[Editorial note: This essay is the third in a series of posts examining a recent student-sponsored forum on intellectual history held last week at Stanford University. You can find the previous two posts here and here.] Area Studies and the Problems of Global Histories by Ruben Flores Portrayals of academic area studies centers in the U.S. that have arisen in the debate concerning Stanford University’s decision to deny tenure to historian Aishwary Kumar have perplexed me. In one, Stanford literature scholar Robert Harrison describes the centers as “nationalist” rather than concerned with communication across nations. In another, Matthew Linton argues Read more