Word: abraham
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Other academics soon entered the fray. At the University of Bielefeld, in West Germany, Historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler had received The Collapse of the Weimar Republic to evaluate, as part of Abraham's rite of passage to tenure. Wehler disliked what he called the dogmatic framework of the book and would not recommend tenure. Turner, meanwhile, circularized colleagues, sending them several of Abraham's quotations, together with underlying source documents that seemed contradictory. For example, Abraham cited Banker Hjalmar Schacht as calling the Nazis "the positive force" and telling associates "we should contribute to them and their efforts." Actually, Schacht...
...Oberhausen, site of one of Germany's largest industrial archives, Economics Historian Ulrich Nocken, a former student of Feldman's, checked the sources of the disputed quotes and said that of 100 Abraham footnotes, only six were correct. The rest of the book, he added, contained "mistakes of every possible kind." With this new evidence in hand, Turner and Feldman set out in earnest to expose Abraham's work. They wrote to Catholic University in Washington, where Abraham was under consideration for hiring, and Feldman attached Nocken's findings. The job evaporated. Abraham lost another opportunity at the University...
Princeton historians, and sympathetic colleagues elsewhere, were offended by the assaults on Abraham. "Everything they could say about Abraham's book might be true," said Princeton's Carl Schorske. "Still, the method of trying to get this guy is not civil." Schorske, joined by University of Chicago President Hanna Gray and other ranking academics, lodged a protest against the attackers with the professional affairs committee of the A.H.A. Last week the committee declined to pursue the matter, on the shaky grounds that in scholarship, ethical standards may be too subjective to enforce--and in any case, "the system" of open...
...Abraham become the focus of such turmoil? At the A.H.A. convention, the Belgian-born historian conceded, "There are mistakes in my book." (Earlier he had admitted paraphrasing the quotes.) "But," he insists, "the mistakes do not distort reality. The truth, the argument, wasn't based on the errors. Like all historians, I interpreted a mass of material in a way that is most truthful...
Historians, however, remained polarized over both Abraham's work and the attacks against him. Feldman said, "What Abraham has done disqualifies him as a member of the profession." Other academicians were deeply troubled by the spectacle of powerful, tenured scholars coming down on a young man at the most vulnerable point in his career...