Talk:Caroline Elkins

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Editors please use this page to discuss controversies about the Caroline Elkins' views and not engage in a revert war.


 * Elkins will not respond to her many critics, so how can a proper debate happen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.68.53.136 (talk) 06:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The wikipedia entry on Elkins is not a place to debate or rebut criticism. It is a place to state verifiable facts - not opinions of critics or admirers. -- Thaths 14:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

"This is a place to state verifiable facts - not opinions of critics or admirers". The problem is that in Elkins case she has asserted as verifiable fact that which others dispute!


 * So there is a healthy debate happening in the media about whether those are facts or fabrications. The public sphere seems to me an admirable place for that debate to happen. The wikipedia pages are not, and should not be a place to try and convict or try and exonerate the subject in-absentia. It is so very easy to edit wikipedia articles to agree with one's point of view. Establishing real truth takes a lot longer. Thaths (talk) 20:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Content, not more one-liners critical of the subject
The 'Criticism of Elkins' work' section is becoming a collection of one-liners critical of Elkins' work and links to adverse reviews. Any author and book have reviewers praising them and panning them. Please let us try and not use these sections to provide a list positive and negative reviews. IMO, there is currently adequate information provided in this section to show that there is both positive and negative press surrounding Elkins' work.

Could we, instead, have more content about the Subject, please? -- Thaths 19:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Is that you, Caroline? 63.215.27.199 19:52, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The criticism section is poor. The cliams of Elkins' critics are simply repeated near-verbatim. I'd like to see some balance. -- This unsigned comment was made by Hythlodayeus


 * I know next to nothing about her work, but this article assembles criticisms which, taken together, leave her reputation in tatters and make other people (Pullizer committee, Niall Ferguson) look silly. Wouldn't it be fair if someone dug out an answer to her critics? I presume one exists. Jagdfeld (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Bordering on defamation
The 'criticism' section of this page defies belief. Here is a professor of history in Harvard University who writes a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of British policy in Kenya in the 1950s concluding that it was, for want of a better word, barbaric. This conclusion offends nationalistically-minded British people so they orchestrate a campaign against this historian. Not a single historian who has examined Elkins's evidence has been asked for his/her opinion. Instead people who have no expertise in this area are used in this article to discredit this quite superb, if harrowing, history. Bad form (to put it very mildly). Dunlavin Green (talk) 23:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Dunlavin, you evidently do not know what you are talking about. Elkins is not taken serious anymore among africanists, as a scholar. People who have no expertise in the subject may still be charmed by her propaganda; the near unanimous opinion of the academic community is not. The Wikipedia entry correctly renders this - not more. Alexander Eichener, 26 June 2009


 * That claim might have some validity if the article didn't mostly quote opinion pices from london based authors.©Geni 18:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Eichener, it is you who evidently does not know what you are talking about. You also breached wikipedia policy by editing my comments and managed somehow not to be banned. You make claims against the reputation of an internationally respected professor at Harvard that she is "not taken seriously" and you have no support for this opinion; you just blurted it out. The article, as the above user notes, is based on the opinions of nationalistically-minded British writers who cannot abide the idea that maybe the white man's burden was in fact the black man's burden. There is no attempt at neutrality, at balance. And you - you - expect to be taken seriously? The criticism section of this article is so fundamentally in breach of wikipedia's Biographies of living persons that it defies belief that it is still in existence. A bit like your views, to be honest. Dunlavin Green (talk) 01:15, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this page near defamation, very one sided, and also completely out of date. Elkins was awarded tenure at Harvard University in 2009; clearly indication that plenty of people take her seriously. I would suggest that a broad range of historians be consulted in updating this page. You might begin by contacting some of her colleagues in the Harvard history department--Lizabeth Cohen, Emmanuel Akyeampong, Evelyn Higginbotham,  Walter Johnson, and David Armitage. K2telemark (talk) 13:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, Harvard University. —Preceding unsigned comment added by K2telemark (talk • contribs) 12:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

This article is now most odd. ALL criticisms have been removed (even those referencing peer reviewed articles) but it is still apparently biased, in the absence of any criticisms. Bizarre! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.91.223 (talk) 20:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Criticisms (once again)

 * A recent perspective on Elkins’ work is provided in:- “Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya”.

Daniel Branch, Cambridge University Press. 2009. xiv-xv. “Elkins repeated claims of torture in detention camps, similar to those found in the voluminous number of memoirs written by Mau Mau veterans. However, she went further than even those authors by arguing Britain had overseen an “incipient genocide“ that claimed the lives of “perhaps hundreds of thousands”. Such allegations garnered much attention, and the book received a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Among academics, the book has been less well received. The methodology behind some of the most contentious claims has been called into question. Moreover, respected figures from within the fields of Imperial and African history have fiercely criticised Elkins’ arguments”. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.93.134 (talk) 10:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Who are these seemingly eternally elusive "respected figures"? As so often before the criticisms of her work appear to revolve around opposition to the fact that she has firmly, and squarely, blamed British colonialism for what happened in Kenya. There is no rational argument against her argument. She merely committed the "crime" of not dressing up her findings for a British audience. This campaign is getting tiresome. 86.44.43.208 (talk) 20:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Elkins' 32
Elkins mentions the 32 Europeans killed by the Mau Mau but does not mention the much larger numbers of Asians and Africans killed by the Mau Mau. I remember looking at a photo of an African burned to death by the Mau Mau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.180.34.206 (talk) 11:09, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The Wikipedia article on the Mau Mau Uprising estimates that 50,000 African civilians
 * were killed by the Mau Mau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.113.118 (talk) 13:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

controversy
I see some of these issues have been touched already, but it is my opinion, that wheather Elkins has been discredited or not by some of her opinions or work, that does not change the information she found in national archives. Im not sure why the tagline that ' controversial issues' may be located on this page appears, when I dont see anything controversial in any of the items as there is not debate on her biography about her work on her page. Are we going to tag every Nazi concentration camp article in the same manner? The content is controversail to whom? I find it very odd, that some one for example, would find Anne Franks diary and then say, we can not talk about her expereinces or someone else can not talk about her expereinces becasue the person who reported it was discredited by academia, historically, academia has been wrong on many things.. look at some of the ideas on Darwinism, and the fact that some of the people that have discredited some of her work are African historians means what? The argument, really should be about the person and not the information she found in the national archives. Some people doubt the inforamtion that is choronicled by Jewish people in some of the concentration camps too, the Nazis and other general citizens that claim that the numbers of people killed were exagerrated, usually that happens when systematic killings happen so it is expected that some will dispute her findings. Some people have discredited Darwin but Darwinism is still taught in schools. There are some topics in this world that are not confortable...but lets not pretend that nothing happened just becasue you dont like the author. That is the real the controversy in thie topic - the otomology. It seems like double standards.

MsTingaK (talk) 01:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Criticism of Elkins' work
Given the more recent releases of information this section could probably do with a reassessment.©Geni 17:48, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The Mau Mau torture hearings in the UK and it's outcome
This section should not be included unless it can be directly linked to the subject. I would recommend its removal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.193.11.45 (talk) 09:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I disagree. The criticism section has claims made about the veracity of the subject's work. If there are recent developments which show that the abuses alleged in the subject's work is being argued in court and being accepted by the UK government, it is very relevant to the subject and her work. Thaths (talk) 21:41, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality assessment
Can a few who are neutral(ish) give me an opinion on whether the criticism section is now POV free? OK to remove the tag? I've sourced to where Elkins has briefly responded—you can download that article for free via the link in the article or go here. FlutteringCarp (talk) 20:53, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The Link is behind a pay-for-view. The free link referred to in the article (nor response) doesn't appear to exist (can you cite it explicitly please in case I am missing it). 2001:8003:70F5:2400:7943:9457:231F:621F (talk) 16:00, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

No Criticism Allowed?
As has been noted by others on this page criticism of Elkins is not permitted even if cited by refereed Journals or refuted by first-hand accounts (which is permitted by the Page guidelines). This has led to the peculiar phenomena that would strike a first time visitor to this page of seeing a lot of people defending Elkins for the many criticisms levelled against her work and yet there seems to be a paucity of those criticisms listed here and none in the main Article page.

For people from countries that are used to engaging in robust, scholarly debate ... welcome to the story-time stupor that characterises the American academic system! 2001:8003:70F5:2400:7943:9457:231F:621F (talk) 15:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Article is self-promotion and being used for commerce
1) The article reads like a CV.

2) The criticisms levelled against her academic methodologies are not addressed (seemingly removed).

3) It is overtly being used to plug her latest book (which leads to the question of who exactly is editing the page and to what purpose?):

''"Reviewers call Legacy of Violence "Top-shelf history offering tremendous acknowledgement of past systemic abuses," and "a feat of scholarship that elucidates the bureaucratic and legal machinery of oppression, dissects the intellectual justifications for it, and explores in gripping, sometimes grisly detail the suffering that resulted. The result is a forceful challenge to recent historiographical and political defenses of British exceptionalism that punctures myths of paternalism and progress."''

Both sources cited are "gushing reviews" from unnamed persons within book publishing companies that include links to purchase the book. 2001:8003:70F5:2400:7943:9457:231F:621F (talk) 18:02, 27 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Note that KenyaVoice123 is a sock-puppet of Caroline. Also, Caroline seems to change colour at times.
 * Caroline B. Fox has been mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23CC:B59B:6B01:906A:87C8:B12F:7746 (talk) 15:43, 25 November 2023 (UTC)