How Should Scholars Behave?

Abstract

46 Historically Speaking · September/October 2005 How Should Scholars Behave? Jeremy Black Maybe I'm one of those simpleminded souls who can only best grasp an issue when it affects them directly, but a couple ofepisodes have led me to think about how scholars should behave. I'm not referring here to relations with colleagues in the same institution, though many years ago, as a young lecturer at Durham, I can remember being unsure how to respond when I went to the bar for a fortifying drink during a performance by the Scottish Opera at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle to see, at the other end, a (married) senior colleague holding hands with a student: the university's induction course had provided no guidance on whether to say hello or to pretend not to notice. I dare say it still doesn't. No, my concern is the problem of conferences and how to respond to arguments one feels misguided. I may be totally wrong, I'm certainly confused (rather like the train I'm writing this in which appears to find the timetable way too confusing to keep to), but here are two cases for starters. Last November, I was very kindly invited to the excellent Mershon Center at Ohio State University to take part in a symposium on how best to teach military history. Very trying in the midst ofterm, but great fun—interesting people, good papers, great hospitality. I gave my paper, essentially on the global theme, and, in the questions, someone says why haven't you mentioned John Keegan, and I made a critical remark: Face ofBattle is very Anglocentric. The tone of my remark was possibly overly abrasive, but the content was spot on. Subsequently, a colleague who is a good friend and whom I much admire, wrote to me to say he thought I'd been too harsh and to ask would I make my remark to Keegan in person. My response was yes, but, more generally , that it struck me as very odd that we feel it perfectly appropriate to judge critically students, academics seeking posts and promotion , and other academics in the smallchange ofconversation, but that there seemed to be a reluctance to make such judgments publicly. This leads to the second episode, one in which I inadvertently fell foul of America's culture wars. In 2003 I was invited to the Ian Fleming conference hosted by the English department at the University ofIndiana. I was to be the keynote closer, speaking on "Changing Views of America in the James Bond Corpus," and my hosts kindly paid all my expenses and gave me a most welcome honorarium. The quality of the papers alas was very mixed: from first rate to inaccurate and tendentious. I had been given over an hour for my talk, so thought I would spare five minutes at the start to review what we'd heard. Trying to be fair, I remarked, in a light tone, that historians had to offer chronological precision, while literary critics had to try to anchor themselves in the texts, and that it was of only limited interest to hear lesbian readings of Bond unless it could be shown that lesbianism was an important theme in the corpus or lesbians a key element among the readers. This led to a furor described by Andrew Lycett in the Sunday Times ofJune 8, 2003. A roundtable in which I was due to talk was boycotted by several participants, I was criticized in a letter from which excerpts were read out in the business meeting next day, and my paper was dropped from the proceedings. The organizer refusedto show me the letter or to return my calls. Tantpis you may well say. I certainly did. The English department at Bloomington is not exactly prominent on my radar screen of intellectual endeavor, and, anyway, they paid my costs and honorarium in full, so I'd had a paid trip that had enabled me to see a couple ofold friends (Bill Thompson at Indiana, and James Chapman, the other keynote speaker), to hear four good papers, to work on useful Townshend material in the Lilly Library, and to eat my...