Nice write up from Henry Giroux on Howard Zinn who, love him or hate him, was a man who lived up to his principles. He was one of those special people whom, through one’s life and work, helped change the entire frame of how we approach history and how we should best approach it for understanding its true importance. I hope his work as an educator continues to serve as a positive example those engaged in teaching amongst all strata of academia.

There was something about Howard’s fearlessness, his courage, his willingness to risk not just his academic position, but also his life, that marked him as special - untainted by the often corrupting privileges of class entitlement.

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Howard refused to separate what he taught in the university classroom, or any forum for that matter, from the most important problems and issues facing the larger society. But he never demanded that students follow his own actions; he simply provided a model of what a combination of knowledge, teaching and social commitment meant. Central to Howard’s pedagogy was the belief that teaching students how to critically understand a text or any other form of knowledge was not enough. They also had to engage such knowledge as part of a broader engagement with matters of civic agency and social responsibility. How they did that was up to them, but, most importantly, they had to link what they learned to a self-reflective understanding of their own responsibility as engaged individuals and social actors.

He offered students a range of options. He wasn’t interested in molding students in the manner of Pygmalion, but in giving them the widest possible set of choices and knowledge necessary for them to view what they learned as an act of freedom and empowerment. There is a certain poetry in his pedagogical style and scholarship and it is captured in his belief that one can take a position without standing still.

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Howard was one of the few intellectuals I have met who took education seriously. He embraced it as both necessary for creating an informed citizenry and because he rightly felt it was crucial to the very nature of politics and human dignity. He was a deeply committed scholar and intellectual for whom the line between politics and life, teaching and civic commitment collapsed into each other.

Read The Complete Essay

As for how Zinn himself wanted to be remembered, he stated he would like to be thought of for ”introducing a different way of thinking about the world,” and as “somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.” 

The interview with Howard can be viewed Here.