More Noted Things

by Cliopatria

The Carnival of Bad History VI is up over at Frog in a Well/Japan. Jon Dresner is the host, so you know it will be enlightening.

Josh Gerstein,"A Rebellion Grows Within the ACLU after ‘Earthquake'," New York Sun, 26 June, outlines the reasons for internal dissension. See also: Gerstein,"For ACLU's Anthony Romero, These Should Be Best of Times," New York Sun, 27 June. Given the issues, if the dissidents don't prevail, I'm tearing up my membership card. A card-carrying Republican member of the ACLU? You're damn straight. You got a problem with that? Thanks to David Garrow for the tip.

Scott Jaschik,"New Home for the King Papers," Inside Higher Ed, 26 June; and Luker,"Access to King's Papers Also Key," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 27 June, report some of the concerns I have about Atlanta's purchase of the Martin Luther King Papers from the King Estate. Kate Taylor,"King's Papers Sold, But Unsettled," New York Sun, 27 June, is richly illuminating. See, especially: who actually will now hold title to the King manuscripts, questions that Morehouse College President Walter Massey will not answer, Sotheby's claim that the King Estate misrepresented what was actually being auctioned, and the fact that massive collections of civil rights era documents remain ill-housed at the King Center, covered with plastic sheeting to shelter them from the leaking roof.

From"the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" file: 1) senior administrators at the University of Colorado announce plans that would lead to Ward Churchill's termination; and 2) a federal judge has ordered the federal government to act on Tariq Ramadan's application for a visa.

Finally, if you thought that Chris Pettit's comments on KC Johnson's posts here at Cliopatria are irate rants, you haven't seen irate ranting. I frankly stole this from my virtual son, Chris Richardson, who's been stealing noted things from me and alarming the masses with Outside Reports of Roving Transvestites in the Big Easy who've Seized Control of J. K. Rowling's Brain and the Republican Agenda for America!

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Manan Ahmed - 6/27/2006

I, for one, have no problems with your comments - tho, I share the masthead at Clio.

However, I do tend to personify the ignorance is bliss phrase but that is for purely aesthetic reasons.

chris l pettit - 6/27/2006

glad to know that some are so blinded in their ignorance that they think the posts are irate ranting...

I am not upset really in any way...irate seems to denote anger...mine is more bemusement and awe at the fact that anyone takes KC (among others) seriously on a variety of subjects. The fact that "scholars" are so blinded by ideolgy that thye can't even critically analyze their arguments would make one irate if it didn't happen so othen...causing one to become almost numbed to the idea. Thudda thump...thudda thump...the tennis ball of reason continues to bounce of the wall of ideological ramblings of pseudo-scholars...

Rant...now this word is rather subjective. I could see how you might term them rants...but I could term a lot of the posts on Clio rants...it doesn't really say anything other than that we do not find them particularly convincing within our ideological framework. I apologise for not drinking the Luker or KC kool-aid...I suppose I will just continue with my veil of ignorance up over my head while many at Clio continue to personify the phrases "ignorance is bliss" and "taking oneself (and life) way too seriously."

The arrogance is astounding...

CP

Charles V. Mutschler - 6/27/2006

Thanks, Ralph, for your thoughtful commentary. As you note, the devil is in the details. I hope that this will be a positive outcome for scholars and the public, but I would feel much more comfortable if the questions you raise were answered promptly. The issues of intellectual property rights are probably going to become increasingly dominant as shapers of scholarship as historians study the lives of major public figures in from the latter 20th century onwards.

Charles V. Mutschler

Ralph E. Luker - 6/27/2006

Thanks, Greg. A couple of issues probably mitigated against the King Papers going to Emory, including difficulties in dealing with the King Estate and a clear preference for their going to an HBCU -- though if they'd gone to auction, they could have gone to Mongolia, for that matter. Emory has done a remarkable job in recruiting black administrators, faculty and students, as well as making a major commitment to African American library and archives. Amistad is an interesting case in point. It moved from Fisk to Dillard and, eventually, to Tulane. And, the problem has always been money. Fisk nearly collapsed. Dillard has never been wealthy. Tulane won out in competitive bidding for location over Hampton; and there are people close to Amistad who maintain that it went to the wrong place because Hampton subsequently became a fairly wealthy HBCU. Another interesting comparison would be with the Avery Research Institute at the College of Charleston. The ARI is an African American institution, the surviving relic of a private American Missionary Association secondary school in segregated Charleston, within a very largely white public college in a richly bi-racial city. It interests me, at least, that the King Papers, Amistad, and the ARI all seem to be where they are because of a complex of reasons in which place plays a somewhat larger role than race.

Greg James Robinson - 6/27/2006

Congrats on the JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION article and good work on this, Ralph. Emory University, of course, also has good archival facilities. While it is not a historically Black institution, neither is Tulane in New Orleans, which took over the Amistad Collection.