The Professor of History Should Also Be a Historical Protagonist?

"The liabilities of this subjectivist approach became clear in the 1980s and 1990s, as 'alternative' became a marketing technique employed to sell commodities that also were supposed to 'speak to' personal identity, and radical historians grew little closer to understanding their opposition. In the Age of Reagan the movement was never stronger in personnel, nor weaker in ideological achievement. Alan Brinkley, writing in the American Historical Review in 1994, faulted the movement for its formulas of commitment. 'New Left scholarship, which attacked the consensus with great effectiveness for ignoring or marginalizing the Left, had relatively little to say about the Right. That was in part because of the way much of the New Left celebrated, even romanticized, "the people." Having repudiated the liberal suspicion of "mass politics" and embraced instead the concept of "participatory democracy," scholars of the Left had difficulty conceding that mass movements could be anything but democratic and progressive.'"

John Summers in The New Republic reviews Carl Mirra's The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970.

Carl Mirra and Staughton Lynd respond, and John Summers answers back.