Columbia history professor Eric Foner claimed Radosh's book on the Rosenbergs violated the canons of historical scholarship. As any infant knows, one of the canons of historical scholarship is to mindlessly hold as an article of faith the manifestly absurd belief that the Rosenbergs were innocent. It is an affront to good scholarship to suggest otherwise. Most devastatingly, Foner – once president of the American Historical Association – accused Radosh of "liberal anti-communism." Other historians have even stooped so low as to call Radosh a "conservative." One editor said he believed Radosh was a CIA agent.
American college students are learning history from people who believe the Rosenbergs were innocent idealists and Radosh is a CIA agent. (How are the grades for students who write term papers saying the Rosenbergs were guilty?)
Obtaining a teaching position was not so difficult for Joel Kovel, who holds the prestigious "Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies" chair at Bard College. With superb timing, in 1994, just one year before the Venona cables were declassified, Kovel published a book describing anti-communism as a psychiatric condition. Appropriately, Kovel dedicated the book to his chair's namesake, Soviet spy Alger Hiss. Making paranoid accusations based on his own neurotic impulses, Kovel explained that America's anti-communism was a form of anti-Semitism.
He should know. In a 2002 article, Kovel called the West Bank "a huge concentration camp," and demanded to know: "Why does the Zionist community, in raging against terrorism, forget that three of its prime ministers within the last 20 years, Begin, Shamir and Sharon, are openly recognized to have been world-class terrorists and mass murderers?"
But in his book "Red Hunting in the Promised Land" – dedicated to uber-WASP communist Hiss – Kovel raved: "The Communist became ... the archaic blood villain of Western civilization – the Jew who killed Christ, the black Hamitic son of Noah, the howling savage beyond the gates reminding 100 percent Americans of the terrors of the dark." (Now that's serious scholarship.)
When the Venona Project was declassified one year later, it turned out there was another likely explanation for America's anti-communism. To wit: the fact that the government was crawling with Soviet spies feverishly passing atomic technology to America's mortal enemy. But right up until the Soviet cables were declassified, Kovel's lunatic psychological theory was accepted in the journals of mainstream opinion. His book describing anti-communism as a mental defect was one of the Washington Post's recommended books in 1994.
Unlike Radosh, who did not need to read Soviet cables to figure out that Julius Rosenberg was a spy, Kovel has encountered no difficulty in landing any number of teaching positions. In addition to holding the coveted Traitor Chair at Bard College, he has been an anthropology professor at the New School for Social Research; a professor of political science and communications at the University of California, San Diego; a lecturer at San Diego State University; and a professor at the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco.
People who have dedicated their lives to exposing lesbian imagery in "Moby-Dick" are more prevalent on the nation's campuses than serious scholars. The nation's colleges and universities have become a Safe Streets program for traitors and lunatics. At least Tailgunner Joe got them out of government work.