Professors, Politics and Pop

The Haymarket Series

by Jon Wiener

“It is frightening to think that [Wiener] teaches history at a university...”—Jacques Derrida
“Wiener takes the modern university as his beat, & covers it like a police reporter...Wiener’s mean streets are the think tank, the scholarly symposium, & the faculty lounge. & when he’s had enough of this academic low life, he listens to Elvis, Springsteen & the Beatles. He even listens to Frank Sinatra.”—John Leonard
“In this book, Jon Wiener demonstrates his great skill as guerrilla sharpshooter in the 40-year war that the National Security State has been conducting against the American people. These reports from the field—the resistance—illuminate Nixon & Watergate as never before, reveal in fascinating detail the turbulence within Academe, invoke pity if not awe for that unexpected victim of state, Frank Sinatra.”—Gore Vidal
“Wiener is good at spotting, & blasting, paranoid fantasy & incompetence in high (& low) places & his range of targets is impressively wide...[his] surveys are lucid, trenchant & brief.”—Observer
Acknowledgments
Deconstructing de Man
Debating de Man
The responsibilities of friendship : Jacques Derrida on Paul de Man's collaboration
The Sears case : women's history on trial
The Sears case : what happened?
Dealing with deadwood : the Arizona approach
Capitalist shock therapy : the Sachs plan in Poland
The odyssey of Daniel Boorstin
Footnotes to history : the David Abraham case
Bringing Nazi sympathizers to the US : Talcott Parsons's role
Poles, Jews, and historians : the case of Norman Davies
Campus capitalism : Harvard chases biotech bucks
The CIA goes back to college
Dollars for neocon scholars : the Olin money tree
Accuracy in academia : Reed Irvine rides the paper tiger
History wars : why the right is losing in academe
School for spooks : Yale and the CIA
Law profs fight the power
Free speech for campus bigots?
Racial hatred on campus
Looking back, moving ahead: students today & the sixties
Freshman activists
Divestment report card: students, stocks & shanties
Campus voices, right & left. Radical historians & the crisis in American history, 1959-80
Crossing the lines: Taylor Branch gives the movement its due
The liberal imagination and the antiwar movement
The New Left as history
Chicago '68 revisited
Black social experience & radical politics in Alabama
When Old Blue Eyes was Red
Inside the Nixon liebrary
John Lennon versus the FBI
Beatles buy-out: how Nike bought the Beatles' Revolution
Crushing a dead Beatle : the case of Albert Goldman
Rockin' with Ron: Springsteen and Reagan
Reggae and revolution
A soft rain : Dylan
Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Nixon: Watergate in theory
Tom Hayden's new workout
The other Nancy Davis: not necessarily the First Lady
Footnote, or perish
Index

Genres: Politics

366 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of (mostly) previously published articles dating from the 70s to the early 90s. Most appeared originally in The Nation. Most notable to me was his "Radical Historians and the Crisis in American History 1950-1980", which appeared in The Journal of American History. This and a number of other pieces concern themselves with the transformation of the historical profession occurring as a result of the rise of the New Left in the sixties. Having then thought I might become an historian myself and being close to a number of others who actually pursued the field, these articles were of interest because I had had some glancing acquaintance with some of the figures discussed and some real involvement in some of their products. Beyond these more serious pieces having to do with historiography, the book concludes with a series of essays, some rather amusing, about popular culture.