In the latest New Republic historian Christine Stansell has a lengthy essay using Rwanda to draw some conclusions on post-conflict envronments. The article is fine. But if you’ll forgive a little territorialism, what in the hell is Christine Stansell doing writing on Africa in such a prominent forum? Stansell is a fine historian of American women’s history, especially in the 19th century. But to my knowledge she has no background writing about contemporary Africa.
This phenomenon is distressingly common. The New York Times, for example, regularly seems to find people who are absolutely not the most qualified to assess the books they review. And while it is fine to let as many voices as possible weigh in on these sort of public intellectual discussions, it seems to me that there are so many people out there who are well regarded in their fields, and especially in African studies, which is so often overlooked and as a result in which the best people can often be overlooked, that it is borderline irresponsible to ignore them in favor of people decidedly not as qualified. Christine Stansell is a fine historian and public intellectual. But without even breaking a sweat I could name dozens of more qualified people to write the essay that she was able to write in a very respected American magazine. In a very real way, this was not her essay to write.
