VDH UltraOne Long, Long Angry Reader: Part Two

Two, you know almost nothing of the multifold requirements of a tenured Hoover senior fellow that transcend public commentary. And since you would apparently wish to see me gone from the Hoover Institution, you should learn what fellows are expected to do and how writing a column fits into their job description. (I mention what I am doing in this regard, not to be self-centered but to school you on just how little you understand the Institution or those who work there, and how fellows are evaluated on criteria that far transcend a weekly column.)

The obligations of senior tenured fellows are:

1) to publish both academic and general books and articles in their fields of academic expertise. (Accordingly, I have written 27 books by a variety of publishers such as Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, Doubleday, Simon and Schuster, the Free Press, Bloomsbury, Princeton University Press, the University of California Press, Encounter, and others.)

These books inter alia include a comprehensive history of World War II (The Second World Wars), a history of Western military practice (Carnage and Culture), a history of the Peloponnesian War (A War Like No Other), an agrarian history of the Greek city-states (The Other Greeks), a history of classical Greek battle (The Western Way of War), studies of generalship (The Savior Generals, The Soul of Battle), a study of classical strategy (Makers of Ancient Strategy [ed.]), an analysis of citizenship and its challenges (The Dying Citizen), and, most recently, a study of how civilizations perish in war (The End of Everything).

The last three books I have written were listed as New York Times best sellers. In addition, I have published over 100 scholarly articles and essays, on topics from classical and modern agriculture to military history and contemporary military affairs. All these publications complement the Hoover Institution’s 100-year history of emphasizing the study of war, revolution, and peace.

2) to develop institutional programs. I created and chair the Hoover Military History Working Group, one of the largest and oldest task forces at Hoover. It includes over 50 members of all political persuasions, both Democrats and Republicans, including military officers, active and retired, civilian analysts, diplomats, historians, and independent scholars. I am the general editor, along with colleagues, of its chief publication Strategika (https://www.hoover.org/publications/strategika), a nonpartisan historical online magazine devoted to analyzing current military crises in the context of historical precedents. In addition, our team publishes Military History in the News on the Hoover website, nonpartisan essays by historians who describe current wars and crises in terms of past historical precedents, as well as numerous online book reviews of military history classics. All of these venues are easily found on the Hoover website and would meet your preference for non-political writing.

3) development outreach and public relations. Hoover fellows are expected to make their scholarly expertise known to the general public and to help advance the values and traditions as described in the mission statement. That agenda includes media appearances on radio and television, podcasts, interviews, op-eds, public appearances, speaking engagements, guest lectures at Hoover-sponsored retreats, and active participation when asked in fundraising for Hoover donors. I try to do between 15-20 interviews a week on radio, podcasts, and television, in addition to writing a syndicated weekly column and a long weekly essay for American Greatness.

In other words, a Hoover fellow, as is common in most institutes, is required to pursue academic research but not in isolation or for scholarly audiences alone. Nor is one’s task simply to write political opinions, but rather to use one’s scholarship to inform the general public and to persuade them of the wisdom and value of the Hoover mission statement and goals.

Note that many Hoover fellows in the past have written op-eds and book reviews for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Times Literary Supplement, and appeared frequently on NPR and PBS. What has changed is not the fellows’ views nor their willingness to continue to express them in liberal outlets, but rather a new political environment in which the Left censors and excludes conservative opinions and viewpoints.

4) Hoover committee work. All senior fellows are expected to participate fully in senior fellow governance of the institution. That requires serving on hiring and retention committees, attending core governance meetings, and meeting with fellows of similar interest to develop programs, and in my case to advance formal historical study at Hoover.

Given all of the above, writing a weekly syndicated column that you object to represents about 5 percent of my weekly schedule.

In that regard, fellows are each given one day per week to pursue outside academic or intellectual interests. I teach either by Zoom or in-person undergraduate and graduate classes on nonpartisan subjects, such as a current graduate course in the grand strategy of World War II. And in addition, I do four hours per week of podcasts on politics, culture, history, warfare, and classical literature.

Your efforts to suppress free expression that you either disagree with or cannot refute or both are not new and have in the past been embraced by the Stanford faculty senate, not known either for their political reticence or centrist views, to seek to censure Hoover fellows such as myself, Scott Atlas, and Niall Ferguson.

I have been denied an opportunity in the past to use the Stanford media studio, in theory open for the use for television interviews for Stanford and Hoover faculty and fellows—unless I would write out in advance what I planned to say on a Fox newscast (that is an impossible and unworkable requirement not allowed by any network). Note the studio did not apply such requirements to leftwing faculty and fellows who appear frequently and often express highly partisan views on CNN or MSNBC.

The post VDH UltraOne Long, Long Angry Reader: Part Two appeared first on VDH’s Blade of Perseus.