Correspondence

Responses to 'Respecting Diversity'

Dear Editors,
When I first read E.J. Pollack's "Respecting Diversity" I was surprised that a scholar would so openly express his anti-Catholic prejudice but I was dismayed that the OAH Newsletter would publish it. But on second thought the power of Professor Pollack's call for toleration of diversity made me see the 2000 OAH meeting in a new light.

Not only did the OAH Board ignore Professor Pollack's complaint about meeting at a Jesuit University; they willfully scheduled the conference in a city named for a Catholic saint. On every piece of conference literature OAH members were assaulted with the Catholic symbol "St." Much worse than a Pius XII library on a university campus is a city named for a French monarch honored by the church for leading a crusade against Islam. The conference city's name forced the OAH to align itself with genocide and religious intolerance.

Respect for diversity was further flaunted by asking pro-choice members to meet at a university whose medical school will not teach abortion procedures. Nor was this the only intolerance I saw exhibited at St. Louis University. Typical of a Catholic institution, I saw alcoholic beverages being served at several social functions, regardless that this might be contrary to some people's religious beliefs and distressing to problem drinkers. Nor did St. Louis University make the slightest effort to prevent the numerous flowering trees on campus from blooming, even though there were OAH members who suffered from allergies. But these were mere minor irritations to the offensiveness of a city that takes pride in being the "gateway" to western expansion. Before St. Louis was given its Catholic name, the area was known as "Mound City," because of all the American Indian earthen architecture found at the site. The modern city and its Jesuit University literally are built on the bones of a Native American civilization. Of course, the OAH chose to overlook this history and the larger issue that a Catholic, Christopher Columbus began the whole genocide against Indian peoples.

I strongly recommend that the OAH Council consider holding no further meetings until they can guarantee that their members will not be subjected to cultures, ideas, and history that may be in any way offensive. Perhaps the cultural vacuum of cyberspace can provide the hermetic environment necessary to protect Professor Pollock's [sic] sensibilities and prejudices. Until that time I think the OAH Board, the Catholic Church, and the Society of Jesus should join in intoning for his benefit, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximum culpa.
Theodore J. Karamanski
Loyola University, Chicago

Dear Editors:
The May 2000 issue of the OAH Newsletter was truly shocking. It printed a "Viewpoint" from four members of the OAH that was hate mail, no more, no less. The authors of this "viewpoint" criticized the OAH for moving the convention to St. Louis University because it is a Catholic institution. The authors gave all sorts of reasons to justify their stance, but when all is said and done, they are bigots who dislike the Roman Catholic Church. They have insulted all OAH members who are Roman Catholics and/or alumni of Catholic institutions.
I will not demean myself by refuting their attacks. I see no reason why I should apologize for being a Roman Catholic who attended a Catholic college (Fordham) and a Jesuit high school. To be drawn into a debate is like a Black having to justify himself when attacked by racists.

Intelligent bigotry always disguises itself. It looks to the sciences or to "Americanism" or to fashionable views for justification. The four authors of the "Viewpoint" point to diversity to justify themselves. They point to their Jewish background, their sense of victimhood, to justify their lack of tolerance.

Their insensitive "viewpoint" shows that bigotry is not the exclusive property of hooded yahoos or of a white Christian hotel owner. The remarks of the four authors of the "viewpoint" are proof that hate can come from any part of the multicultural mosaic.

This is an unpleasant truth that all Americans must recognize as we enter the new millennium.
Lawrence Squeri
East Stroudsburg University

E.G. Pollack responds:
Unfortunately, neither letter writer engages with any of the issues raised in my Viewpoint piece, "Respecting Diversity in the OAH." One letter is jejune; the other lacks content. Both represent precisely the kind of insensitivity to issues of antisemitism to which my colleagues and I were objecting.

To label us "bigots" for protesting the Church's long history of lethal antisemitism is sophistry. To equate the discomfort some might feel at seeing alcohol "being served at several social functions," which one need not attend, with being, in effect, forced to speak beneath a centuries' old symbol of aggressive antisemitism if one were to participate in any of the sessions at the convention, is not only to use a spurious analogy, but to trivialize the history of antisemitism. To ask why we did not complain that the OAH "willfully scheduled the conference in a city named for a Catholic saint . . . honored by the church for leading a crusade against Islam" is to substitute a puerile--and specious--form of mockery for argument. Aside from the letter writer's failure to understand the difference between holding sessions in rooms adorned with what to us are antisemitic icons, and the abstraction of meeting in a city named for whomever, it is notable that he never mentioned that Saint Louis was, in fact, renowned for his particularly virulent antisemitism. Indeed, William of Chartres commented of Saint Louis, "Jews he hated so much that he could not bear to look on them." He even confiscated and "burned all copies of the Talmud he could lay his hands on." One historian has observed, "Despite, or perhaps because of, his cruel and violent attitudes and actions toward Jews, Louis was canonized a mere twenty-seven years after his death, an extraordinarily brief period for a layman." Enthralled by his cleverness, the letter writer proceeds to chastise the OAH for daring to hold its convention in a city "built on the bones of a Native American civilization," and for overlooking "that a Catholic, Christopher Columbus began the whole genocide against Indian peoples." But would the letter writer ever mock those who protest meeting beneath the Confederate flag at the Capitol in Columbia, South Carolina, in this way? It appears that casuistry, the double standard, and ignorance of, or indifference to, the history of antisemitism still flourish in parts of our profession.

In our "Statement of Concerns" my colleagues and I also indicated our discomfort at meeting at a university whose library is named the Pius XII Memorial Library. I found the OAH leadership's hosannas to a university whose core institution memorializes Pius XII particularly unseemly since, in an effort to canonize him, the Church has been actively and grievously distorting his historical record. One historian found it "shocking" that the document We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, issued only a little over two years ago, characterized Pius XII only "as an active opponent of Nazi antisemitism," extolled for what he did "personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives!" It is appalling that "By the document's lights, the Catholic hierarchy, from the Holy See on down, answered the Nazi war against the Jews with principled and consistent opposition." Indeed, several scholars have stressed that in the document Memory and Reconciliation: the Church and the Faults of the Past, released only four months ago, the Vatican calls only for the "purification of memory"--the elimination of "all forms of resentment or violence left by the inheritance of the past"--not for the recovery of memory. As one analyst wrote, "the past is not to be recovered," but "disarmed." And although the Vatican has now responded to the outcry of Jewish organizations worldwide against its attempt to elevate Pius XII to sainthood by agreeing to the appointment of six eminent historians, three "Jewish historians" and three Catholic ones, to assess his record during the Holocaust, they can examine only the eleven volumes of published Vatican materials. Given all this, I concluded that for historians to convene at a school whose centerpiece is the Pius XII Memorial Library, without raising any of these issues--with only the leadership's fulsome praise--was, in effect, to participate in the cover-up. Here was an opportunity to stand up in defense of historical truth, even to call for the opening to scholars of the Vatican Archives pertaining to the Holocaust--not to remain silent or to celebrate, betraying the historian's central role.
E.G. Pollack

In Search of Traditional Medicine

Dear Editors:
The emergence of modern science has affected the lives of many people and the way they think in improving their lives for the better, but science is not the only way of solving problems of mankind. There are other knowledge systems usually much older and wider than science. For example in Southern Africa, science as a knowledge system is barely a century old. Before it, and alongside it, is the indigenous or traditional knowledge system, which in my opinion deserves some serious study, not because of its duration which dates back to the dawn of the human race, but also because of its continued use by the majority of our people as they try to cope with the problems of their health.

Many historians and healthcare providers seem not to be aware that in African traditional-medical knowledge and practice, there is a vast sea of knowledge opportunities, which all along await their exploitation, articulation, and use in new-drug preparations. In widening the scope and horizon of other thinkers and their potential resources of knowledge, I am eagerly inviting personalities from different persuasions across the globe to come and share noble ideas and experience, skills pertaining to the "Doctrine of Signatures," traditional wisdom that states that all native medicinal and aromatic plants resemble the diseases and ailments that they treat. Really, history cannot be simply made to stand on its head. Direct inquiries in confidence to No. 20-16th Cress,Warren Park 2, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Leon Mungofa