George Will—Time to Retire?
Apparently thinking that it is under attack, George Will defends the study of history in his column today. He went to a lecture at the White House by Yale historian Donald Kagan, and, well, he must have needed a column.
Here's his lede: "When Yale awarded President Kennedy an honorary degree, he said he had the ideal combination—a Yale degree and a Harvard education. Today, he might rethink that, given the Harvard faculty's tantrum that caused President Lawrence Summers' cringing crawl away from his suggestion of possible gender differences of cognition. At least the phrase 'Yale education' does not yet seem, as 'Harvard education' does, oxymoronic."
Where to begin?
First, JFK's quote has been dead wrong for decades anyway; everyone knows that the ideal combination would be a Yale education and a Harvard diploma. Yale has a better (undergraduate) education, and Harvard has a better-known brand.
Second, Summers didn't just talk about "possible differences" in cognition; he talked about possible inequities. There's a difference.
Third, Will's getting on his years now. Instead of becoming more thoughtful, he's becoming more bilious. Note the faculty "tantrum" and Summers' "cringing crawl".... George Will has become such a parody of his sniping, snobbish self that it's time for his editors to suggest a lengthy sabbatical.
Apparently Will would have liked Summers to stand with a mighty sword and slay the faculty dragon. Because he goes on to decry post-modernism in historiography, on the grounds that post-modernists deny that great men do great deeds for the right reasons.
Will says that "the defining characteristics of postmodernism [are] skepticism and cynicism."
On the other hand, the greatest critics of postmodernism, according to Kagan and Will, are religious true believers.
The true road to salvation (i.e., moral guidance) instead lies in history, which Kagan/Will seem to define as the study of great men who did great things for the right reasons.
At the risk of being post-modernist, might I suggest that Will and Kagan might hold this view of historiography because of their political beliefs? And that therefore we should take their words with a grain of salt, because their's is hardly an objective truth? That their view of history—history shows great men doing great things because we need it to—is tautological?
Meandering on, Will concludes thusly:
"Historian David McCullough says the study of history is 'an antidote to the hubris of the present— the idea that everything we have and everything we do and everything we think is the ultimate, the best.' Compare, for example, the heroic construction of the Panama Canal and the debacle of Boston's “Big Dig'' 100 years later."
History does indeed stand as an antidote to the hubris of the present...but the greatest example of hubris in our world today is the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq. Which Will supports.
Will continues: "Near the “Big Dig'' sits today's Harvard, another refutation of the theory of mankind's inevitable, steady ascent. From Yale, however, comes Kagan's temperate affirmation of the cumulative knowledge that comes from the study of history."
Harvard is "another refutation of the theory of mankind's steady, inevitable ascent"? Oh, please.
George Will, take a look in the mirror. Who's the cynical one here?
