EDITOR'S NOTE
Rothschild, Matthew
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild Bosnia and the Left The crisis in Bosnia is also a crisis for the American left. More than any issue in memory, Bosnia has posed a problem for us. Our traditions...
...I'm acutely aware that their voices would not have been in this issue of The Progressive were Erwin Knoll still the editor of this magazine...
...By the way, Taylor reported that Burris and his lawyer had "discussed whether the journal could refuse to turn over" its subscriber list "to investigators based on the argument that compliance could have a 'chilling effect' on scholarly discussion...
...military response...
...The first issue in 1995 contained some interesting, if academic, articles, including: "No One Likes a Vacuum: The U.S.-Iraq War and the Search for Middle East Regional Stability, 1948-1990...
...Founded as the Insurgent Sociologist by anti-Establishment professors and students during the ferment of the Vietnam War, the publication has fewer than 1,000 subscribers," Taylor wrote...
...The horrors of Bosnia have left many of us, myself included, troubled, torn, and uncharacteristically diffident...
...Iwas struck by a five-paragraph AP story that ran in The New York Times on July 21 entitled, Unabomb Inquiry Turns to Subscriber List...
...Our traditions of pacifism, of noninterventionism, of anti-imperialism tell us that the United States should not get involved in the war in Bosnia...
...Rest assured, if the FBI subpoenas our list, we'll fight it...
...U.S...
...Erwin would not permit a departure from pacifism, except for one intemperate dissent on Somalia that I penned, which was soon repudiated by events...
...The item said that the FBI had subpoenaed the list of subscribers "to a far-left academic journal," Critical Sociology, and had subpoenaed its editor, Val Burris...
...So now we're for killing...
...It was not exactly The Anarchists' Cookbook...
...and "The Theoretical Foundation of Marx's Historical Sociology...
...I'm not in any situation to talk about it," he said...
...But I'm for open debate on the left, and when people we work with and respect tell us that we're making a terrible mistake, I think we owe them a hearing...
...If subscribing to The Progressive is the most daring thing you've ever done, you've got to get out more.B...
...Both Kaldor and Klare take the American left to task for not responding to genocide...
...But don't be afraid...
...he'd ask, his voice rising along with his temper...
...And yet there is genocide going on, and it is not very satisfying to recite dogma in the face of deportation, rape, torture, and summary execution...
...But there are some among us who have taken a stand, and we're bringing you their voices in this issue...
...I'd read an issue or two of the Insurgent Sociologist as a college kid (Louis Freeh, come and get me), but I hadn't seen its new incarnation as Critical Sociology, so off I went to the library...
...Back in the fifties, people were afraid to subscribe to leftwing journals because they didn't want an FBI file on them...
...What right does the FBI have to come seize our property and invade the privacy of our subscribers...
...Michael Klare, a lifelong leftwing military critic and frequent contributor to our pages, also calls for a U.S...
...Mary Kaldor, a valiant British peace activist, has reported from Sarajevo for us as recently as April 1994...
...I can remember getting calls from people even a few years ago who just wanted a specific issue and not a subscription for fear that they'd be placed in the FBI's computers...
...Burris did, however, put me on to Paul Taylor's original story in the Los Angeles Times...
...By 1995, it had discarded this jargon and downsized its ambition, now describing itself simply as a journal open to "critical or radical social science...
...she now demands Western military intervention...
...Capitalism, 1972-1992: The Jobs Problem...
...Now the FBI is coming after us again...
...And that would be that...
...With the serial bomber now revealing himself in missives as an anti-technology anarchist, investigators have turned part of their attention to like-minded groups and individuals—environmental activists, anarchists, and others—who are infuriated to be linked in any way to the Unabomber's terrorist tactics and alarmed by the FBI inquiries...
...Kaldor and Klare make their case...
...The left as a whole, if there is such a thing, has been quiet and confused, muffled and invisible...
...I don't take kindly to FBI subpoenas myself, so I called up Val Burris to see what was going on...
...I sure hope they haven't...
...we make ours in the "Comment" section (which Ruth Conniff and I write, in case you're puzzled by editorial anonymity...
...A 1990 "Information to Contributors" box said: "Critical Sociology is committed to the liberation of social science from bourgeois hegemony and to advancing the contribution of social scientists to the transformation of capitalist society and the building of socialism...
...Taylor told me he still isn't sure whether Burris and Critical Sociology turned over their list...
...The Political Economy of Developmental Disability...
Vol. 59 • September 1995 • No. 9
