University's soft spot for stalinists
by RONALD RADOSH, m.nypost.com
March 23rd 2011
On April Fool's Day, New York University will launch its latest attempt to
whitewash the history of communism in American life.
The occasion is a six-hour conference on the topic of "Academic Freedom in the
1960s," sponsored by the university's Federick Ewen Academic Freedom Center.
The conference, according to the center's statements, will "examine the key
fronts in the present battles over higher education, and their historical
parallels in previous eras," and "examine successive, well-funded ideological
assaults on academic freedom by outside pressure groups aimed at undermining
the legitimacy of scholarly study during the 1960s."
But the bland academic language can't mask the agenda, which is apparent with a
look at the speakers. All come from various precincts of the American left; not
one has a different perspective on the 1960s.
Historian Ellen Schrecker, author of many books about McCarthyism and the
academy, will deliver the keynote. She is famous for arguing that, while many
accused of being Soviet agents in the 1950s turned out to be guilty, they
should be excused for their crimes. Such agents "did not subscribe to
traditional forms of patriotism" and, because they were spying for a cause in
which they believed, they weren't "betraying their country," she has written.
Another major speaker is a Rutgers-Newark professor of English and American
studies, H. Bruce Franklin, author of several books about America and Vietnam
and a proud anti-war activist. Franklin wrote an introductory essay to a book
he edited, "The Essential Stalin" (1972), in which he argues: "I used to think
of Joseph Stalin as a tyrant and butcher who jailed and killed millions . . .
But, to about a billion people today, Stalin is the opposite of what we in the
capitalist world have been programmed to believe."
To these people, Franklin writes approvingly, Stalin is "one of the great
heroes of modern history, a man who personally helped win" the "liberation" of
the people of China, Vietnam, North Korea and Albania.
Perhaps Franklin will elaborate on how Stalin fought for civil liberties in
Russia, by orchestrating the killing of millions of "class enemies" and by
urging his American followers to work for revolution at home and to spy for the
Soviet Union?
The author's biography for his Stalin volume proudly describes Franklin as "a
revolutionary who is also a professor of English."
Need one say more?
The "academic freedom" conference is only the latest salvo in NYU's apparent
attempt to establish itself as the preeminent center for leftist reappraisals
of the recent past.
A few years ago, another NYU creation, the Tamiment Library's Center for the
United States and the Cold War, held a major conference dedicated to proving
the innocence of American Soviet spy Alger Hiss. The center recently held a
forum in which speakers all proclaimed the heroism and innocence of executed
atom spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were portrayed as yet another set of
victims of America's Cold War repression. The university also runs a Web site
dedicated to proving Hiss' innocence, "The Alger Hiss Story."
All those appearing at NYU forums have the right to their points of view. But a
great university should offer students and the public a chance to hear
contending points of view on controversial issues, rather than holding partisan
events passed off as scholarly conclaves.
Does NYU really want to vindicate the charges made by conservative critic David
Horowitz, who argues that radical faculty have "turned America's classrooms
into indoctrination centers for their political cause"?
NYU once had on its faculty the late Sidney Hook, then the preeminent academic
fighter against totalitarianism of both the right and the left. Hook fought
relentlessly throughout the 1950s and '60s against one-sided forums in which
only the pro-Soviet left had speakers and which always excluded him. Were he
alive, Hook would no doubt be dismayed that his university now partakes of the
same kind of practices he dedicated his life to fighting.
Is NYU pleased with itself for sponsoring these closed-door séances of the Old
Left?
Ronald Radosh, adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, writes a regular blog
for PajamasMedia.com. He is co-author of "The Rosenberg File" and other books.
Original Page:
http://m.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/university_soft_spot_for_stalinists_p6sL36DlbrJKP3seb923zN
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