History & Politics
Howard Zinn says in this classic program, “I’m going to argue there is no conflict between historical honesty and a passionate belief that the world should be changed, that people should be equal, that war should be abolished. In fact, that particular scholarship is meaningless unless in some way it advances the human race in ways we desperately need. What is called objectivity is a kind of myth. I know there are useful myths. There is a way in which the concept of objectivity is useful to the extent it means honesty and not lying and not deliberately distorting a situation. In that sense, there is some value to it. But there’s another sense that objectivity is not only a useful myth but a harmful one. And that is when objectivity is pretending neutrality of scholarship, pretending the scholar, the historian really doesn’t care.”
Lecture in honor of Harvey Goldberg.
Recorded at the University of Wisconsin.
Speaker

Howard Zinn
HOWARD ZINN CENTENARY 1922-2022
Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, was perhaps this country’s premier radical historian. He was born in Brooklyn in 1922. His parents, poor immigrants, were constantly moving to stay, as he once told me, “one step ahead of the landlord.” After high school, he went to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. During World War II, he saw combat duty as an air force bombardier. After the war, he went to Columbia University on the GI Bill. He taught at Spelman, the all-Black women’s college in Atlanta. He was an active figure in the civil rights movement and served on the board of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was fired by Spelman for his activism. He was among the first to oppose U.S. aggression in Indochina. His book Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal was an instant classic. A principled opponent of imperialism and militarism, he was an advocate of non-violent civil disobedience. He spoke and marched against the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. His masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States, continues to sell in huge numbers. Among his many other books are You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian and Original Zinn with David Barsamian. Shortly before his death he completed his last great project, the documentary The People Speak. Always ready to lend a hand, he believed in and practiced solidarity. Witty, erudite, generous and loved by many the world over, Howard Zinn, friend and teacher, passed away on January 27, 2010. He would say, Don’t mourn. Get active. The struggle for peace and justice continues.
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