Historians have long struggled with the questions of historical
relativism, objectivity, and standards of proof and evidence.
Intellectual historian Alan Spitzer focuses on the contradiction
between theory and practice by presenting case studies of four
politically charged debates about the past: the response to the
report of the commission chaired by John Dewey that evaluated the
accusations made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Purge Trials of
1937, the Dreyfus Affair in turn-of-the-century France, the
allegations about the extent and meaning of literary critic Paul de
Man's complicity with the German occupation forces in wartime
Belgium, and Ronald Reagan's justification for his 1987 visit to a
German cemetery where Nazi SS officers are buried. Spitzer's
argument centers on the ways in which the authority of 'objective'
criteria for historical judgment are introduced in politicized
disputes about the past, regardless of the theoretical
qualification or repudiation of such standards. The higher the
political stakes, the more likely the antagonists are to appeal to
generally warranted standards of relevant evidence and rational
inference. Spitzer's commentary speaks to issues that transcend the
specific content of the four cases he discusses.