When Politics Control History

There is one major issue that arises through the disagreements and eventual cancelation of the Enola Gay exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum, which is, how much influenced is politics allowed in shaping American history? How much can they censor without infringing on free speech and free thought? Richard Kohn brings all of these questions to readers attentions in his essay History at Risk: The Case of the Enola Gay.

Kohn’s concern surrounding the political harassment and manipulation of the NASM is that the government sought to suppress the NASM’s “scholarly independence … to accommodate [a] political perspective.” Since the Smithsonian institute and its museums are “premier cultural institutions” and are looked up as historical authorities, then being subjected to government bullying sets a precedent that can easily be applied to lesser institutions. The fear is, if the government tries to censor public museums then what is to stop them from censoring public universities. This fear of censorship goes back to the Scopes Trial and anti-evolution legislature that affected public school curriculum and upset many Americans. The government was trying to tell it’s citizens what they could and could not learn about or believe in.

If we allow our government to censor public educational institutions (schools and museums) then our society and history is subject to interpretations of the few and powerful. This opens our history to the risk of becoming a history solely based on pro-American propaganda instead of scholarly critique and genuine learning. In a democracy the public needs to be informed of passed mistakes and events in order to be proactive in guarding against foolish decision making in the future. The fear of the government is that controversial exhibits will steer vulnerable minds to be anti-american. However, part of being a competent human being is continuing to learn and speculate about others beliefs as well as your own. If someone went into the NASM and saw the Enola Gay exhibit and allowed that to be their one opinion of WWII then they seriously need to pick up a book or pay attention in class. One’s personal knowledge is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. The government should be encouraging people to think, doubt, and explore because that is how lessons are learned and creative problem solving is form.

Conflicting Narratives

There has always been a clash between the historical narrative and the personal narrative when discussing a major historical event, especially a war. This is because the historical narrative is “unbiassed” and looks to confront the gray area of history, while the personal narrative looks to explain the event through eye witness accounts and emotions. One explains through “fact” and the other through “I felt”. This can cause major controversy because when the historical narrative clashes with the personal one the people that were involved feel as though their truth is being attacked and their feelings invalidated. This is the exact situation that occurred when the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) tried to host an in-depth exhibit about the Enola Gay, the end of WWII, and the atomic bomb.

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed the world forever and has been justified in various ways. The NASM tried to examine these different views and put them into a historical context. They went about this by discussing the facts, the effect the bombs had on Japan, its victims, and the possible moral failure of the United States. Although these topics had been discussed within academia they were not common public concerns, or conversations, in the early 1990’s. The NASM tried to create an exhibit that engaged the public in a historical debate and forced them to confront the sometimes uncomfortable history of our country. This was a massive task to undertake and a extremely controversial and painful subject to do it with. Tensions, not surprisingly, erupted during the planning of this exhibit.

The two sides were patriotism (veterans, mainly the AFA), and historical realism (academics). These sides were not clear cut, for example some academics were on the side of patriotism. However, at one point or another, in the planning of the Enola Gay exhibit, both of these sides were against the NASM. In the beginning of the project the script for the exhibit was very liberal and confronted very directly the issue of how Truman came to the decision to drop the atomic bomb and the morality of that decision. This greatly upset veterans and the AFA because they felt that this view was unAmerican and insulted their lives, since they believed that the bomb saved them. They felt that the NASM was being pro-Japanese and ignoring the obvious fact that Japan was the aggressor during the war and somehow earned the bomb. The NASM was trying to tell a story of humanity and the effect that America’s decision, dropping the atomic bomb, had on all of us. Part of this story is the devastation that the Japanese people experienced. However, this goal of historical realism was derailed by patriotism and political coercion which ended in a revised draft of the script that was more harsh on the Japanese, giving more glory to the United States. What started as an exhibit to discuss the impact of atomic power on humanity became an exhibit to glorify America’s use of the bomb; which included an undertone of moral responsibility.

The Enola Gay exhibit is a very overt example of the never ending feud between history and personal experience. It is hard to truly analyze history, in a very public way, without putting into question the beliefs and moral sanity of those who lived through the experience. In the case of the Enola Gay questioning the morality and motives behind the dropping of the atomic bomb implies complicity in mass murder to all those who fought. This accusation is counter to the conviction of patriotism and survival that was prevalent during the war. The conflict between historic and personal narratives gives way to the question: Can the events and decisions of war be evaluated with our normal set of values or do they warrant a different set of values? In the case of the NASM’s Enola Gay exhibit the answer was a resounding: we don’t want to think about it, resulting in the exhibits cancelation. The point of historical criticism and unbiassed analysis is to try and get people away from the we don’t want to think about it reaction. Martin Sherwin’s restatement of Santayana’s famous quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, accurately warns of the dangers of the pervasiveness of the we can’t think about it reaction when he says, “Those who insist only on their memories of the past are condemning the rest of us to avoid it”.

Source: “Anatomy of a Controversy”

Head of the Oklahoma

Saturday Races

First race of the weekend. Overall it was a solid race for us. The times are probably not accurate because the officials were not keeping great track of them. Therefore, we were probably a little bit faster than the time says. However, still happy about where we placed.

Another decent race. There were A LOT of NCAA teams in this race so that was why our rank is so low. However we did beat some club teams and were closer to others in times. We have work to do but it’s a good bench marker.

Night sprints are so much fun. We did come in dead last but we had a ton of fun doing it. I really miss spring racing!
Sunday Races

This race felt better than the one on Saturday. We were in a different boat however and that probably slowed us down a bit. Rowing up to the start and sitting next to the other three Texas boats was a lot of fun though. This weekend made me remember how much I enjoy coxing the guys boats. I am really happy that I’ll be doing more of it.

I’m upset that I ended the weekend with this race. The girls were very tired and were not really into pulling hard for this race. Our time is not anywhere near what we should be achieving and the girl’s attitudes were also awful. Wish we could have tried a little harder for this last race of the weekend.

“Against a historical background that cannot be denied or ignored”

The full title quote is “The case comes to us against a historical background that cannot be denied or ignored” (259). When I read this quote I realized that it sums up how historical events change future action. In dealing with the Scopes Trial, those future actions were court cases of similar nature dealing with how the origins of humans was to be taught in public schools.

The case that is identified in the quote above has to do with the Louisiana statute of 1981 that required “‘balanced treatment’ in biology instruction for ‘creation science'” (258). Creation science was defined as “‘scientific evidence for creation and inferences from those scientific evidences'” (259). The wording of this act shows a change in how fundamentalists tried to inject their views into public school curriculum. At the time of the Scopes trial in 1925 the fundamentalists were focussed on preventing evolution to be taught at all in the public schools. However, in 1981 when this Louisiana law was formed their tactics had changed to requiring that creationism be taught instead of trying to prevent teaching evolution. This change shows that the fundamentalists accepted that evolution and science would be taught in the secular public schools, so they moved to get creationism to be taught as well. This tactic promotes fairness and seems like a logical compromise. However, because of the tradition of the separation between church and state the Louisiana law was ruled as unconstitutional because it favored one religious view. This ruling also showed the change in thinking between 1925 and 1981. During the Scopes trial religion was not seen as necessarily separate from the state controlled public school’s the view was instead that of majoritarianism, if the majority of people were religious in the state then the schools should be too. However, this view changed by 1981 because the supreme court began to enforce the notion of separation between church and state. This lead to the ruling against the Louisiana statute.

The change in ideals over time is typical of historical progression. Especially in the United States it takes a while for progressive policies to take hold and be enforced by all branches of government. This is because of the checks and balance system that is in place that keeps our democracy strong but also hinders progress at times. The Scopes trial, its legacy, and the struggle between fundamentalists and science is a great example of this. It took many years for the change in thinking to happen in society to accept evolution and it took many years after that to put these ideals into legislation.

“A society of bodies…

“A society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason”

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s description of a mob. Found in Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson (241).

Summer for the Gods: Contingency

Contingency is defined as: A future event or circumstance that is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty. This definition helped me about 5% to understand what contingency was because honestly I had no clue. I had less of an idea of how it related to history and therefore the Scopes case. However, there is a wonderful two paragraphs on the American Historical Association’s website that really cleared up the details for me. I learned that contingency as it relates to history is a way of thinking and therefore learning about history. To think of history contingently means that you are looking at all the different things that had to come into play for one event to occur, and all the things that had to happen for those things to occur. Basically you are looking at history like a spider web where every one persons decisions sends the strand in another random direction and when the strands intersect that’s when something significant happens.

In relation to the Scopes case I can see that Edward J. Larson believes that this event happened in a contingent way, the timing of everything was just right. The decisions that brought the Scopes trial to fruition where: Scopes saying yes to the test case, the evolution law being passed in TN, the required high school text book before the law passed having evolution in it, and Dayton badly needing some tourism. If all these things were not in play that summer then the Scopes trial would not have happened or if it did it would not be in the same place or had so much hype surrounding it. Also, Bryan and Darrow being draw into the case was also part of the contingency for the case. If they both had been busy or not as riled up by the topic the Scopes case could have easily been a flop. All of these things coming together made the Scopes trial the sensation that it was.

Thanks to my digging to find out what contingency meant and my full reading of Summer for the Gods I now understand both ideas better. I feel like I’m closer to being a historian and I have a better understanding of the Scopes trial and how it came to be.

Books and You

Every book is meant to engage its reader. This requires readers to enter into the story as well as bring the story into them. All of this happens with the readers past experiences and personal thoughts in the background. It is impossible to derive meaning from a text without placing it in context with everything else you know. For this reason while reading a book it is becoming part of your knowledge and your history as you catalogue it into your memory.

Especially when reading books about historical events I rely on my previous knowledge a lot. I read books while placing them into the timeline I have developed over the years and try to think about what else was happening during the same period. Also, I read all books with my bigger interests in mind. You will most likely find scribbled questions in the margins of my books either relating to my bigger interests, or with something I am engaged with at the time. I find that personal histories make reading and discussing books more interesting. Although these biases can get in the way of an objective reading. I think that if you are engaged in a book your personal beliefs should factor in to how you read it, especially if that book challenges your beliefs. Accepting a book to become part of your knowledge bank is what being an engaged learner is all about.

“We assume others…

“We assume others show love the same way we do — and if they don’t, we worry it’s not there.”

“Any restriction…

“Any restriction of academic freedom heaps coals of shame upon the community”

Albert Einstein’s thoughts on the Tennessee anti-evolution law. Found in Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson.