In 1995, when the Smithsonian Institution tried to mount a 50th anniversary exhibition at the Air and Space Museum about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, daring to broach the factual horror of Japanese civilian victims along with a display of the restored B-29 “Enola Gay” bomber, outrage from American military organizations and Congressional hawks not only succeeded in cancelling the show but in ousting the museum’s director, Cornell astronomer Martin Harwit.
Harvard’s cowardly revocation of a Kennedy School fellowship offer to Chelsea Manning recalls another prominent lesson in where power resides when government and academic circles overlap.
