Talk:Charles A. Beard

The Blacklisting of Charles Beard
Should this be discussed? Is it relevant? It's likely the reason he had so much time to write after 1917 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.70.118.67 (talk) 14:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * he wasn't blacklisted--he was elected president of both the Am Historical Assoc.and the Am Pol Science Association and his books were very well received by scholars in the 1920s. In 1919 he was disgusted with Columbia and quit--but his main income came from writing. Beard was never much of a teacher and I don't recall that he had many PhD students (if any) in 15+ years at Columbia. Rjensen (talk)


 * I added this to the Independent Scholar section, with a wikilink to the Red Panic. Even though he became president of both those associations in the New Deal, that he couldn't secure an academic appointment seems quite relevant. I don't have time to check the dates--1917 and 1919--if his showy resignation caused the surveillance which led to his outing on that 1919 list.Jweaver28 (talk) 14:16, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * What is the "red panic"? I am aware of the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism in the 50's when most blacklisting went on.  If you have sources for it, why not write an article on this so-called "red panic"?

71.163.117.143 (talk) 10:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Comments
I'm curious if you should be using the term "isolationism" to describe Beard's outlook on foreign affairs. Is he a true isolationist (he doesn't want to trade with other countries, in addition to being a non-interventionist)- or does he just believe in non-interventionism? I don't believe their one-in-the-same. Being non-interventionist just means you don't want to get involved in other people's wars, it doesn't mean you don't want to be friendly and diplomatic toward another nations.

--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.34.162.207 (talk) 03:47, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

This bit about only a few modern historians "clinging" to Beard is absurd. From Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, to conservatives like Andrew Bacevich, to Pulitzer Prize-winner James M. McPherson---all regularly cite the work of Beard.

I propose that this "clinging to the his models of class warfare in American history" bit be deleted.

Police Teeth (talk) 20:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's keep it. McPherson is the only historian in the group and he rarely cites Beard; the others are from politics and recycle ideas 50 years old. In his Battle Cry McPherson does quote one non-controversial line from Beard ("the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South . . .making vast changes in the arrangement of classes, in the accumulation and distribution of wealth, in the course of industrial development, and in the Constitution inherited from the Fathers.") but that's about it. Rjensen (talk) 00:03, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a sign of success, not oblivion; it wasn't uncontroversial when written. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:05, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That passage was written around 1927 (Rise of Am. Civlization) & basically it says the plantation South got whipped by the agrarian Midwest and the industrial East, and the latter sections grew enormously after the war, and the Constitution changed. All true enough and I don't believe was ever controversial. The controversial stuff (about foreign policy for example) is rarely cited by historians though you do find elderly scholars in other fields (like Chomsky and Zinn) still holding on after 50 years. Bacevich (a scholar in International relations and military strategy) is indeed a convert (he first wrote about Beard in mid 1990s) --the only such I can recall, and he admits that Beard now belongs mostly to "crackpots and conspiracy theorists" [Bacevich American empire p 12]; Bacevich for example concedes that Beard was blind to the evil of Hitler Rjensen (talk) 01:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

-- I added more details and readings RJensen Rjensen 18:45, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The first paragraph, second sentence, doesn't read well. Someone whould fix it.

--

Added a bit at the bottom about the revival of Beard's foreign policy ideas among paleocons and Prof. Bacevich. Interesting how his reputation, at low ebb for almost 60 years, has risen(a little)since the end of the Cold War. DubeauxBeau MartinDubeaux

- I am not certain that the 1917 NYT article, "Columbia's Deliverance," was sarcastic. Beard was heavily criticized by some American nationalists for emphasizing economic motives in his revisionist history of the formation of the Constitution. Also, his resignation from Columbia followed in the wake of his unsuccessful and controversial attempts to defend three Columbia faculty who had been fired for opposition to the war effort. He had also raised the ire of the Columbia Trustees for his defense of community centres thought by some to be hotbeds of anti-patriotic sentiment. See Carol S. Gruber's 1975 monograph, Mars and Minerva, especially p. 160, 210; and Larence J. Denis, George S. Counts and Charles A. Beard, collaborators for change, p. 149-150. Yvonneh21 (talk) 20:07, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

The devil theory of war
The Devil Theory of War: An Inquiry into the Nature of History and the Possibility of Keeping Out of War

Ruskin College
The Ruskin names can be confusing. I changed the reference from Ruskin House (which is London and which Beard was not formally involved) to Ruskin College which is in Oxford. I also changed the collaborator from John Ruskin to Walter Vrooman. Ruskin was never involved with the institutions that bore his name. I hope to post an article on Vrooman this weekend (among his accomplishments were getting the first playgrounds in NYC!). Americasroof 18:10, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Isolationist foreign policy
Beard did indeed publish "President Roosevelt and the Coming of War" but the correct title is President Roosevelt and the Coming of War 1941."--Shemp Howard, Jr. (talk) 21:35, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Revisionist historians (American)
Anyone know if he was ever labeled as a revisionist, or revisionist historian? --Ludvikus (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * yes indeed. for his Constitution book and for his interpretation of the causes of ww2. Rjensen (talk) 14:09, 25 September 2009 (UTC)


 * All academic historians are by revisionist by definition, as they are constantly re-accessing the current understandings of the past. Yale history professor David Blight sums it up as:
 * "I don't know how closely you listened to that, but what has Herodotus just said? He's basically said history is two things. It's the story, it's the color, it's the great deeds, it's the narrative that takes you somewhere; but it's also the reason why, it's also the explanations. That's what history does. It's supposed to do both of those things. Some of us are more into the analysis, and we're not so fond of story. Some of us just love stories and don't care about the analysis--"oh, stop giving me all that interpretation, just tell me the good story again." This is what goes on, of course, out in public history all the time: "just tell us the old stories and just sing us the old songs, make us feel good again. Stop interpreting, you historians, and worst of all, stop revising." You notice how that word 'revision' has crept into our political culture? When politicians don't like the arguments of people who disagree with them they accuse them of being revisionist historians. It was even a poll-tested word for a while when Condoleezza Rice was using it. "Revisionist, revisionist." As though all history isn't revisionist. My favorite story about revisionism is my buddy, Eric Foner, was on a talk show once. About 1992. He was on one of those shouting talk shows with Lynne Cheney, who at that--Dick Cheney's wife--who was then head of the NEH. And this was a time--you won't remember this--we were having this national brouhaha over what were called National History Standards. And Lynne Cheney, if you remember, a real critic of these National History Standards. She didn't particularly like some of the ideas that the historians were coming up with. So on this talk show--it was Firing Line where you get two people on and they just shout at each other for an hour, or a half hour, and the producers love it. And Foner is pretty good at rapid fire coming back, he's pretty good at it. Anyway they had this set-to and she kept accusing him and other historians of being "revisionist." And Eric says the next morning he got a phone call from a reporter at Newsweek and she said, "Professor Foner, when did all this revisionism begin?" And Foner said, "Probably with Herodotus." And the Newsweek reporter said, "Do you have his phone number?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.213.16 (talk) 00:18, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Lead Paragraph: He was so young.
"He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science. He was so young. His works included radical re-evaluation of the founding fathers of the United States, who he believed were more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles." Doesn't really make sense, I doubt it should be there? Mathmo Talk 11:56, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Constitution
The article tracks the acceptance and dismissal of Beard's economic theory regarding the voting of the delegates fairly well, but it's lacking in mentions of attempts since the 60s to revisit this theory. Much of McDonald's own work has been questioned, and even repurposed to give support for Beard's theory. See: McGuire and Ohsfeldt, Economic Interests and the American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard, for instance. I don't know exactly how well-received this effort has been or if anyone still actively pursues it; is it substantive enough to merit mention? 76.109.241.82 (talk) 06:37, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * the problem is that no one reads Beard on the topic anymore. It's "Beardian" --that is in the tradition of Beard-- but not Beard. Rjensen (talk) 07:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Still, it seems as though, if nobody ever rejected McGuire and his contemporaries works, that their redemption of Beard's ideas would deserve mention. As the article here stands, it makes it sound like his work was discredited and ignored from the 1950s onward, when in reality statistical analysis has proven him at least partly right. Beard himself may not be read much nowadays (and with good reason - his book on the subject is profoundly confusing), but more modern papers summarizing and supporting his theory ARE. It seems like the article should mention this. The line at the end about how we still look at economic rational choice when examining the motivations of historical figures doesn't really give it the weight it deserves, and it implies that we're only using Beard's ideas about other historical figures, when really we're still using it to analyze the specific situation he was. It's not absent from modern discussions of the matter at all. 129.171.233.76 (talk) 19:22, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Scholars vs Academics
Under the Economic Interpretation, the line reads "Academics and politicians denounced the book, but it was well respected by scholars until the 1950s." Aren't academics the same thing as scholars, and thus they either denounced the book or respected it? If different groups of academics/scholars respected or denounced it, the article should talk about those differing groups. Or if academics once respected it, but have since denounced it, the shift in historiography should be mentioned.Koothrappali (talk) 22:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

legacy
I added a section about his death and legacy, but don't have time to research it very much. IMHO, Beard's more than a polemicist, and more than an intellectual historian, which seems the gist of the substantial end of the article as it previously stood. It seems his intellectual heirs weren't disciples, per se, which is OK in my book. Have any awards been named to honor him, or the Beards jointly? I'm sure the AHA has one, but googling the name produces lots of results. FYI, I noticed a Beard School in Chicago, but that's apparently to honor a very different midwest-born guy, founder of the Boy Scouts. BTW, were they related, cousins or something? The current article says Beard came from a wealthy family, but not how/from where they got their $$, which IMHO might've led to his economic history viewpoint. But all this shows why this article about one of the U.S.'s most influential historians is still start class. Hint. Hint.Jweaver28 (talk) 14:23, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

exposed forgery of B. Franklin
FWIW Beard exposed forgery of statements of Benjamin Franklin against the Jews. https://archive.org/details/dudeman5685_yahoo_BF1 71.163.117.143 (talk) 10:53, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Charles and Mary Beard
There is a discussion about the redirect and former article Charles and Mary Beard, which currently points to this article, at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 August 29. You are invited to contribute there. Thryduulf (talk) 14:37, 29 August 2022 (UTC)