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Editors please use this page to discuss controversies about the Caroline Elkins' views and not engage in a revert war.
"This is a place to state verifiable facts - not opinions of critics or admirers". The problem is that in Elkins case she has asserted as verifiable fact that which others dispute!
The 'Criticism of Elkins' work' section is becoming a collection of one-liners critical of Elkins' work and links to adverse reviews. Any author and book have reviewers praising them and panning them. Please let us try and not use these sections to provide a list positive and negative reviews. IMO, there is currently adequate information provided in this section to show that there is both positive and negative press surrounding Elkins' work.
Could we, instead, have more content about the Subject, please? -- Thaths 19:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
The 'criticism' section of this page defies belief. Here is a professor of history in Harvard University who writes a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of British policy in Kenya in the 1950s concluding that it was, for want of a better word, barbaric. This conclusion offends nationalistically-minded British people so they orchestrate a campaign against this historian. Not a single historian who has examined Elkins's evidence has been asked for his/her opinion. Instead people who have no expertise in this area are used in this article to discredit this quite superb, if harrowing, history. Bad form (to put it very mildly). Dunlavin Green ( talk) 23:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Dunlavin, you evidently do not know what you are talking about. Elkins is not taken serious anymore among africanists, as a scholar. People who have no expertise in the subject may still be charmed by her propaganda; the near unanimous opinion of the academic community is not. The Wikipedia entry correctly renders this - not more. Alexander Eichener, 26 June 2009
I agree that this page near defamation, very one sided, and also completely out of date. Elkins was awarded tenure at Harvard University in 2009; clearly indication that plenty of people take her seriously. I would suggest that a broad range of historians be consulted in updating this page. You might begin by contacting some of her colleagues in the Harvard history department--Lizabeth Cohen, Emmanuel Akyeampong, Evelyn Higginbotham, Walter Johnson, and David Armitage. K2telemark ( talk) 13:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, Harvard University. —Preceding unsigned comment added by K2telemark ( talk • contribs) 12:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
This article is now most odd. ALL criticisms have been removed (even those referencing peer reviewed articles) but it is still apparently biased,
in the absence of any criticisms. Bizarre! —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
95.148.91.223 (
talk)
20:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Daniel Branch, Cambridge University Press. 2009. xiv-xv. “Elkins repeated claims of torture in detention camps, similar to those found in the voluminous number of memoirs written by Mau Mau veterans. However, she went further than even those authors by arguing Britain had overseen an “incipient genocide“ that claimed the lives of “perhaps hundreds of thousands”. Such allegations garnered much attention, and the book received a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Among academics, the book has been less well received. The methodology behind some of the most contentious claims has been called into question. Moreover, respected figures from within the fields of Imperial and African history have fiercely criticised Elkins’ arguments”. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.93.134 ( talk) 10:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Elkins mentions the 32 Europeans killed by the Mau Mau but does not mention the much larger numbers of Asians and Africans killed by the Mau Mau. I remember looking at a photo of an African burned to death by the Mau Mau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.180.34.206 ( talk) 11:09, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
I see some of these issues have been touched already, but it is my opinion, that wheather Elkins has been discredited or not by some of her opinions or work, that does not change the information she found in national archives. Im not sure why the tagline that ' controversial issues' may be located on this page appears, when I dont see anything controversial in any of the items as there is not debate on her biography about her work on her page. Are we going to tag every Nazi concentration camp article in the same manner? The content is controversail to whom? I find it very odd, that some one for example, would find Anne Franks diary and then say, we can not talk about her expereinces or someone else can not talk about her expereinces becasue the person who reported it was discredited by academia, historically, academia has been wrong on many things.. look at some of the ideas on Darwinism, and the fact that some of the people that have discredited some of her work are African historians means what? The argument, really should be about the person and not the information she found in the national archives. Some people doubt the inforamtion that is choronicled by Jewish people in some of the concentration camps too, the Nazis and other general citizens that claim that the numbers of people killed were exagerrated, usually that happens when systematic killings happen so it is expected that some will dispute her findings. Some people have discredited Darwin but Darwinism is still taught in schools. There are some topics in this world that are not confortable...but lets not pretend that nothing happened just becasue you dont like the author. That is the real the controversy in thie topic - the otomology. It seems like double standards.
MsTingaK ( talk) 01:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Given the more recent releases of information this section could probably do with a reassessment.© Geni 17:48, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
This section should not be included unless it can be directly linked to the subject. I would recommend its removal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.193.11.45 ( talk) 09:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Can a few who are neutral(ish) give me an opinion on whether the criticism section is now POV free? OK to remove the tag? I've sourced to where Elkins has briefly responded—you can download that article for free via the link in the article or go here. FlutteringCarp ( talk) 20:53, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
As has been noted by others on this page criticism of Elkins is not permitted even if cited by refereed Journals or refuted by first-hand accounts (which is permitted by the Page guidelines). This has led to the peculiar phenomena that would strike a first time visitor to this page of seeing a lot of people defending Elkins for the many criticisms levelled against her work and yet there seems to be a paucity of those criticisms listed here and none in the main Article page.
For people from countries that are used to engaging in robust, scholarly debate ... welcome to the story-time stupor that characterises the American academic system! 2001:8003:70F5:2400:7943:9457:231F:621F ( talk) 15:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
1) The article reads like a CV.
2) The criticisms levelled against her academic methodologies are not addressed (seemingly removed).
3) It is overtly being used to plug her latest book (which leads to the question of who exactly is editing the page and to what purpose?):
"Reviewers call Legacy of Violence "Top-shelf history offering tremendous acknowledgement of past systemic abuses," and "a feat of scholarship that elucidates the bureaucratic and legal machinery of oppression, dissects the intellectual justifications for it, and explores in gripping, sometimes grisly detail the suffering that resulted. The result is a forceful challenge to recent historiographical and political defenses of British exceptionalism that punctures myths of paternalism and progress."
Both sources cited are "gushing reviews" from unnamed persons within book publishing companies that include links to purchase the book. 2001:8003:70F5:2400:7943:9457:231F:621F ( talk) 18:02, 27 July 2022 (UTC)