Drew Faust, Truth-teller
In the Globe,
Maria Sacchetti profiles Drew Faust.
Faust, an award-winning historian expected to be named Harvard's president today, reveals much about herself and her work habits in a three-decade career as a scholar of the American south. Her goal, she has said in interviews, is not simply to tell the stories of the neglected. Instead, colleagues say, Faust wants to confront the truth -- even when it is ugly.
Then, in a line of reasoning I don't quite follow, Sacchetti argues that....
Faust's approach to history parallels the contradictions in her own life.Described as good-natured and unassuming, she has devoted years of research to some reprehensible characters, such as slave-owner James Henry Hammond. She also studied Mary Chestnut , a Southern elitist who excoriated slaves and insulted a white woman in North Carolina who protected her from Yankee invaders.
"Sometimes I couldn't resist using those, probably because they weren't entirely representative but were such an extreme that they did have that startling effect that reminds you who these people were," Faust said in the magazine article, "and that they are not you."
I'm not sure how studying reprehensible characters parallels contradictions in Faust's life—I'm not sure Sacchetti even establishes that there are contradictions in Faust's life—but never mind. The piece is an interesting look at Faust's scholarship.
