Dissident Notes

I appreciate your response and I think the solution you propose is fair, so I agree. Upon a second read of my email to you, I think I was a lot harsher than I should have been toward you. I would not object to editing my email to remove the ad hominems, if you wish to do so.

You cannot know how bizarre it was for me to find myself on that website: the one comment I usually get from my student evaluations is “he’s too far to the right” every time I suggest that the US policy during the Cold War made sense. As I note in my first email, it’s hard already to defend oneself from constant badgering by left-wing colleagues to have to answer for not being on the right enough! But I agree, the substance of all this should concentrate on how the McCarthy era is treated, not personal issues although I trust you understand why I took it so personally. For future reference, I dare you to find a person from eastern Europe who lives in the US and who has one kind word to say about the communist system. We are not closet academics who only have an arm-chair acquaintance with that particular idiotic system.

Branislav L. Slantchev is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.