The Politics of American Studies

Abstract

IN APRIL 1975 AT THE BICENTENNIAL WORLD REGIONAL CONFERENCE held in Salzburg, Austria an incident happened that startled all those present and underscored the political nature of American Studies. Scholars had gathered from most European countries, the United States, and Israel to discuss the impact of the United States and Europe on each other. The meetings were held at the Schloss Leopoldskron, an elegant eighteeenth-century rococo palace, home of the Salzburg Seminar, but perhaps more famous for its role in the movie version of The Sound of Music. After the opening banquet, Gordon Wood of Brown University was in the middle of reading a carefully crafted paper on republicanism and the American place in the world, when Andrew Sinclair of Great Britain rose noisily from his chair to denounce Wood's sad and terrible words and to attack the American presence in Southeast Asia and in Europe. Then he stomped out of the hall. After a few moments of embarrassed and stunned silence, Wood finished his address. Sinclair's outburst (for which he apologized the next day) was related to the particular world situation in 1975 that found the United States at perhaps its lowest reputation at any point in the twentieth century, even among American Studies scholars.' At another conference in Washington the next year, Eqbal Ahmad of Pakistan denounced Henry Kissinger as a war criminal who ought to be tried for his crimes