<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5373"> Versions of this response have been sent to the Daily Illini, the News-Gazette, and the Public I, all in accordance with their concision requirements. Kristin Hoganson has been copied on this message.</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5599"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5598"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5552" face="Times New Roman">
</font><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5554" face="Calibri">University of
Illinois History Professor justifies a century of American aggression</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5555"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5556" face="Times New Roman">
</font><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5558" face="Calibri">David Green</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5559"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5560" face="Times New Roman">
<br></font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5561" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5562" face="Calibri">This letter is provoked by the disgust and sadness that I
felt upon reading a commentary in the local <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5563" style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">News-Gazette</i>
on February 19<sup id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5564"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5565" size="2">th</font></sup> by Professor of History Kristin Hoganson, titled
“Requiem for the American Century.”</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5566"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5567" face="Times New Roman">
</font><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5569" face="Calibri">This letter is not to be construed as a personal attack on a
member of a department which includes several individuals whom I have been
privileged to call friends over the 18 years I have lived here. During these years
I have written and spoken regularly in local media regarding militarism,
economic inequality, racism, and Israel/Palestine. My professional background
is as an educator, social researcher, and policy analyst. My political identity
is as an antiwar activist and socialist.</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5629"><font face="Calibri"><br></font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5570"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5571" face="Times New Roman">
</font><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5573" face="Calibri">Hoganson laments the passing of an American Century
characterized by “freedom of conscience and of speech, freedom from want and
fear. Freedom of movement. The free world.” This transparent falsehood is
consistent with her general support for U.S. warmaking and subversion since
World War 1, while admitting in passing that our wars against Korea and Vietnam
“burned to hot.” This is an unfortunate description of our government’s murder
of millions of innocent people, in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle
East, for what the record clearly shows to be the goals of global economic and
military domination, ongoing.</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5574"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5575" face="Times New Roman">
<br></font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5576" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5577" face="Calibri">For the past four decades, these aggressive
(neoconservative) policies have been joined with neoliberal policies promoting
radically increased economic inequality, at home and abroad. Hoganson supports
corporate-driven and rapacious “free trade” agreements which are central to a
neoliberal agenda that has nothing to do with freedom or democracy.</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5578"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5579" face="Times New Roman">
</font><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5581" face="Calibri">In sum, Hoganson offers an innocent narrative of American
exceptionalism that is false, implicitly racist, and explicitly elitist. While
she aligns her views with general disdain for President Trump, she tellingly criticizes
his most reasonable policies: his opposition to war with Russia, and to the
Trans-Pacific Partnership.</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5582"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5583" face="Times New Roman">
</font><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5585" face="Calibri"><br></font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5628"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5627" face="Calibri">That all of this is argued within liberal and feminist frameworks
is revealing of our current ideological impasse, within academia and beyond. Students
and other community members deserve the self-critical historical facts and
analyses that will move us beyond long-term nightmarish realities and triumphalist
dogmatism.</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5586"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5587" face="Times New Roman">
<br></font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5588" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5589" face="Calibri">Ironically, Hoganson’s “requiem” augurs and implicitly
supports continued destruction, of our species and our planet.</font></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5590" dir="ltr"><font id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487612256005_5591" face="Times New Roman">
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