In the 1930s, many academics either flirted with, or were indifferent to, Nazism. Carlin Romano, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, reviews Stephen H. Norwood's new book, The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses, a well-researched historical investigation into the failure of many American university presidents and academic professionals to stand by their ostensible devotion to the liberal arts and the humane society. Mr. Romano draws some important object lessons from the book, and applies them in the context of modern-day Iran, and the question of what the proper response should be to the savagery of the current regime.
Among the many fascinating things I learned from reading the article was this: "And who knew that the 'stiff-armed Nazi salute and Sieg Heil chant' was 'modeled on a gesture and a shout' that Hanfstaengl had used as a Harvard football cheerleader?" (Ernst Hanfstaengl, an early supporter of Hitler, was born in Germany, but attended Harvard University, returning to his homeland in the early 1920s).
We have, of course, seen many more examples of betrayal by the denizens of the ivory tower in modern times, as large numbers of the professoriate have, in turn, lined up to hawk socialism, communism, the New Left, and other statist nostrums (in addition to what we've seen with our own eyes, permit me to refer you to the writings of the late Sidney Hook, Norman Podhoretz and Tom Wolfe). I am not by any means anti-intellectual; on the contrary, I greatly admire those men and women who maintain an active interest in the life of the mind, and who seek honestly for knowledge and truth. The problem is that so many people who pass for intellectuals these days are, as the saying goes, "educated beyond their intelligence", and are, themselves, the products of the leftist echo chamber that arose as radicals took Gramsci's advice and commenced "the long march through the institutions". This should remind us that the operative word in the descriptive expression "book worm" is oft times "worm".
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I also recommend Clive James' "Cultural Amnesia" for a look at the intellectuals of Europe and their relationships with both fascism and communism at a time when the nature of neither could possibly be in doubt...
Those who sided with fascism in the 1930s have been damned by history and quite properly so. What I've never been able to work out though is why those who thought Stalinism was a pretty good idea at most are seen as naive but well meaning. Obviously the fact that the Russkies were on our side in the War has something to do with it but even now that the horrors of Stalin's Russia are known to all, its adherents somehow escape any real criticism.
I'm never sure whether it's that my education never caught up with my intelligence, or my intelligence never caught up with my education, but I wander the Earth, always missing something.
Fake intellectuals are pretty much what a lot of colleges are pumping out these days.
And in what is not likely to be a coincidence, vocational technical schools have gone downhill quite a bit in this era of "intellectualism". Much to the detriment of our country.
Seconded for Clive James' "Cultural Amnesia". I've only had the time to complete the letter "A", and that's the clearest message from the book so far!
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