at the age of 84.

I got to know Montgomery's work as a graduate student. The Fall of the House of Labor was one of the most brilliant--and daunting--things I read as a first-year graduate student.  I don't think I ever had any aspirations to be a labor historian, but I remember feeling after reading Montgomery's book that I would simply be incapable of producing anything like that.  The sheer amount of knowledge about the particulars of various late nineteenth-century industrial trades was staggering to me.

I got to know David himself when he and I were among the founders of Historians Against the War (HAW).  Though David's academic work alone is enough to seal his reputation as a major figure in our profession, he also distinguished himself as an activist.  When I first met David, I remember being struck by what an extraordinarily down-to-earth and practical person he was (qualities which were, frankly, sometimes absent from my generation of academic leftists).  Getting to work with David was one of the great pleasures of my years in HAW. 

I heard the news of his passing in an e-mail communication to the HAW membership that included this nice recollection from one of our first co-chairs, Van Gosse:

David wrote the founding statement of HAW, huddling in a small group at the end of our first meeting, at the AHA in January 2003 in Chicago.  He was a very active member of the Steering Committee for some years, always a reasonable, steadying person, but also always up for more action.  He will be much, much missed.  David Montgomery, Presente!

There aren't many obituaries up yet, but there's a nice piece by Jon Wiener about David Montgomery at The Nation.

Marking Time through War

Mary Dudziak's new work on war and time resonates with me. For those unfamiliar with Dudziak's argument you can read about it in her new book "War Time" and in an excellent essay in the California Law Review entitled, "Law, War, and the History of Time," (2010). In brief, Dudziak argues that while we have traditionally assumed that wartime is a time of "exception" (ala Giorgio Agamben), for at least the last ten years it seems wartime has replaced peacetime. As she writes in the law review essay: "Viewing war as an exception to normal life, however, leads us to ignore the longstanding persistence of war."

I couldn't agree more. In a book that I have just completed, entitled "God and War" (due out in July 2012), I noticed and attempted to play upon references to time in the debate over how war shaped different versions of an American civil religion. What follows is a brief review of some of the more interesting comments I found about time and war.

"The Ladder To Nowhere": The New Inquiry, Recent Cultural History, And A Little Bit More

Alex Williams recounted some recent cultural history in yesterday's online New York Times* with an article on the founding of The New Inquiry. You might remember that Casey Nelson Blake and the rest of the panelists from the 2010 USIH Conference plenary finale, titled "Intellectual History for What?", published each of their pieces in The New Inquiry (via Scribd). This honored both the spirit that drove both their panel (i.e. the place of intellectuals, and historian-intellectuals, in the academy) and the founding of The New Inquiry.**

Returning to Williams' write-up on the founding of TNI, I think many USIH contributors and followers will relate to the sense of alienation many "unestablished" youthful thinkers have in relation to the academy and the current intellectual establishment.

A New Glass Ceiling For Women In Academia?

Berit Brogaard at NEW APPS made me aware of this January 2011 AAUP study in relation to women in academia---particularly those working in larger institutions and/or research-oriented schools. Here are the relevant passages from Brogaard's entry:

1. Women do more service work than men in academia. One of the effects of this additional service work appears to be that women are stuck in associate professor positions several years longer than their male colleagues.