A certain classicist in the Central Valley has ignited quite a hullabaloo in some academic circles, and he’s been paid half a million dollars for his efforts.
The California State University, Fresno professor, who’s committed to calling out the lefty slant he sees in university instruction, might otherwise be seen as another conservative curmudgeon exasperated with the politics of his more liberal counterparts.
But that $500,000 gets in the way. So does his connection straight to the White House.
Victor Davis Hanson landed an advance to write a book about the Peloponnesian War, likely the largest amount of money anyone has ever received to write about the subject.
And in February, he released a compilation of previously published columns applying his classical training to lessons about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here, the story gets sticky – because his analogies are actually being taken seriously.
He has the ear of war architects Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and even President Bush himself.
He’s a frequent contributor to the conservative National Review. He’s become the point man for the “anti-critical backlash,” as one UCLA classics professor calls it.
This guy isn’t just an armchair academic. Hanson has made himself famous for political posturing.
A few years ago, he wrote a book titled “Who Killed Homer?” that accused universities of abandoning classics in their classrooms.
More recently, he’s been occupied with using his background in classics and military history to justify Bush’s agenda.
David Blank, the aforementioned UCLA professor, is more than skeptical – and so are his colleagues.
Blank suspects the movement Hanson represents began during the Reagan years.
It makes sense; Hanson’s ideological line is drawn unapologetically between the West and militant Islam.
Yet, it’s too easy to chalk this up to the “culture wars.” This isn’t a fringe movement, and it’s been going on for a while.
Hanson’s friend Donald Kagan, a classics professor at Yale, signed on to the Project for the New American Century – Wolfowitz’s pet think tank, which advances the neo-conservative idea of a unipolar world.
Yikes. And you thought Wolfowitz came up with that himself.
When academics get tied up in political allegiances, the conflict of interest reeks something suspicious. Since when are scholars in the business of extrapolating their scholarship to military strategy?
His invitations to White House Christmas parties notwithstanding, I actually don’t think Hanson’s just in it for the fame. He actually believes it.
Nevertheless, there are some serious concerns here about compromising intellectual integrity for political gain.
We put up with all kinds of noise from professors who make a living by manufacturing theories about revisionism, progressivism, symbolism, essentialism and postmodernism.
Ironically, Hanson would likely disregard these flowery “-isms” in favor of a more straightforward approach – yet he draws some extremely dubious associations of his own. We really don’t need someone else comparing Ariel Sharon to Ajax, the Trojan war hero. You’ve got to be kidding.
Blank, for one, says that with the Olympics coming up, there’s been a tendency to “romanticize the role Athenians had as progenitors of democracy in the world.” When an athletic event inspires an intellectual debate that finds itself in the Bush White House, I think we know we’re in trouble.
E-mail cjenkins@media.ucla.edu if after reading this column you have a $500,000 advance waiting for her.
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