As very junior member of the History Department), so I hope you will
forgive my own response to you directly.

Your articulate letter covered two distinct issues. I assure you that the
second one, about the limits of academic freedom for historians, is extremely
well-taken. Indeed, you might be surprised to learn that professional
historians struggle with this issue every day, in many, many different forms.
Does merely attempting to recover the past, in order to better understand,
interpret, criticize it, and yes, never repeat it, also validate that past in
some unintended and mischievous way? There is no simple answer to this
dilemma. Historians have grappled with it extensively for four decades, and
will continue to do so. One thing is agreed upon by all: to attempt to erase
the past--to censor its worst violence and horror, and leave only fairy tales
of martial glory, is a mistake of colossal proportions. Such censorship
can only result in a perpetuation of blind nationalism--a nationalism that
will then only reproduce that endless cycle of violence.

In my own field of German history, you can of course immediately see the
relevance of this discussion. Should the Germans have attempted to forget
about the Holocaust? Should they have erased the horrific photos of
Auschwitz, because the inhumanity evident in them was so profoundly upsetting
to every civilized person? Should historians have refused to delve into the
records of the extermination, refused to investigate the mindset of the
Holocaust's perpetrators--and thereby have refused to come to terms with how
such a thing actually could have happened-- in order to preserve their
position of impassioned (yet superficial) denunciation?

My answer to this (and the answer of all historians, including German, Jewish,
and American) has been a resounding 'no'. As historians, we owe it to the
public to investigate the uncomfortable topics. It is, quite literally, our
job.

The other issue in your letter, however, I believe misses the point.

You say that you are " not in a position to discuss the intention of the "
Visualizing Cultures' project." The point is, you should be in a position to
discuss its intention--or you should not have written your letter.

I have read the accompanying text for the image that some students found
offensive. The text is clear and unmistakable. It points out the racism in
the image. It points out the brutality in the image. It points out the
nationalism in the image. And it points out the propagandistic nature of the
image. Indeed, the whole Visualizing Cultures project was designed as a way
to show how different cultures "envision" each other--and misunderstand each
other, often through propagandistic and/or racist imagery. By showing such
imagery, and by criticizing it, the project undermines this racist imagery--
and thereby, aims to rob it of its power.

Unless the viewer simply refuses to read the text, and instead takes the image
at face value.

Professor, I believe, was frustrated at this simple failure to read. I
know that I myself have been extremely frustrated by this situation. Prof.
Dower's life work has been to expose and criticize racism. For him to come
under attack from students who clearly did not even bother to read the text is, quite frankly, preposterous.

What if someone walked into a bookstore, picked up a copy of Christopher
Browning's Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution, flipped
through to the photographs of the Josefow massacre, threw down the book in
disgust without reading the text, and declared this very-essential book on the
Holocaust to be anti-Semitic? And then proceeded to boycott the bookstore,
without bothering to revise their view even after their mistake was pointed
out to them?

Yes, I can understand the power of emotional responses to imagery.

But please understand my frustration when a lifetime of careful work is thrown
out the window by a viewer who, at some level, would rather believe their own
gut-level reaction than find out what the historian is actually saying about
it.

In my class, "Nazi Germany and the Holocaust", we deal with very difficult
issues. Some of my students have lost family in the Holocaust. They have
personally suffered, often only one generation back. Yes, this class can be
emotionally-wrenching. But if one of my students ever (mis)judged an entire
book by a single, de-contextualized image within it, and thereafter refused to
read it, then they would receive an "F" for the assignment. MIT is an
academic institution. We are committed to learning, and not just reacting.

And for MIT students to have pulled the Visualing Cultures image OFF of the
website, and circulate it on the internet to third parties--and in doing so,
remove it from the original context that explained its racism-- was not only
irresponsible; it was downright malicious. It was also slanderous.

This opinion is, of course, only my own personal and professional one, and
does not reflect that of the History Department nor MIT as a whole. However,
I hope that my perspective--coming from a historian not of China nor of Japan,
but of Germany--might help to shed new light on this issue.

I also wish you all the best at your own institution (wherever that might be).
I do appreciate the time you took to write your letter to us. If any of
the points in my above letter strike you as valid, I hope you will convey them
to your colleagues and compatriots.