Mark Moyar, Historian of Vietnam, Finds Academe Hostile to a Hawk

Mark Moyar doesn't exactly fit the stereotype of a disappointed job seeker. He is an Eagle Scout who earned a summa cum laude degree from Harvard, graduating first in the history department before earning a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England. Before he had even begun graduate school, he had published his first book and landed a contract for his second book. Distinguished professors at Harvard and Cambridge wrote stellar letters of recommendation for him.

Yet over five years, this conservative military and diplomatic historian applied for more than 150 tenure-track academic jobs, and most declined him a preliminary interview. During a search at University of Texas at El Paso in 2005, Mr. Moyar did not receive an interview for a job in American diplomatic history, but one scholar who did wrote her dissertation on "The American Film Industry and the Spanish-Speaking Market During the Transition to Sound, 1929-1936."

"Let's just say, a person applying to teach whose topic is the Vietnam War and whose position is conservative, would encounter difficulties because the ideological ghosts of the 1960s are, unfortunately, still alive on a great many campuses, even though the Vietnamese themselves have put the war behind them."

Academia is the stronghold of the Left in America. Has been all my life. I've been an amateur historian since the fourth grade, and this is why I will always remain an amateur.

We are not supposed to venerate the Founders of this Republic. We are not supposed to be inspired by the achievements of our forefathers. We are not supposed to measure our martial prowess against the victories of past American warriors. American Exceptionalism is bad. We use too much energy and too much toilet paper and the only acceptable emotions for us to feel about our country are shame and guilt.

Democrats are have become experts at messing things up, militarily speaking. In the past 5 decades, Democrats have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Truman's administration had the US troops pull out of "South Korea" in the late 1940's and said the US had no interest in being involved in that particular part of the world.

In 1950, the army of Kim il-Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea, easily took over most of South Korea.

In order to wrest back South Korea Truman sent 30,000 Americans to their deaths within 30 months. (Imagine, an average of 1,000 American deaths per month in Korea under Truman!)

In an effort to win back a "country" which Truman's administration lost in the first place, his administration found it necessary to impose the severest wartime censorship on news out of Korea and to draft thousands of Americans.

It’s absolutely true—the bigotry is palpable, but by going public, he’s totally ruined forever. He’ll never get a job. The only way any of this will change is if parents, alumni, donors students bang away at the low quality of education this produces and refuse to shut up.

But it’s next to impossible to do that with enough force; lawsuits are next to impossible as the article points out because of confidentiality rules. They are next to impossible, not impossible because feminists, leftists, homosexuals etc. have successfully sued to get hired and tenured, despite the confidentiality rules. But one has to develop a dossier of illegal actions one has encountered, document it by saving all emails, logging all conversations etc. for months or years, then using the dossier to support one’s case.

If a few cases of this sort began to get some traction, combined with the simple fact that baby-boomer tenured Radicals are nearing retirement age, it might begin to change things. It would help if EEOC and other government bureaucrats got behind these cases, but they are hard to document.

Sadly, Dr. Moyar probably spoke too soon and too loudly and with insufficient hard evidence. He’ll be sacrificed. But FIRE needs to be supported, conservatives need to pound on the doors of their state legislatures to investigate this bigotry on state university campuses. That’s the most likely route to changing the climate on this. Even that’s a long shot.

Look, what happened was that in the Reagan years the conservatives created their own “universities”—the think tanks. They employed talented conservative researchers whose outlet became the emerging alternative media. They didn’t try to create new universities because universities stand or fall on “branding” and “reputation” and there was no way the conservatives could acquire that prestige and be seen as on par with established colleges and universities. Among the conservative cognoscenti, of course, the new or retrofitted schools (Grove City, Thomas Aquinas, Hillsdale) and individual pockets in departments (e.g., economics at some places, George Mason, perhaps; political science some places; the Committee on Social Thought at the U. of Chicago—in a limited way; the U. of Chicago Economics department; the Hoover Institution—actually more of a think tank than department etc.) developed a reputation for academic excellence and provided intelligent recruits for conservative politicians and non-profits. The think tanks were funded by conservative money.

And they’ve had their impact. Without them the Reagan Revolution could never have had the impact it did. But for the same reason—that they were outside mainstream Academia and were not and never will be accorded the respect their research deserved—the impact of the Reagan revolution has been circumscribed and perhaps, today, is reaching its limit.

The only long-term solution in our system is through the democratic process: 1. state legislators have to really take on this issue. It has to be done using the Left’s own principles (which they do not in fact follow) of diversity and “hearing all sides.” 2. market-forces — if enough young folks and their tuition-paying parents and alumni donors simply refuse to put up with academic bigotry and with the shoddy education offered at Ivy League and Ivy-League-wannabees, the schools will change.

But that’s why conservatives railing at “tenure” and at academia with loud voices don’t accomplish much. Those who want to change the system first have to understand it and attack where it is weakest. Too much of the assault on Academia comes out of ignorance, which means the Lefties can simply dismiss it snootily. That’s why FIRE is so important—it takes up the issues on their merits, argues the cases from within the criteria the Academy claims to honor.

My point originally was not to say nothing can be done. It was to express outrage and also sorrow that Mr. Moyar probably is toast. He personally probably doesn’t have a chance now—he’s damaged goods etc. I hope for a much better fate for him. Perhaps one of the conservative schools will hire him. Or he can make a future in the think tanks. But even that would be a failure because that would continue the confining of conservatives to a few plantations/ghettos instead of the mainstream Academy truly opening up to diversity.

It would, however, at least give him a livelihood. His chances within the mainstream, however, are very dismal unless he can make a case in court and from the story, that doesn’t seem likely.

Here is an interesting little tidbit from the war blog (FPM).

The Worst of the Worst
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28090
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=1492

Late last week, a convocation gathered to defend Ward Churchill. By no coincidence, the prime defenders of Churchill are themselves some of the worst offenders of academic standards and discourse. We have included their statements, found at this website, and have hyperlinked their names to their profile, which delineates their unsavory history. — The Editors.

Today April 28, 2007 there will convene an “Emergency National Forum to Defend Dissent and Critical Thinking: Why Ward Churchill Must Not Be Fired.” It will be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder to support academic freedom, democracy, the right to be different and free speech.

Solidarity Statements in Support of Professor Ward Churchill:

1. Gil Anidjar – Columbia University
2. Bill Ayers – University of Illinois – Chicago
3. Dana Cloud – University of Texas
4. Drucilla Cornell – Rutgers University
5. Hamid Dabashi – Columbia University
6. Michael D’Andrea – University of Hawai’i
7. Richard Delgado – University of Pittsburgh
8. Richard Falk – UC Santa Barbara; Professor Emeritus, Princeton
9. Juan Gomez-Quinones – UCLA
10. Robert Ivie – University of Illinois, Bloomington
11. Robert Jensen – University of Texas
12. Peter N. Kirstein – St. Xavier University
13. Carlos Munoz, Jr. – UC Berkeley
14. Henry Silverman – Michigan State University
15. Paul Von Blum - UCLA
16. Immanuel Wallerstein – Yale University
17. Howard Zinn – Professor Emeritus – Boston University

From my alma mater U of I at Chicago:

Statement in Support of Ward Churchill
by Bill Ayers

“It’s no surprise that this outrage against Professor Churchill occurs at this particular moment— a time of empire resurrected and unapologetic, militarism proudly expanding and triumphant, war without justice and without end, white supremacy retrenched, basic rights and protections shredded, growing disparities between the haves and the have-nots, fear and superstition and the mobilization of scapegoating social formations based on bigotry and violence or the threats of violence, and on and on.”

Typical Lefty nonsense that parents pay to have beat into their offsprings’ heads. It is amazing that parents are not rabid at the cost of higher education considering the quality of the product. I know I would be. I would be furious.

BTW, here is Ayers background. The U of I is not even embarrassed that this dreadful excuse of a professor is on the payroll and in a position to influence generations. Disgusting.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2169

“Leader of the 1960s and 70s domestic terrorist group Watherman
“Kill all the rich people. ... Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.”
Participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972
Currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois”

"......All told, Ayers and Weathermen were responsible for 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S. “I don’t regret setting bombs, said Ayers in 2001, “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

"......In 1970, Ayers’ then-girlfriend Diana Oughton, along with Weatherman members Terry Robbins and Ted Gold, were killed when a bomb they were constructing exploded unexpectedly. That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, “tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too.”

“.......Notwithstanding his violent past, Ayers today does not describe himself as a terrorist. “Terrorists destroy randomly,” he reasons, “while our actions bore ... the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.