The Levan Center hosted the semester’s second edition of the Gadfly Café on Nov. 1 where BC professors Reggie Williams, Javier Llamas and Daniel Gomes discussed the revisioning of history and books.
Audience members agreed that everything in history has different perspectives which lead to a particular example about English author David Irving and his viewpoint on Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.
Irving missed many details while writing about Hitler, as he used many cherry-picked words that basically tried to erase the Holocaust.
Although Nazi Germany lost WWII, Williams and Llamas agree that history “becomes propaganda” once one side of the story is heavily biased.
Bias is inevitable and every book has a slant point of view, whether good or bad.
Revision in history must happen because we are constantly learning something new about the past, but, in this instance, Irving’s revision about Nazi Germany was done in a wrong aspect. History should never include bias and should be presented in a neutral manner.
The next section of the discussion shifts to the lack of Native American history in schools. They are not represented in many history books, and when they are, natives are depicted as battling the conquerors.
That could not be further from the truth, as colonists were killing these innocent people and stealing their land.
While learning about something very sensitive can be difficult for students, Williams stated that “a lot of things in history will make us uncomfortable.”
Bias also plays a role in how one can view history. Someone may grow up not learning about different beliefs and/or cultures, and they receive a culture shock once they blend in with people from different backgrounds.
Williams expressed the importance of school because “it functions to teach you many broad subjects.”
History is a very important subject because it provides students with different points of view.
The Gadfly Café allows for a gathering of students and professors alike to discuss interesting topics in a civil manner. While there is no session scheduled for the rest of the semester, Professor Williams also hosts Deep Cuts and Conversations, a similar roundtable event. Their next gathering will occur on Nov. 8.