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[Forums Moderator]

A historian fired from his job after it came to light that he was a prominent neo-Nazi now says he was merely posing as one in order to do research for a book on the National Socialist movement. "Any attempt to understand a group, a movement, or an individual psyche," he writes, should include "becoming, as much as an individual can, the subject under study." Do you buy that? Are there examples of similar -- though less extreme -- approaches to historical research? Do historians need strict guidelines, like those used by anthropologists, for acting as "participant-observers"?
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[Don Freeman]

An historian has the right to belong to a Neo-Nazi organization because this is a free society, or at least I thought it was.  I have absolutely no interest in right wing movements whether they be Nazi or Fundamentalist or Bush-Republican!  If he joined this organization as a participant-observer, then he was following a distinguished and highly rewarding research practice.  However, doing participant-observation (Street Corner Society, Caste & Class in a Southern Town, etc.), he has some special ethical and professional standards that he must meet.  Usually, the ethical and professional standards limit what the participant-observer might do to harm the subjects of his research.  There is a rich literature on this subject that cuts across Sociology, Social-Psychology and Political Science.  Among the personal risks to which the scholar might be exposed would be being identified as an FBI or other government agent.  After we have explored the "explanation" or "excuse" of being a participant-observer, we have to wonder about an institution that would terminate a member of its faculty for such a reason.   McCarthyism is alive and flourishing in the reign of Bush II!  I am sad that my professional colleagues are not speaking out in protest when Universities terminate faculty members for their political contacts -- you can belong to any group (no matter how far to the right or how radical) if the group is approved by the current political administration.  God save the republic!

[%sig%]

[Observer, MidWestern U.]

What about a rational response to this issue which doesn't resort to ad hominem attacks on the current administration or any other group?  Please?  An ad hominem response actually avoids the issue at hand and shows a lack of critical thinking on the topic.

[Loren Wingblade, Ph.D.]

Journalists certainly become "embeded" in organizations to report the news.  Just be sure that you are not doing something illegal.  Just like I thought we had a free press, it seems that our academic rights are being infringed upon. History and sociology are slowly merging.  If you need to go to the source than do so.  I don't know about historians, but scientists go where the knowledge is.  Would you rather not know what such groups are thinking and doing (ploting)? I could never join such a group but I am curious as to their political motivations.  During the 1960's when the FBI cruised the streets of Madison, Wisconsin with walke-talkies, my fellow students said don't show you face there, you might want to work for the government someday.  I see not much has changed in forty years.  Now we have to worry about college officials.
Are things getting better or worse?  I say worse. We all know we live in a free society :).  If you are a historian, I say go for it.  Loren Wingblade Ph.D. Jackson Community College.  PS--I am both a psychologist and a sociologist.

[Common sense]

It seems to me that we need to take a step back and employ some common sense:

First, what is the purpose of an undertaking of this sort?  To study what Neo-Nazis think?  Let me guess:  they hate  Jews.

Second, are we debating the rightness/wrongness of terminating a public employee for being a Neo Nazi?!?

Let's solve this very simply--a national referendum on a very simple question:  if person A is a Neo-Nazi, can he be terminated from his university job for that association?  I can tell you what the People will say:  absolutely Yes!

God save the Republic?  Vox populi, vox Dei.

[Uncommon sense]

Let's not turn this into a round of "Question the Jewish lobby and get fired," shall we?  Professors have as much right to dissident opinions or outright bias as anyone else, although in my mind, the line is crossed when a professor *voluntarily* makes his biases obvious in public to the point where a reasonable minority student who heard him would have good cause to fear being treated poorly in that professor's courses.  Having a radio show where you yap about the "browning of America" seems to fit the bill.  This cannot be justified by his claim of doing field research, since he could easily have joined up but refused to speak openly in public "out of fear for his job," certainly a believable excuse.  No, he volunteered to go the extra mile.

More to the point, none of the previous posters seem to have noticed that the article makes it clear the "historical research" argument is bull****.  He does not seem to have had a clear methodology for his "research" in mind at all.  He doesn't plan to go back to academia and the most likely venue for "publication" of his "research" is a historical novel -- in other words, he plans NO real scholarship and has a hazy fantasy that he'll write fiction about neo-Nazis someday, although he has not yet set pen to paper.  Before anyone gets on the bandwagon to say it's McCarthyist to fire someone for doing research, ask yourself how much forethought you would give to possible publications before committing yourself to spend a year steeped in some subculture you didn't much like.  No such plan means no genuine scholarly motive.

[surprised]

I was surprised by his firing, having attended Northwestern U in the 80s, and watched an administration gainfully employ the scientist Butz who had written several tomes denying the Holocaust.

[%sig%]

[jt]

Comman Sense  wrote:

"Second, are we debating the rightness/wrongness of terminating a public employee for being a Neo Nazi?!?

Let's solve this very simply--a national referendum on a very simple question: if person A is a Neo-Nazi, can he be terminated from his university job for that association? I can tell you what the People will say: absolutely Yes!"

Smacks of McCarthism

Or, let us vote on whether the Nazi  rocket scientists hired after WWII should be  fired, retroactively, for that association.

Better, repeal the first amendment.

[Loren Wingblade, Ph.D.]

To Observer, Common Sense, Uncommon Sense, and Surprised:
 Why won't any of you except myself, and Don Freeman sign your names to these posts?  My you have strong opinions as long as you remain anonymous!  Anybody graduating from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. has a strong research background.  I am quoting from the original article:

"Citing Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, the English Romantic poets, and the medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz, Mr. Pluss says he developed a highly participatory theory of historical investigation. "It slowly yet surely dawned on me," he writes, "that any attempt to understand a group, a movement, or an individual psyche, would have to include becoming, as much as an individual can, the subject under study."

Does this sound like a person who has no research plan? He graduates from the University of Chicago and has no research plan? Try again.  Have any of you seen the film the Counterfeit Traitor" starring William Holden?  He had to pose as pro-nazi and denounce his jewish friends so he could be an ex-American (now Swedish citizen) and be a spy for the British.  Many of his Jewish friends couldn't believe their ears when they heard his statements.  But he shortened the war by telling the Allies where the German oil refineries were.
People do lots of things in life to find information.  Just because you or I wouldn't do it, doesn't make it invalid.

[Don't believe the hype]

He was "fired" from his position as an adjunct, which isn't an unusual occurrence.  In fact, to a budding novelist -- or a person with any self-respect -- it ought to  be a relief.  Then there's his research, which he doesn't want to "intellectualize," because that would take him totally out of the moment, preventing him from getting into character.  Ultimately, he, like thousands, if not the majority of his fellow citizens, plans to transform this unexamined existence into a novel.  Yes, this is a sad story all right. The newspapers ought to add a section (right after Sports, I think) called Worthless Ideas and Failed Ambitions.

[First]

First they came for the Nazis . . .

Good!

[Waller Hastings, Northern St U]

  It seems to me there are two ethical issues - one, is it legitimate to fire someone from an academic position b/c of a view he/she may hold (or "pretend" to hold)?  The answer to this would seem to me to be "No."  That is what "academic freedom" supposedly guarantees, even to the most egregious viewpoints.  To state that the mere expression of opinion cannot justify dismissal does not require adhering to the views of the dismissed person.

  There is another question, about the legitimacy of research.  If one does not adhere to the neo-Nazi viewpoint, one might very well pretend to do so in order to get unusual access to such organizations (though here the dissimulation is already getting ethically murky, I think).  However, to do so, one should have a clear plan of research, which an earlier poster has already pointed out does not seem to have been the case here.

  But it is one thing to join a group for observation, and quite another to actively promote that group's agenda.  The individual in this case anchored a national news program espousing neo-Nazi propaganda.  This is no longer research - it is proselytizing for the viewpoints of the group supposedly being "studied."  A boundary line has clearly been crossed.  Further, insofar as his activities during this research would clearly impact human subjects who would have no idea they were the subject of research, the project should certainly have been submitted to a review committee within his institution.

  He evidently was fired for espousing neo-Nazi ideas.  In itself, this is wrong.  He should, however, most likely have been dismissed for unethical research practices.

[Dr. Jacques Pluss]

I wish to thank Dr. Loren Wingblade for her insightful and positive comments.  Generally, comments on my "method acting" or "participant-observer" research method have been quite negative.  Yet it seems that a few commentators have grasped the notion that an historian, especially one doing work in contemporary studies, can't fully understand the subject under study without experiencing and sensing it, in full emotional and psychic contexts.  Certainly, Dr. Wingblade is correct when she notes that the approach I've taken has much in common with sociology. She also understands the importance of my training at the University of Chicago, famous for its Committee on Social Thought. Finally, many of my detractors appear to criticize me for the group I chose to examine, the National Socialist Movement, while ignoring the fact that I've said more than once that I chose them precisely because of their obnoxious platform of hatred -- a hatred which must be addressed and exposed with as much vigor as possible.  There's more to the White Power Movement than many choose to recognize.  Dr. Jacques Pluss.

[sociologist]

Academic freedoms aside, actually participating in this movement, rather than limiting oneself to full ethnographic observation of things that already would have happened, has a substantial impact on the real world, very likely strengthening the movement far more than this "research" strategy is going to do anything to reduce its impact.

In sociology, Kathleen Blee closely studies the white hate movement, grappling with these issues in ways many might be more comfortable with. For one thing, she notes that even though she clearly was not supportive of their movement, the people she interviewed and observed were nonetheless happy to have their movement gain any form of publicity, because that was how they grew. She worried that she might be giving them a boost even through her activities, but decided that a carefully neutral kind of involvement was worthwhile because she learned surprising things about how people become members of the movement for incidental social reasons, rather than an initial strong agreement with their beliefs.

Interestingly, the person above seems to think that the title of "researcher" automatically exonerates him from any such responsibility for the implications of his own actions, or for defining any limits to an optimized balance between the negative effects and benefits of his research. To achieve a fairly similar effect, why can't a former member of one of these groups who has already done the damage be join with you to write a "historical memoir?" Does someone with the legitimacy of the "researcher" title have to make the world a worse place just to make the observations compelling? There are certain arguments that can be made for total personal immersion as a necessary step in ethnographic research, but taking this stance indisputably changes outcomes in whatever field one is studying, rather than using the standard many ethnographers use to do everything possible to avoid altering what otherwise would have happened.

[dark globe]

jt wrote:

> Comman Sense  wrote:
>
> "Second, are we debating the rightness/wrongness of terminating
> a public employee for being a Neo Nazi?!?
>
> Let's solve this very simply--a national referendum on a very
> simple question: if person A is a Neo-Nazi, can he be
> terminated from his university job for that association? I can
> tell you what the People will say: absolutely Yes!"
>
> Smacks of McCarthism
>
> Or, let us vote on whether the Nazi  rocket scientists hired
> after WWII should be  fired, retroactively, for that
> association.
>
> Better, repeal the first amendment.

Someone who belongs to a legally sanctioned group that does not espouse criminal activity should not be fired for that association.

On the other hand, the Nazi scientists were collaborators in crimes against humanity. They should have been put on trial with the rest of the Nazis who collaborated with Hitler.

Two quite different situations.