Word: hoffmann
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Social Studies Program began five years ago as a coalition of malcontents, led by Alexander Gerschenkron, professor of Economics, and Stanley Hoffmann, now professor of Government and chairman of the Program...
...Explains Hoffmann: "Given the growing competition for honors within departments, and the requirements of the Gen Ed Program, too few students were taking a satisfactory number of courses related to their discipline of concentration. We were graduating narrow specialists, government majors with no knowledge of Freud and Weber, economics majors with no political science background. We were all concerned that social science itself was losing coherence, splintering into artificial and uncommunicating disciplines...
...Hoffmann's distaste for super-specialization was not as acceptable five years ago as it is today. And even those who agreed with him were not unanimous in applauding the new program. Many wished that he and his colleagues would instead focus all their efforts on reforming the departments 'from within...
...reasons, Hoffmann rejected the idea of concentrating wholly on internal reform. First, and most important, it seemed an impractical idea. The ambitious academic, in search of tenure or professional prestige, shied away from the cross-disciplinary approach, just as he now rebels against teaching Gen Ed courses. To buck this trend in each department was beyond the power and energy of even a Hoffmann or Gerschenkron...
...Movement can muster, that march down Massachusetts Avenue chanting "Stop the War in Vietnam, Bring the Troops Home"? "Neither May 2nd nor McGeorge Bundy" is the sentiment of the synthesis. But that does not make a very good slogan. A sound American foreign policy involves, as Stanley Hoffmann has said in a different context, "treading between the abysses." That means supporting radical social reform while opposing subservience to the totalitarians. Since admiration for Marxism and enthusiasm for reform are usually linked in the modern world, that means recognizing and supporting indigenous independent Marxists. To the extent that Tito and Castro...