Professor Kirstein Steps Up To Complain
Today is the official publication date of The Professors, and perhaps this will inspire its critics on the left to read the book before they attempt to attack it again. Many, like Professor Michael Berube, think they can avoid its argument by burying its author in verbal sludge. Perhaps that will make the argument disappear. It won't. One of the reasons for this is that anyone who actually reads the book will note that the academics in it, like Michael Berube, are treated civilly and seriously. In other words this is not a book of ridicule or an attempt to dismiss its subjects out of hand by labeling them. It makes a reasoned case and provides the evidence that substantiates the case.
Not all leftsts are like Berube. Take Peter Kirstein for instance, who actually read my book before reviewing it. Professor Kirstein came to everybody's attention when he responded to an earnest letter from an Air Force cadet for help with an academic assembly. This is the subject of Professor Kirstein's first complaint as it appears on his website. The profile in The Professors did -- as he notes -- appear earlier on DiscoverTheNetworks.Org. According to Professor Kirstein, "[The Professors] contains one glaring error and omission. I never called Cadet Robert Kurpiel a 'baby-killer' and notified them months ago when such a charge appeared on the Internet. My e-mail referred to “you and your aggressive baby-killing 'tactics' of collateral damage.” Even though I e-mailed [the editors of DiscoverTheNetworks], they persist in their distortion of what I said in an internationally circulated e-mail. I do believe that our tactics kill babies, that collateral damage is a repulsive term in which the tragic death of innocents is obscured by dispassionate Pentagonese and that we bear the shame and opprobrium of mass murder and the killing of innocents." With all due respect to Professor Kirstein, I believe this is a distinction without a difference, which is why it wasn't "corrected" in The Professors.
Professor Kirstein has another complaint: "While much of the biography of me is accurate and many of my quotations are rendered in a contextual manner that is appropriate, I noted with considerable interest that their coverage of my well-publicised academic freedom case does not mention my suspension, reprimand and website censorship (http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/?p=49). I was told by the Vice President of Academic Administration that nothing would be allowed on my website without his approval. Since the book claims to be a clarion call for academic freedom and the protector of supposed legions of conservative students who are denied it, I find it inconsistent that when it is violated in the case of a progressive professor, it is conveniently ignored. Intellectual honesty would require that the book be impartial and when the left is persecuted by the right, then say so. Note that not one word of my many sanctions are mentioned. This could be the only extensive treatment of my case that does not contain any reference to the academic freedom implications or the significance of sanctions intended to silence my antiwar views and extramural utterances."This is a valid criticism of my book. Even though FrontPage did publish commentary critical of Professor Kirstein's suspension I wasn't aware of it or of the institutional retributions Professor Kirstein suffered, and should have been. If I had been aware I would have defended him, as I defended Ward Churchill's right to publish articles on the Internet, however reprehensible the views expressed in them, without being punished. St. Xavier is a religious institution and so has wide lattitude to discipline and restrict the St. Xavier community. But if St. Xavier subscribes to the tenets of academic freedom it should observe them. I will make this point when I debate Professor Kirstein at St. Xavier in March. This debate was set up Professor Kirstein himself and shows the kind of attitude one has a right to expect from a professor. His attitude is quite different from most professors in my experience, which is extensive. This will be the first time that I have ever been invited to a university by a member of the faculty on his own account. The now famous invitation to me to speak at Hamilton did come from Professor Isserman but it came at my initiative -- I asked him to invite me). Despite the criticism of Professor Kirstein in The Professors, and despite our extreme differences of perspective, he has been gracious and civil throughout our exchanges. Would that Michael Berube and others would learn from his example how scholars (and gentlemen) should behave. Since I have been maligned by people who have not accorded me such courtesy, allow me to employ Professor Kirstein as a witness as to my own behavior: "Mr Horowitz has given me ample opportunity to respond to him with e-mail and participate in relevant discussions for Frontpagemag. He also published critical commentary concerning my suspension. Yet I believe his latest effort could have been more thorough and comprehensive in its portrayal of my activities."Professor Kirstein has yet another complaint: "In the introduction on p. xxiii I am included in a category of professors who were allegedly promoted in rank 'far beyond [their] academic achievement.' They proffer no specific evidence for such a serious accusation. Usually the evaluation of a professor is conducted by a department, a rank and tenure committee and, of course, the appropriate administrative officials such as a provost and president....How non-academics can arrogate to themselves the wisdom and the knowledge to evaluate the credentials of professors at institutions far removed from their sphere of activity is puzzling." Actually, I sought and was given academic counsel on the issues in my book relating to professional standards. This is the commentary on Professor Kirstein's case: "Peter Kirstein is a full professor of History at St. Xavier University. His main scholarly publication is one short book: Anglo Over Bracero: A History of the Mexican Worker in the United States from Roosevelt to Nixon (1977): pp. 113. That is, his main scholarly publication is a 100 page book, published 30 years ago. The title suggests an obvious political orientation in any case. Such a person would be a minor associate professor at any self-respecting university department of history--not a full professor. Such a person would be unlikely nowadays even to get tenure with a book merely 100-pages long. Kirstein's latest "scholarly publication" as listed on his website is an article six pages long on an "online journal", American Diplomacy, from 2001. This is not a major journal, nor even a hard-copy journal. And it was five years ago. It's not about bracero's, either--but an attack on the U.S. decision to drop the Hiroshima bomb." Professor Kirstein says he has published numerous articles in refereed journals. We couldn't find them. If he will send me a list, I will publish it.
Finally Professor Kirstein takes issue with the structure of the argument in the book: "I strongly agree with one of Mr Horowitz’s statements in the introduction: 'Every individual, whether conservative or liberal, has a perspective and therefore a bias. Professors have every right to interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points of view.' (xxvi)
"Yet the book profiles and critiques only progressive academicians and its purported support of academic freedom appears less than comprehensive due to its robust denunciations and public vilifications of professors for activites far removed from the classroom. Group association with Historians Against The War, publications, activist involvement and extramural utterances, that may be radical or societally engaged, fall explicitly under the purview of academic freedom. Yet they are the main substance of criticism in the book’s effort to castigate socially conscious and idealistic professors as “dangerous” and disloyal.
Let me begin my response to this by pointing out that the word "disloyal" does not appear in the book nor is loyalty any part of its argument. The word "dangerous" appears only in the subtitle and was never a part of the conception of the book in its selection of professors to profile or in the way the profiles were written. If these professors are dangerous -- and I believe there is a legitimate sense in which they are -- it is to the academic enterprise itself, and stems from their confusion of activism with scholarship.That is the argument that those who read the book will find in its pages. This arugment concludes with a chapter titled, "The Representative Nature of the Professors Profiled In This Volume." In other words, not the "worst of the worst" or the "most dangerous" -- these are marketers' tags -- but a cohort which I estimate to be between 5% and 10% of the faculty population, or between 30,000 and 60,000 professors nationally. In the book I stay with the lower and more conservative estimate. The reasons for arriving at this percentage are laid out in the text.I don't believe Professor Kirstein is accurate in describing the book's attitude towards Historians Against the War and similar expressions of professorial activism as "robust denunciations and public vilifications." If he can produce any of these, I will publish them in this blog. I do single out organizations like Historians Against The War because in my view they are unprofessional and at odds with academic mission -- and would be so if they were Historians For The War. This is the heart of the argument in my book, and I welcome comments on it by any academic whether included in the profiles or not, who will argue his or her position as civilly and intellectually as Professor Kirstein.
Not all leftsts are like Berube. Take Peter Kirstein for instance, who actually read my book before reviewing it. Professor Kirstein came to everybody's attention when he responded to an earnest letter from an Air Force cadet for help with an academic assembly. This is the subject of Professor Kirstein's first complaint as it appears on his website. The profile in The Professors did -- as he notes -- appear earlier on DiscoverTheNetworks.Org. According to Professor Kirstein, "[The Professors] contains one glaring error and omission. I never called Cadet Robert Kurpiel a 'baby-killer' and notified them months ago when such a charge appeared on the Internet. My e-mail referred to “you and your aggressive baby-killing 'tactics' of collateral damage.” Even though I e-mailed [the editors of DiscoverTheNetworks], they persist in their distortion of what I said in an internationally circulated e-mail. I do believe that our tactics kill babies, that collateral damage is a repulsive term in which the tragic death of innocents is obscured by dispassionate Pentagonese and that we bear the shame and opprobrium of mass murder and the killing of innocents." With all due respect to Professor Kirstein, I believe this is a distinction without a difference, which is why it wasn't "corrected" in The Professors.
Professor Kirstein has another complaint: "While much of the biography of me is accurate and many of my quotations are rendered in a contextual manner that is appropriate, I noted with considerable interest that their coverage of my well-publicised academic freedom case does not mention my suspension, reprimand and website censorship (http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/?p=49). I was told by the Vice President of Academic Administration that nothing would be allowed on my website without his approval. Since the book claims to be a clarion call for academic freedom and the protector of supposed legions of conservative students who are denied it, I find it inconsistent that when it is violated in the case of a progressive professor, it is conveniently ignored. Intellectual honesty would require that the book be impartial and when the left is persecuted by the right, then say so. Note that not one word of my many sanctions are mentioned. This could be the only extensive treatment of my case that does not contain any reference to the academic freedom implications or the significance of sanctions intended to silence my antiwar views and extramural utterances."This is a valid criticism of my book. Even though FrontPage did publish commentary critical of Professor Kirstein's suspension I wasn't aware of it or of the institutional retributions Professor Kirstein suffered, and should have been. If I had been aware I would have defended him, as I defended Ward Churchill's right to publish articles on the Internet, however reprehensible the views expressed in them, without being punished. St. Xavier is a religious institution and so has wide lattitude to discipline and restrict the St. Xavier community. But if St. Xavier subscribes to the tenets of academic freedom it should observe them. I will make this point when I debate Professor Kirstein at St. Xavier in March. This debate was set up Professor Kirstein himself and shows the kind of attitude one has a right to expect from a professor. His attitude is quite different from most professors in my experience, which is extensive. This will be the first time that I have ever been invited to a university by a member of the faculty on his own account. The now famous invitation to me to speak at Hamilton did come from Professor Isserman but it came at my initiative -- I asked him to invite me). Despite the criticism of Professor Kirstein in The Professors, and despite our extreme differences of perspective, he has been gracious and civil throughout our exchanges. Would that Michael Berube and others would learn from his example how scholars (and gentlemen) should behave. Since I have been maligned by people who have not accorded me such courtesy, allow me to employ Professor Kirstein as a witness as to my own behavior: "Mr Horowitz has given me ample opportunity to respond to him with e-mail and participate in relevant discussions for Frontpagemag. He also published critical commentary concerning my suspension. Yet I believe his latest effort could have been more thorough and comprehensive in its portrayal of my activities."Professor Kirstein has yet another complaint: "In the introduction on p. xxiii I am included in a category of professors who were allegedly promoted in rank 'far beyond [their] academic achievement.' They proffer no specific evidence for such a serious accusation. Usually the evaluation of a professor is conducted by a department, a rank and tenure committee and, of course, the appropriate administrative officials such as a provost and president....How non-academics can arrogate to themselves the wisdom and the knowledge to evaluate the credentials of professors at institutions far removed from their sphere of activity is puzzling." Actually, I sought and was given academic counsel on the issues in my book relating to professional standards. This is the commentary on Professor Kirstein's case: "Peter Kirstein is a full professor of History at St. Xavier University. His main scholarly publication is one short book: Anglo Over Bracero: A History of the Mexican Worker in the United States from Roosevelt to Nixon (1977): pp. 113. That is, his main scholarly publication is a 100 page book, published 30 years ago. The title suggests an obvious political orientation in any case. Such a person would be a minor associate professor at any self-respecting university department of history--not a full professor. Such a person would be unlikely nowadays even to get tenure with a book merely 100-pages long. Kirstein's latest "scholarly publication" as listed on his website is an article six pages long on an "online journal", American Diplomacy, from 2001. This is not a major journal, nor even a hard-copy journal. And it was five years ago. It's not about bracero's, either--but an attack on the U.S. decision to drop the Hiroshima bomb." Professor Kirstein says he has published numerous articles in refereed journals. We couldn't find them. If he will send me a list, I will publish it.
Finally Professor Kirstein takes issue with the structure of the argument in the book: "I strongly agree with one of Mr Horowitz’s statements in the introduction: 'Every individual, whether conservative or liberal, has a perspective and therefore a bias. Professors have every right to interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points of view.' (xxvi)
"Yet the book profiles and critiques only progressive academicians and its purported support of academic freedom appears less than comprehensive due to its robust denunciations and public vilifications of professors for activites far removed from the classroom. Group association with Historians Against The War, publications, activist involvement and extramural utterances, that may be radical or societally engaged, fall explicitly under the purview of academic freedom. Yet they are the main substance of criticism in the book’s effort to castigate socially conscious and idealistic professors as “dangerous” and disloyal.
Let me begin my response to this by pointing out that the word "disloyal" does not appear in the book nor is loyalty any part of its argument. The word "dangerous" appears only in the subtitle and was never a part of the conception of the book in its selection of professors to profile or in the way the profiles were written. If these professors are dangerous -- and I believe there is a legitimate sense in which they are -- it is to the academic enterprise itself, and stems from their confusion of activism with scholarship.That is the argument that those who read the book will find in its pages. This arugment concludes with a chapter titled, "The Representative Nature of the Professors Profiled In This Volume." In other words, not the "worst of the worst" or the "most dangerous" -- these are marketers' tags -- but a cohort which I estimate to be between 5% and 10% of the faculty population, or between 30,000 and 60,000 professors nationally. In the book I stay with the lower and more conservative estimate. The reasons for arriving at this percentage are laid out in the text.I don't believe Professor Kirstein is accurate in describing the book's attitude towards Historians Against the War and similar expressions of professorial activism as "robust denunciations and public vilifications." If he can produce any of these, I will publish them in this blog. I do single out organizations like Historians Against The War because in my view they are unprofessional and at odds with academic mission -- and would be so if they were Historians For The War. This is the heart of the argument in my book, and I welcome comments on it by any academic whether included in the profiles or not, who will argue his or her position as civilly and intellectually as Professor Kirstein.
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