To the Editors:
In the June issue of The New Criterion, Norman Cantor asserts that “[Lawrence] Stone was—and is—an English Marxist.” He goes on to imply that Lawrence Stone used his “extensive patronage powers” as director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University to promote Marxism.
I find those statements distressing. I have known Lawrence Stone for seventeen years and consider him an old-fashioned liberal. Although he is a great admirer of Tawney’s, he is not and never was a Marxist. He is indeed director of the Davis Center, but he does not rule over it with absolute or even partial sovereignty. A committee, of which I have twice been a member, makes every decision on the election of fellows and the selection of seminar topics. The history department approves those decisions and passes on the Center’s budget. And aside from its mode of operation, the Center has never favored Marxism or any of the other ideologies that Cantor names.
His way of calling names strikes me less as a defense of liberalism than as a revival of McCarthyism. It discredits him and the liberalism he purports to defend. I think he should make a public apology.
Robert Darnton
Department of History
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
Norman Cantor replies:
I did say that Stone was and is an English Marxist and I do not retract this statement. On the contrary, I confirm it.
Stone’s first publication, in 1948, was an article
