Breaking: Howard Zinn Goes To Hell
Thanks to user Mike3481 for tipping me off.
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.
“His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives,” Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. “When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”
For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn’s best-known book, “A People’s History of the United States” (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers — many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out — but rather the farmers of Shays’ Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s.
As he wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” (1994), “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”
Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and Silber. Dr. Zinn twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers “who poison the well of academe.”
Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against “the BU Five” were soon dropped, however.
Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard before joining the Army Air Force during World War II. Serving as a bombardier in the Eighth Air Force, he won the Air Medal and attained the rank of second lieutenant.
After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University as a 27-year-old freshman on the GI Bill. Professor Zinn, who had married Roslyn Shechter in 1944, worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.
Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were the novelist Alice Walker, who called him “the best teacher I ever had,” and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children’s Defense Fund.
During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.
Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.
The focus of his activism now became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at countless rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and another leading antiwar activist, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.
Dr. Zinn’s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: “Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal” (1967) and “Disobedience and Democracy” (1968). He had previously published “LaGuardia in Congress” (1959), which had won the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Prize; “SNCC: The New Abolitionists” (1964); “The Southern Mystique” (1964); and “New Deal Thought” (1966).
Dr. Zinn was also the author of “The Politics of History” (1970); “Postwar America” (1973); “Justice in Everyday Life” (1974); and “Declarations of Independence” (1990).
In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement so as to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: “Emma,” about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and “Daughter of Venus.”
Dr. Zinn, or his writing, made a cameo appearance in the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting.” The title characters, played by Matt Damon, lauds “A People’s History” and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.
Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, “The People Speak,” which ran on the History Channel in 2009. Damon was the narrator of a 2004 biographical documentary, “Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.”
On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did so.
Dr. Zinn’s wife died in 2008. He leaves a daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington; a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaugthers; and two grandsons.
Funeral plans were not available.
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The nicest thing I can say about that scumbag is to quote David Horowitz, “‘A People’s History of the United States’ is a Marxist cartoon of American history”.
This guy and his buddies-in-evil like Noam Chomsky have done untold damage to this country and generations of Americans.
Wouldn’t it be delicious, in light of last week’s events, if he actually croaked arguing politics and or knowing that now, there is a road that leads to the undoing of his entire political agenda and life’s work? yum-yum.
Great news… who’s next?
It’s always interesting how Americans never seem to ask themselves why these little bastards are never the slightest bit concerned about the large scale bloody genocide that rises to the lust for global totalitarian regimes.
It is only when America intervenes that they get a sophisticated talk show circuit, authored boook aplomb and wind up on Bill Maher with their phony ass sophistication and talk at length and attempt to justify their ideological and material betrayal of this county and how emboldened the enemy becomes with such useful fools.
Obama can’t get out of the middle east fast enough and apologizes like Gomer Pyle ever chance he gets. He has provided a huge bonanza of encouragement, exploitation and manipulation for the worst enemy this nation has confronted since the Second World War.
America is laughing and partying on the deck of the Titantic and marvelling at the night sky.
Impeachment is likely… he is violating the Constitution that he swore (after several attempts without a teleprompter) to uphold!
Looks like Matt Damon needs a new pole to smoke.
I always wondered why Damon was such a lib douchebag at such a young age, and now I know.
Indoctrinated from an early age.
Just like Obama.
Watching a little of the Good Shepard and the Bourne series starring in it was nauseating. Hollywood channels the American heart like Kremlin propaganda machine-and has since the 1960s. The older I get the more blatant it becomes. People believe thqat these movies accurately depict history. It’s implanted in the conscience and then when the country needs the will of the people to support security efforts, the wedge against it is already underway.
Can you imagine people fighting their doctors if they have a well corroborated case of cancer?
We’ve been set up decades ago and we accept what we have come to feel as normal as a refusal to even reconize danger or allow the security forces to defend us.
Indoctrinated. That word you used shows me you do indeed understand the abdication of this kingdom that has come slowly, deeply and accepted asd quite normal. The insider threat is deep and pervasive and it is quite egotistical. While we are accused and despised as the world hegemon, guess who is waiting in the wings to enslave us and dominate the entire world?
I read somewhere that when Damon spend a semester at Harvard, Zinn was his hero. That’s why he worked in the “Check out Howard Zinn. He’ll knock your socks off” line in Good Will Hunting.
Mindless ideological indoctrination. What the Dumbocrats call “education.”
Glad this traitorous asshole is dead. He poisoned the minds of millions of young people with his revisionism. Hope to piss on his grave some day.
I thought the air seemed a little clearer…. roast in hell Zinn.
pergamentum init, exit pergamentum….
i had a great history teacher when i was in high school who said when going to college you must look into the minds of your professers and figure out their individual sentiments and how they will effect the country and its future. he warned us of people like howard zinn. he wanted us to question their motives and what they wanted from the people. Sexton Larsen was not only a hero in ww2 he was a hero in a small farming community in jackson mn. his foresight was profound. he disliked howard zinn and his collegues. i had forgot about zinn until today. a good day as i remmember a great teacher Mr.Sexton Larsen.
I had those types of teachers in high school social studies classes 1968-1972. Leftists, despicable snakes. I hated high school. We were at fault for Viet Nam, what were we doing there and why is it so bad that the Vietnamese people choose their own destiny. Naturally they disregarded the wholesale erasure of innocent non-combatants and the communist genocide of scores of people there. That’s perfectly allright.
Dang it … he would have pulled in great ratings for the “Gallows-On-The-Mall” television show some of us were developing.
A 30 share at least, maybe more.
Fires of hell burn a little brighter today
Fresh ass. He’s probably being hit hard.
First off, I feel bad for his family, even though he was a scumbag. Oh, and… Matt Damon!!
We are to feel joy when evil passes from this earth
Myaaat Dayymonnnnn (…and Arec Bawlwin!)
Burn, baby, burn!
Another one bites the dust…
Good riddance!
Knowing the untold damage he and his colleagues have brought upon the United States, it would be dishonest for me to proclaim that I wish his ending was quiet and painless
I just heard J.D. Salinger died.
I guess he hung on just so he could see Zinn kick the bucket, and having tasted that sweet joy, pegged out.