Comments on Raymond Tanter's 'Foreign Affairs Analysis: An Activist vs. A Hippie'

Abstract

If one must be criticized, it is comforting to have the criticism come from an able person whose critique makes a contribution to the subject at hand. This is the case with Professor Tanter's criticism. The heart of his objections to my article is really that I wrote a different kind of article than he would have liked to see. I reach this conclusion because he does not appear to reject any of the central positions set forth in the piece: 1) that there is a subculture in the Department of State; 2) that t-he outlines of the subcultural ideology approximate those I have suggested; 3) that the subculture and its associated ideology have a continuing impact upon policy outcomes. Professor Tanter does not really focus on these questions but instead criticizes the article on the ground that it is not fully documented. Surely he realizes t-hat different kinds of pieces are written for different purposes. If t-he article had been elaborately documented, it would have been too long for the International Studies Quarterly and for reprinting in the Foreign Service Journal and would therefore not have reached some of those persons I was hoping to reach. Professor Tanter calls me an activist' and remarks that the activist strategy is to mobilize the services of outside agitators to bring about change. How can he lay my sinister strategy bare to the world like that and then complain because the piece in question is not more extensively documented? We agitators have to write prose that others are willing to read or we will soon go hungry.