I agree with Meardon's thoughtful analysis.  The narrowing of permissible conversation in academic life violates the right to free speech and slows our search for truth.

Has the Executive Committee read and pondered John Stuart Mill's On Liberty?

Arthur Diamond
University of Nebraska Omaha


-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Stephen Meardon
Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2020 10:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] HES executive committee statement against systematic racism

I am sure the HES Executive Committee makes this statement with no intention of taking a side in the US culture war.  But that is what it does.  And it does no good for the HES.
    
People have been killed in the custody of US police, some of them egregiously.  What the killings signify in some cases is not largely contested.  In others it is.  What they signify on the whole is contested very much.  
    
Systemic racism?  One can make an argument.  I can see it.  Why is the History of Economics Society, whose mission is to advance inquiry into the named subject, advancing this extraneous and contested argument?  
    
We have a good thing going in our society.  An uncommon thing. Scholars with different ideological, methodological, and other convictions communicate openly, learn from one another, and take pleasure in each other's company and conversation despite their disagreements. Indeed because of them.  It works because the HES does not suffer from the we- all-agree syndrome that plagues other scholarly societies and US academia at large.  Which happens in good part because the HES sticks to its mission.
    
You and I just might have an interesting conversation about systemic racism in the United States -- why you think it is the salient problem, why I think not.  The kind of conversation that has been commonplace in HES coffee breaks and serendipitous hallway encounters for the couple decades and more that I've been involved.  That conversation will be less common after the HES has decided which of us is right.  Try thinking how frequently and freely you've heard such a conversation on any US university campus of late.
    
The scope of permissible conversation in US academic life is narrowing.  
If there is a salient social problem in the United States that relates to the mission of the HES, that's it.  

The HES has been an academic oasis where the range of values and scope of conversation is great.  I hope the HES Exec. will take care in the future to preserve it.
    
Stephen Meardon
Bowdoin College