On the value of objective scholarship

Politics and Objectivity in History and Political Science: The Poverty of Our Philosophy

by Bruce Cummings for H-Diplo

"My “upbringing” in Beard’s sense included being escorted in April 1968 by guards through a student-occupied Columbia campus into the interview for my graduate work, and looking out the window during classes as guerrilla theater unfolded on the campus: a student would don a professorial get-up and his comrades would point at the “professor” and chant, “value-free! value-free!” Younger professors echoed these sentiments by arguing that if one were a scholar as well as a malcontent, an honest researcher as well as a radical, his very partisanship, bias, call it what you will, gives him a kind of objectivity. Because he stands opposed to established institutions and conventional conceptions, the radical scholar possesses an unconcern for safety or preservation which enables him to carry inquiry along paths where the so-called ‘objective’ conservative or liberal scholar would not dare to tread."

My own views on the subject are heavily influence by Cummings' work. But if I might add one thing: As Cummings' work makes so clear, the supposedly "value neutral," "objective" scholarship of the mainstream carries its own biases - deference to the flag, or the class, or the race, etc.. but of course one who rejects those biases is deemed as lacking in objectivity. What happens if you simply ask the questions that inspire you without concern for who might be offended by your answers?