In the face of Ward Churchill’s vindication in a Colorado court, and now hearing support for him by fellow academics, Wingnut Holocaust Deniers are rallying behind whichever colleague will grab their dunce baton. The latest denier is academic aspirant, Social Security Administration archivist Larry DeWitt, who’s been nursing a masters from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus. His master’s thesis was about little known SSA efforts to mitigate The Wartime Internments & Other “Restrictive Governmental Actions.”
Example: his caption under a photograph of quarters at the Manzanar relocation camp reads: “Figure 43: While these internees do indeed have a bare lightbulb overhead, their living conditions are not as primitive as the rhetoric of some historians may imply.”
DeWitt has been an Agency Historian for the SSA since 1995, in which capacity he cobbled a history of the department, with a view it appears, to lay a groundwork for its privatization. You can read more about DeWitt at larrydewitt.net, a website “created as part of coursework in the graduate program of the History Department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).”
But he calls it: A Miscellany of History, Philosophy and Public Policy: A portal to four websites containing the work of historian and public policy scholar Larry DeWitt.
Most recently, DeWitt assumes to be an authority on scholarship, opining on the History News Network website: Ward Churchill: He’s Baaack! Here’s his opening line: “Well, that embarrassment for the liberal academy—Ward Churchill—is back in the news again.”
A recent article for Coloquio: Revista Cultural was about Iraq: “Doing the right thing the wrong way.”
Are DeWitt’s writing unremarkable? Yes, but for a federal agency that has proven to be vulnerable to partisan attack, I think DeWitt’s positions are ominously charged. Here are some more articles:
“Howard Zinn: The Historian as Don Quixote,” HNN, 01/26/09
“The Future Social Security Debate,” Independent Voice , April/May 2008
“How Historians Can Help Frame the Next Social Security Debate,” HNN, 10/22/07
“It is Time to Impose Peace on the Middle East,” August 2006
“Should Historians Try to Rank President Bush’s Presidency?” HNN, 5/22/06
“A Progressive Argument for Overturning Roe,” October 2005
“It’s Not the Cows Who are Mad,” January 2004
‘I say that the story of Ward Churchill is a perfect case study in the shortcomings of Multicultural Postmodernism, and its denigration of the ideals of truth and objectivity in scholarship.’
When you say ‘Wingnut Holocaust Deniers’, Eric, you are merely showing hate and animosity towards opponents of Multicultural Postmodernism.
Don’t you know that America is Great? That the Christian God is Great, Praise Allah, their Lord? YOU need to find Jesus in your heart before it’s too late, Eric, or you will be going to Hell. Multicultural Postmodernism is Satan’s plan to misguide and trick you. Reject it.