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The Cold War & the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years

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Viewing a political era from a particular point of view, from a subjective perspective can often manage to shed light on much more. The experiences reported by the individuals in this book are extremely well written stories that transcend the bounds of what at first seems a narrow topic. Still, if you have a particular interest in education and the politics of universities and colleges, you will find this book even more intriguing.

A fine collection of essays, particularly those of Howard Zinn, R.C. Lewontin, and Noam Chomsky. The introduction by David Montgomery is also quite good, mixing, as many of the essays do, personal recollections of working in the university system, with historical research.

Just a note on the review by the reader from New York posted on May 5, 1999: Laura Nader's mention of Eric Wolf's stealing documents was in fact a misprint inserted by an editor. It's a long story, but I'm fairly certain of its validity. I've taken classes with her at UC Berkeley and in a discussion of the book she went out of her way to point out the error. Understandibly, she was quite upset.

While an important contribution to the literature on the history of the Cold War, a shocking number of production errors marrs the text. The most agregious error is in Laura Nadar's essay in which she inadvertantly accuses Eric Wolf of stealing documents when he was in fact the recipient of such documents. Even the most sympathetic reader will eventually question the conclusions reached by the contributors

If not itself, the history of the Cold War is alive and haunting us. Editor complains that when they first decided to print this project on Cold War scholarship, there were little amount, if not none, of books and statistics to be collected. So they eventually went on to call people who had long been exchanging their postwar experiences in private. The book is not a bedside novel; however, it does not have the flavor of an unpleasant history report either. It is the advantage of the students of international politics and political science to have this volume in their dispossal when composing a paper. But they, plus the reader with a broad interest better use it wisely if they ever read it. There were two kinds of American scholars in the Cold War; the ones that were critical of the American foreign policy and the ones that were not. Neoconservatives, if they may, in their testimony of the Cold War would feel sorry about what had the Washington done in Vietnam; the New Left's impression of those years would be the curriculum and the enrollment policies of the universities having got hideously political. Lewontin draws a parellel between the Cold War and what might be the multiplication of scholarship. It is not a secret that big sums of public money were deposited in the bank accounts of the universities and that meant on one hand a sense of scientific secularism exiting the house of higher education and on the other hand a prosperity gladly welcomed. In the post war years, a crisis awaited the economy. Whether it is in the economy or the science, the costs of production and the projects were to be socialized. In the Cold War setting, this was easy enough. Zinn, himself a historian and a scholar, writes that mouths of scholars were shut in respect to the American foreign policy abroad as well as in respect to the inquisitions at home in the 1950s. Not only they yielded to the currents of the official policy that shamed the Soviet sympathy but also they self censored their publications. It was when Vietnam got discredited that mainstream America as well as scholars gained their sense of what might have been a fraud. The inquisitions of civil right movements given the reason that they were communist oriented did not awaken the public attention as much as they used to. English not an exception from the rest of the sciences were spoiled in what Ohmann calls "the military industrial government university complex"; yet, they were not "recruited" to be there in the front. Disengaged from the Cold War, English and its neighbours were not asked to be politically enthusiastic and to sideline with the foreign policy. Despite the distance English had between itself and the Cold War, there were not any reason why the intelligence office and the inquisitions may skip English and its neighbours. Chomsky's article sums up the causes behind the metamorphosis of the university in the Cold War. But what I found striking is his interpretation of the shadings of the scholarly opposition of the Cold War policy. He emphasizes the Vietnam factor in the late reaction of the university and portrays three opponents of Vietnam: pragmatic opponents saying that we better withdraw because it costs more than it pays; the moral opponents saying that enough blood is shed; and thirdly, the political opponents who say that this is aggression. Book brings insight into how the hands of the politicians got hold of the university in the Cold War years. Montgomery in his introduction adds history of the labor unions and the Communist Party into the instances of political intrusion as well. University; though its coming into the politics was respectively late, jeapordized its own being when criticizing Cold War policies. Nationally famous are the writers who had their essays printed in this book and they admit that they were dissidents as long as the label means being democratic.

I find it very disturbing that people consider these professors as "Marxist Zealots". By your comment, A READER FROM THE USA, you demonstrate who is really misleading the public. Noam Chomsky is NOT a Marxist, he is an Anarchist. Get your facts straight. And to say that these people thought Pol Pot was a "great guy" only shows to which degree you are willing to fabricate lies in order to advance your own political bias. These people are against all forms of genocide and oppression, whether it be Stalin, Pol Pot or JFK and Richard Nixon.

The most important events in the US during the Cold War were McCarthyism and the Vietnam War. But there were also other important issues, like research and field work funding or ideology.
As L. Nader rightly remarks, `repressive and fear generating events such as the cold war periodically appear, thereby facilitating industrial and military regulation of academic affairs.'
For N. Chomsky, the all important issue is `to reduce the threat of democracy and to establish more firmly the Madisonian principle on which the US was founded: that the prime responsibility of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.'

McCarthyism
For, R. Lewontin, there was direct influence on academic affairs, because of `opportunism and cowardice of boards of trustees and university administrators.'
There was passive acceptance of firings, blacklistings, attacks on unions and harassment. (H. Zinn)
Ex-communists named names. Hundreds of teachers lost their job; many left the country; some committed suicide. (L. Nader)

Research and field work
Research became more and more `militarized': geophysics and oceanography (R. Siever), the social sciences (I. Wallerstein) or anthropology (L. Nader).
In the face of US anti-State ideology, the codeword for grants was `war': war on cancer, on diseases, on poverty or on drugs (R. Lewontin).
Fieldwork by anthropologists was used in counterinsurgency, for expulsion of people out of areas with oil reserves, for testing of atomic technology on small human populations, for monitoring political loyalty and for creating a climate of intellectual repression. (L. Nader).

Ideology
A general silence about the Cold War reigned among historians. But some went beyond silence by distorting the truth out of national loyalty. (H. Zinn)
In `English Literature', academics turned to timeless universals (love, death, art) and didn't cover such notions as `history, race, class conflict, empire, power or privilege.' (R. Ohmann)

This mixed collection of essays is a most valuable contribution to the history of the Cold War. It is a must read for all those interested in US history.

Viewing a political era from a particular point of view, from a subjective perspective can often manage to shed light on much more. The experiences reported by the individuals in this book are extremely well written stories that transcend the bounds of what at first seems a narrow topic. Still, if you have a particular interest in education and the politics of universities and colleges, you will find this book even more intriguing.

A book such as this is somewhat valuable, but I was disappointed by the narrowness of the people included. It's as if only Leftists in universities had any experience of the Cold War, and since we know this to be false, why not call this book "Leftist Academics and The Cold War University" or something? What about the old guys reading Latin texts in their offices who thought the world was going mad? What about old-fashioned Liberals who were profoundly ambivilent towards both the American Right and the Stalinist (and post-Stalinist)American Left? The editor was more interested, I suppose, in gathering lefty celebs with high name recognition than he was in getting a ground level view, and that mention of Studs Terkel in the above editorial comments made me yearn for some of Terkel's interest in the folks who are usually overlooked in the rush to sign up the people who've already had their say. Until a good oral history of that sort comes around, I guess this will have to do.

I find it very disturbing that people consider these professors as "Marxist Zealots". By your comment, A READER FROM THE USA, you demonstrate who is really misleading the public. Noam Chomsky is NOT a Marxist, he is an Anarchist. Get your facts straight. And to say that these people thought Pol Pot was a "great guy" only shows to which degree you are willing to fabricate lies in order to advance your own political bias. These people are against all forms of genocide and oppression, whether it be Stalin, Pol Pot or JFK and Richard Nixon.