Another Academic Obamasm

In the wake of November’s historic election, at least one professor is discovering an impulse not widely acted upon in academia—the patriotic one. “It was Wednesday, the day after, and I wanted the election news, so absorbing for so long, now wondrous, to keep coming and coming,” Warren Goldstein writes in the November 28, 2008 issue of The Chronicle Review.

Note to Warren: Get a room. Nevertheless, Obama’s election did get him to seek out Old Glory.

“Trying to squeeze every drop of meaning from the morning paper, making my Web-site rounds, I was listening to my local NPR station when the host asked, ‘Is there a new progressive patriotism in America?’” Goldstein remembers. It’s a question the history professor soon answered for himself.

“Calls flooded in proclaiming a resounding Yes, and I began figuring out how to put an American flag on my front door,” Goldstein recalled. Most Americans without Ph.D.s can figure this out without much difficulty.

“Saturday evening, my wife, Donna Scharper (a United Church of Christ minister who serves a storied activist church in Greenwich Village), and I were tuned into A Prairies Home Companion when Garrison Keillor launched into a patriotic medley,” Goldstein relates. Now where do all these stereotypes of academics come from: NPR, Garrison Keillor, Greenwich Village?

Still, there were limits to Goldstein’s newfound nationalism. “I turned to Donna and said, ‘You’ve got to do something patriotic in church tomorrow: ‘America the Beautiful’ or ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’”

“She proposed ‘God Bless America’—and I objected: ‘too over the top.’” Yes, teaming God and America in an American church may not be centrist.

Similarly, don’t expect Goldstein to start sporting a “Don’t tread on me!” tattoo. He makes clear that his patriotism is more evocative of Barry Obama than of Barry Goldwater.

“Since I’ve already confessed to a ton of emotions that would have embarrassed the hell out of me a month ago, I might as well crawl further out on my limb,” Goldstein states. “When Michelle Obama got into hot water before her husband’s nomination for saying that ‘for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,’ I found myself agreeing, wondering: When had I last been proud of my country?”

“The answer, sad to say, was very rarely in my adult lifetime.” As you might guess, the epiphany of the chairman of the history department at the University of Hartford has not led him to embrace military recruiters or the Reserve Officers Training Corps.

“Looking at the elation of foreign newspapers on November 5, I realized that I’ve been apologizing for my president or government ever since I began traveling abroad in 1973,” he confides. “With a very few exceptions—some U. S. Supreme Court decisions, the Camp David Accords, interventions in Kosovo (to stop genocide) and Haiti (to restore Aristide), the handshake Clinton brokered between Arafat and Rabin—the pride I’ve felt has been in dissent: at marches, in causes, and in loss.”

Readers who question whether the historian’s op-ed chronicles spill over into his classroom lectures may want to check out Goldstein’s reviews at ratemyprofessors.com. “Only take the class if you want to hear about baseball and his personal socialist politics,” one reviewer advised. “Don’t bother disagreeing.”

“He just doesn’t believe that anyone could disagree.”

“I had him during the election and we spent more time talking about present politics” than history, another reviewer wrote so that “we didn’t get to talk about US history very much.”

We should note that most of Goldstein’s reviews are positive although the glowing ones seem to focus on his ease as a grader. This could be a result of what Indiana University professor emeritus Murray Sperber has called the “faculty-student non-aggression pact” that he has seen on many campuses in which the charges indulge the pedagogue’s interests in exchange for good grades and recommendations.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.

Malcolm A. Kline
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia. If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.