Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man

'Are all your meetings this boring?' asks Melissa Todoroff, who will later be discovered not to be entitled to be in the meeting at all, since she is only a visitor, and will be asked to leave, and will do so, shouting. 'Don't worry,' whispers Howard, 'this is just a preliminary skirmish. It will warm up later.' It warms up, in fact, shortly after 17.05, when it is beginning to go dark, and when Professor Marvin reaches item 17, which is concerned with Visiting Speakers. 'A non-controversial item, I think,' says Professor Marvin. 'A few proposed names here, I think we can accept them.' Roger Fundy raises his hand and says, 'Can I ask the chair under whose auspices the invitation to Professor Mangel was issued?' The chair looks bewildered: it says, 'Professor Mangel? As far as I know, Dr Fundy, no invitation has been issued to Professor Mangel.'

'Can I draw the chair's attention to the departmental memo, circulated this very morning, which states that Professor Mangel has been asked here to give a lecture?'

'I sent out no such departmental memo,' says the chair. 'I have here a copy of the departmental memo which the chair says it did not send out,' says Roger Fundy. 'Perhaps the chair would like to see it.' The chair would; it inspects the memo, and turns to Minnehaha Ho. 'It was on the dictaphone,' says Miss Ho, with wide oriental eyes, 'so I sent it out.'

'It was on the dictaphone so you sent it out?' murmurs Professor Marvin, 'I didn't put it on the dictaphone.'

'Can I ask the Chairperson,' says Melissa Todoroff, 'if that person is aware that this invitation will be seen by all non-Caucasians and women on this campus as a deliberate insult to their genetic origins?'

'This is trouble, man,' says one of the student representatives, 'he's a racist and a sexist.' Professor Marvin looks around in some mystification. 'Professor Mangel is to my knowledge neither a racist nor a sexist, but a very well-qualified geneticist,' he says. 'However, since we have not invited him here the question seems scarcely to arise on this agenda.'

'In view of the opinion of the chair that Mangel is neither a racist nor a sexist,' says Howard, 'would that mean that the Chair would be prepared to invite him to this campus, if his name were proposed?'

'It isn't proposed,' says Marvin. 'The point is that Professor Mangel's work is fascist, and we've no business to confirm that by inviting him here,' says Moira Millikin. 'I had always thought the distinguishing mark of fascism was its refusal to tolerate free enquiry, Dr Millikin,' says Marvin, 'but the question needs no discussion, since there's no proposal to invite this man. I doubt if we could ever agree on such an invitation. It would be an issue.'

'May I ask why?' asks Dr Zachery, the British Journal of Sociology forgotten. 'Why?' asks Fundy. 'Do you know what the consequences of inviting that man would be? One doesn't tolerate…'

'But that is just what one does,' says Dr Zachery. 'One tolerates. May I propose, and I think this is in order, since the agenda permits us to make suggestions for visiting speakers, that we issue a formal invitation from this department to Professor Mangel, to come and speak to this department?' There is much noise around the table; Howard sits silent, so silent that Flora Beniform leans over to him and murmurs, 'Don't I see a hand at work here?'

'Ssshh,' says Howard, 'this is a serious issue.'

'You wish to put that as a motion?' asks Marvin, looking at Zachery. 'I do,' says Zachery, 'and I should like to speak to my motion. I observe, among some of my younger colleagues, perhaps less experienced in recent history than some of us, a real ignorance of the state of affairs we are discussing. Professor Mangel and myself have a background in common; we are both Jewish, and both grew up in Nazi Germany, and fled here from the rise of fascism. I think we know the meaning of this term. Fascism, and the associated genocide, arose because a climate developed in Germany in which it was held that all intellectual activity conform with an accepted, approved ideology. To make this happen, it was necessary to make a climate in which it became virtually impossible to think, or exist, outside the dominant ideological construct. Those who did were isolated, as now some of our colleagues seek to isolate Professor Mangel.' There are many murmurs round the table from the sociologists, all of whom are deeply conscious of having definitions of fascism they too could give, if asked. 'May I continue?' asks Zachery. 'Fascism is therefore an elegant sociological construct, a one-system world. Its opposite is contingency or pluralism or liberalism. That means a chaos of opinion and ideology; there are people who find that hard to endure. But in the interests of it, I think we must ask Professor Mangel to come here and lecture.'

'Then you'll get your chaos all right, if he does,' says Fundy. 'You know what the radical feeling is about this. You know what uproar and violent protest there always is when someone like Jensen or Eysenck is invited to lecture at a university. The same will happen with Mange!.' Justified violence and protest,' says Moira Millikin. 'I'm extremely disturbed, Mr Chairman,' says Dr Macintosh, 'to see so many of my colleagues stopping us from inviting someone we haven't even invited.' But now there is much shouting across the table, and Professor Marvin has to stand, and bang his wodge of files down hard onto the desk in front of him, before something like silence returns. 'Gentlemen!' he shouts. 'Persons!'

'Oh, Howard, Howard, is this you?' whispers Flora. 'Flora,' whispers back Howard. 'Stop taking the plane to bits once it's left the ground.'

'You're playing games,' whispers Flora. 'I've not spoken,' says Howard. Professor Marvin, now, has resumed his seat. He waits for full quietness, and then he says: 'Well, Dr Zachery has proposed a motion, which is now on the table, that we in this department of Social Studies issue an invitation to Professor Mangel to come and lecture here. Does that motion have a seconder?'

'Go on, Flora,' whispers Howard; Flora puts her hand up. 'Oh,' says Marvin, 'well, let me briefly note that this issue could become a bone of severe contention, and remind the department of the experience of other universities who have ventured in this unduly charged area, before I put the motion to the vote. Let us be cautious in our actions, cautious but just. Now may we vote. Those in favour?' The hands go up around the table; Benita Pream rises to count them. 'And those against?' Another group of hands, some waving violently, go up; Benita Pream, rises once more to count these. She writes the results down on a piece of paper, and slips this over the table top to Marvin, who looks at it. 'Well,' he says, 'this motion has been carried. By eleven votes to ten. I'm sure that's just, but I'm afraid we've committed ourselves to a real bone of contention.' There is uproar at the table. 'Castrate all sexists,' shouts Melissa Todoroff; and it is now that, on a point of order from Dr Petworth, a constitutional spirit dedicated to such precisions as points of order, it is discovered that Miss Todoroff is not, as a visitor, formally a member of this meeting at all, and therefore has been voting without entitlement, and so she is taken from the room, shouting, 'Sisters, rebel,' and, 'Off the pigs'. The table settles; Howard's hand goes up; 'Mr Chairman,' he says, 'may I point out that the vote just taken-and passed by only one vote-is now clearly invalid, since Miss Todoroff's should not have been cast.'

'I had seen that constitutional point, Dr Kirk,' says Marvin. 'I'm afraid it leaves us in a very difficult position. You see, that applies not only to the last vote, but to all the votes taken throughout the meeting. Unless we can see a way round it, we may have to start this entire meeting from the beginning again.'