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At the tumultuous 1969 meeting of the American Historical Association, I
presented a paper, “Present-Mindedness Revisited: Anti-Radicalism as a
Goal of American Historical Writing Since World War II” (there is a
description of this presentation and the atmosphere at the AHA in Peter
Novick’s chapter, “Collapse of Comity,” in That Noble Dream: The
‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession. The paper
had an interesting history after that first presentation. After much
positive (and negative) attention at the AHA meeting and in the New York
Times and elsewhere, I submitted it serially to the American Historical
Review and then to the Journal of American History. It received
stunningly negative readings. R.K Webb of AHR wrote: (3/27/70) “I wonder
if the activism of the New Left historians today, unlike the activism
you so deplore in your article, may not be a bar to serious scholarship
that can appeal to any scholar outside the sect itself...” Marty Ridge
at the JAH (a nice man) sent me (7/17/70) a fifteen-page handwritten
negative report from his anonymous reader, who wrote, “Lemisch is
certainly the Tony Galento [an unorthodox boxer] of the Left I don’t
know how you can tell him that he certainly cannot do it in the pages of
the Journal. He probably believes that he can, which says something
about how far he and his ilk are estranged from civilization [emphasis
added].” Ridge himself wrote, “This essay more than any that I have read
in the last several years has disturbed me.”
full: http://newpol.org/content/lemischs-active-service-now-available-online
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