The President's Corner

Vol.11, no. 1 September 2000 A^ HISTORICALLY SPEAKING THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER by Eugene Genovese lhi .he response to theprogram that Paul Rahe, Miriam Levin, and Lou Ferlegerput togetherfor our June national conference exceeded all expectations. Members andfriends showered us with accolades, and ifthere were dissenters, we did not hearfrom them—from, that is, people not normally shy and unwilling to howl. Certainly, those who attended the conference and expressed an opinion, as many did, signaled theirpleasure at the high quality ofthe sessions. For myself, I heardfinepapers at every session I attended—that is, a session in every time slot—the best ofwhich were superb. We are especiallygrateful to our host, Boston University, and the outstanding efforts ofits conference services department. We owe spedai thanks to Robert W. Fogcl, who delivered our first Christopher Lasch Lecture and turned in a vintage Fogel performance—richly informative, provocane, and masterfully argued. At tin· nsk of self-indulgence, may I quote from my introduction to Professor Fogcl's lecture: The Historical Society appropriately named this series of lectures Indistinguished scholars in memory of Christopher Lasch, whose untimely death deprived American letters of a powerful voice of reason, moral responsibility, and intellectual integrity. In maintaining that political passion complemented, rather than subverted, high standards of scholarship , Kit Lasch understood what the practitioners of ideologically driven history do not—that political commitment heightens scholarship only to the extent that it responds fairly to the challenges posed by honest opponents and submits its hypotheses to open debate and empirical verification. Kit lived and died a fighter, who upheld the glory of Western civilization while he ruthlessly criticized its failings. America is a better country for his having lived. It has become a poorer place since he left us. continued on pa%e 2 TheJournal ofThe Historical Society Eluthtth Fox-Gtncvcst, Editor!..mm Crawley, Managing Editor Table ofContents • D. G. Hart on Religious History in American History • Robert Wiebe on Nationalism and Imagined Communities • Mark M. Smith on Writing the History of Sound • Victor Davis Hanson on Agrarianisms Ancient and Modern Excerpts, and the Editor's Introduction, available at www.bu.edu/historic. For submission guidelines, please consult our Web site at www.bu.edu/ftistonc, or contact the Managing Editor at the-joumo/@thehistorico/sodety.com. Attention, THS Members: Represent the journal at your home institution and help attract institutional subscribers! Forms, brochures, and offprints are available — please contact the central office at historic@bu.edu for more information . You may also consider donating a subscription to your library. FirstIssue Now Available; Z :PRESIDENT continuedfrom page 1 The introduction of a Nobel Prize winner, a great scholar, and one of the finest men it has been my privilege to know was not the easiest task ever assigned me. After the customary recital of his many achievements and honors, I concluded with remarks, for which I again ask your indulgence: A commitment to the search for objective truth has marked Bob Fogcl's life's work. Bob and I go Lack together some fifty years, when, as young communists, we imbibed the totalitarian doctrine of "class truth, which today has been broadened into "situational" or "positional" truth— euphemisms for the notion that since we cannot hope to attain absolute truth in the study of history, we are free to abandon the quest for the limited truth we can attain; free to reduce truth and morals to whatever serves our interests; free, that is. to become crooks, not to say monsters. In the current war against nihilism in and out of the academy, Bob Fogcl, like Christopher Lisch, has stood fast. I am sure that Bob knows Dante, but even if not, he surely noticed [Dante's great dictum as quoted in the opening pages oí Marx's Capital: "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir' le genti," which, at the Volume II, Number 1 Historically Speaking The Newsletter of The Historical Society 656 Beacon Street Mezzanine Boston, MA 02215-2010 617/358-0260 Fax: 617/358-0250 historic@bu.edu www.bu.edu/historic Editor: Kirse G. May risk of sending Dante spinning in his grave, I shall render inelegantly as, "Do what you know to...