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[marct]

Really good post, Merv.

Tom, you mentioned a failure of the military in "selling" military history, and I think you have probably raised a very good point that holds here in Canada as well. I suspect that some of the problem is also related to a general lack of interest in / knowledge of history being taught before university - at least it seems to be that way in Ontario. For example, only one of my students during the summer knew that Canada had over 400,000 troops in World War I.

The anti-military stance, what Merv called the "tenured radicals", has also spilled over into other areas. I am working with one student right now who has an interest in Intelligence analysis (it's part of her day job). Earlier this week, she had to do a presentation in a course on the History of Anthropology where she would take one of the "older" theoretical models and attempt to use it to analyze a current situation. She chose Durkheim's concept of "altruistic suicide" and applied it to studying suicide bombers. Halfway through her presentation, the professor teaching the course stopped her and told her that this was "propaganda". With attitudes like this running rampant, I really have to wonder...

Merv, while I liked your term "tenured radicals", I think that it is past time that the term "radical" itself was taken back from it's currently "occupied" status where it is held under the hegemonic control of krypto-Fascists (yeah, I can sound like a PC academic if I have to). "Radical" derives from the Latin "radix" or "root", and it is more than time enough for us to retrun to that original meaning and examine the roots of human existence. And, for the past 100 centuries, that means that we have to study warfare, religion, economics, technology, politics and the connections between them all. Currently, "radical" seems to be synonymous with "whining about being oppressed while enjoying a tenured position and sipping coctails and discussing either the inevitable revolutuion or the ultimate meaninglessness of life".

While it may be amusing, in a very droll sense, to watch these neo-Thomistic "scholars" argue about how many oppressions can dance on the head of a pin, it is ultimately a betrayal of both the profession of scholarship, of the societies in which we live and, most importantly, it is a betrayal of our species. I refuse to believe that we have spent the past 5+ million years evolving to end up locked in any type of restrictive "theology".

Sorry, I'll just get off my soapbox now...

Marc

[Merv Benson]

Thanks for the kind words, but I was excerpting from Miller's piece on institutional reluctance of many universities to study warfare. I do comment on Miller's article in my original post.

[SWJED]

Thanks for the kind words, but I was excerpting from Miller's piece on institutional reluctance of many universities to study warfare. I do comment on Miller's article in my original post.

Hat tip for bringing this to our attention - good job Merv.

[S-2]

As a former UW grad with a B.A. in Poli Sci/History, my very first class as a "gratefully red" badger was with Edward M. Coffman. A great man and lecturer, he'd (IIRC) served as a young lieutenant in the 1st Cav in Korea towards the end of that conflict.

A paper by me detailing my dad's adventures as a peripheral participant in T.F. Lynch was read in class by Coffman while mentioning me by name-quite an honor in a survey class of about 200 kids! I'm sorry to see he's since retired and that the Ambrose monies have gone unused.

It was a nearly impossible place to attend ROTC during the Vietnam War. Thankfully I didn't until it had become more of a non-issue during the mid-late seventies.