Acclaimed Dissident Historian, Howard Zinn, Dead at 87
Eighty-seven is a ripe old age, but it’s still a great loss. The Boston Globe has a long, detailed, very meaty obituary. Here are some quotes, in that article, from a range of people, famous in their own right, who knew Prof. Zinn:
“He’s made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture,” Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. “He’s changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can’t think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect.”
Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn’s writings “simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.”
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In 1997, Dr. Zinn slipped into popular culture when his writing made a cameo appearance in the film “Good Will Hunting.” The title character, played by Matt Damon, lauds “A People’s History” and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.
“Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life,” Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon’s co-star in “Good Will Hunting,” said in a statement. “He taught me how valuable — how necessary — dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him — and try to impart it to my own children — in his memory.
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“Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream,” said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe’s opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. “But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful.”
7 Responses to “Acclaimed Dissident Historian, Howard Zinn, Dead at 87”
Good catch, Kathy.
He was an interesting guy, as anyone reading his “People's History” knows.
To this day I remember something Zinn wrote, and I'm convinced I'm not the only one who has read and remembered it. I had a colleague in Seattle who was a militant lefty (actually, more than one, along with a righty friend who, our boss said, made Limbaugh look like a Commie pinko). This guy (lefty) really did view the police very cynically and comtemptibly as “the Guards.”
For those who don't know what this is:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncom…
[It's funny how it is similar to Michael Savage's musing about a nationwide strike of truckers, blocking all roads and bridges on our nation's hghway system someday.]
May God have mercy upon the soul of Dr. Zinn.
Though I rarely agreed with him on anything (Patrick Buchanan fan here), he was certainly a thought-provoking character who, I hope, continues to be a part of our discourse.
Actually, Howard Zinn–like Pat Buchanan–has questioned whether the United States truly needed to go to war during World War II. And like Pat Buchanan, he has criticized our foreign policy in the Middle East.
So on foreign policy, the two are perhaps not as far apart as you would think. The same, however, cannot be said with regards to domestic policy.
“Howard Zinn–like Pat Buchanan–has questioned whether the United States truly needed to go to war during World War II. And like Pat Buchanan, he has criticized our foreign policy in the Middle East.”
They're different, but both happening to be joining in a long tradition (non-interventionism, at its worst called isolationism).
Both Zinn and Buchanan, incidentally, have provided better reading than, say, Justin Raimondo and Anti-War (which has a style and level of overheating similar to Michael Stickings on this site).
I found Zinn later in life after years of history geekdom, for me the man is dropped gold from his pen. Put into context with other history his stuff fills in the bits that we often choose to not discuss.
They are both at the point where the right and left meet politically in the US and largely represent the pre-WWII type of party members. I have this silly dream where they all make a giant non-statist non-interventionist come back, I know I now silly.
“I have this silly dream where they all make a giant non-statist non-interventionist come back”
And Goldwater is finally made President — while Daniel Schorr is still alive. [grin]