Howard Zinn on History, by Howard Zinn

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Howard Zinn: On History by Howard Zinn (2011) is a collection of previously published essays ranging from Freedom Schools in the 1960s, issues in scholarship, to the American Empire. Even though the essays were written over several decades there is a constant theme throughout the work—the activist scholar. Zinn feels that scholars should not be passive citizens concerned with their research alone, but active citizens that use their research to change society. Zinn, unlike other historians, is not afraid to place what he views as right and wrong into his scholarly work. In fact he sees nothing unethical about inserting his opinion or politics into his writing. The society of higher education teaches historians to be objective by removing the person from the reading—removing opinion from writing. Zinn feels that this is a fruitless enterprise, for in the end opinion and politics will enter writing. In Howard Zinn: On History the case is made that for a different kind of historian. Zinn challenges the traditional notion of an historian a more passive scholar that endlessly tries to remove himself, or herself, from their research. Zinn sees this as an impossibility and instead argues for a more active scholar. This is the central theme that runs through Zinn’s book, a theme that should run through scholarship itself.

In “Historian as Citizen (1966)” Howard Zinn first codifies his views of an opinion based activist scholar in terms of a historian. The first type of historian that he introduces is the mainstream version of the historian, “traditionally, he is passive observer, one who looks for sequential patterns in the past as a guide to the future (…) but without participating himself in attempts to change the pattern or tidy the d...

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...nges the traditional notion of the objectivity claiming that it is impossible. People cannot remove their biases and therefore are subjective in nature. Therefore, that objectivity is lost because the historian is no longer a “disinterested scholar;” however, that does not mean that the end result, i.e. research, cannot be truthful, and therefore, objective. Just because people are subjective that does not meant that truth is unattainable. The notion that “specialization” harms scholarship by making the “activist-scholar” impossible is simply not pragmatic. It is impossible for a single person to be a true holistic scholar, and, therefore, a panel of “activist-scholars” is a more practical solution to the issue of “specialization.” Howard Zinn’s book is his attempt to become a “activist-scholar” as he uses his research to try and change society for the better.

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