The Review: On polarization and the study of history

Two historians revisit some recent dust-ups in the profession. ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. In the last few months, two rich essays have appeared looking back at a series of flare-ups, since 2019 or so, in the perennial debate over the politics of historical study. In July, Past & Present published the Northwestern University historian Sarah Maza’s “[Presentism and the Politics of History: Revisiting the 2022 James Sweet Affair.]( And earlier this month, Liberties published the Rutgers University at Camden historian Katherine C. Epstein’s “[Historians Killing History]( Between them, the two essays suggest a way to move beyond the stultifying binaries that have sometimes organized debates over ideology and the study of the past. The James Sweet affair, as most will have already forgotten, involved a fierce dispute over a Perspectives on History editorial written by Sweet, at the time president of the American Historical Association. That editorial accused the profession of mining the study of the past to score cheap political points about the present, especially where matters of race are concerned. (In our pages, [Joan W. Scott]( and [David A. Bell]( each weighed in.) Most controversially, Sweet criticized the historical-tourism industry associated with Elmina Castle, in Ghana, a former slaving hub. According to Sweet, tour guides — courting the patronage of Americans and especially African Americans — understated the role of Africans in the slave trade and misleadingly implied that Elmina played a much bigger role in North American slavery than it did (in fact, most of Elmina’s victims ended up in South America and the Caribbean.) The response was withering. “All hell broke loose,” as Maza writes. She quotes Stanford University’s Priya Satia, who, invited to respond to Sweet’s essay, expressed her “exhaustion at having to explain the harm of Sweet’s condescending portrayal of African Americans’ understanding of history and of his attempt, from his influential office, to delegitimize scholarship on essential topics like race, gender, and capitalism.” At its worst, the debate could risk pitting what Scott described as “the right’s conflation of criticism with dogmatism” against “identitarian purists’ attacks on what they take to be distortions of their experiential truth” — both poles ideologically calcified and morally domineering. Taking a cue from Scott, Maza argues that the dichotomies structuring the debates obscure the truth about what actually makes good history writing good. “What gets lost in the ideology-versus-accuracy formulation,” Maza writes, “is the idea of history as an intellectually creative discipline.” It’s true that “political conviction can lead to simplification.” It’s also true that “the scrupulous accumulation of information” is not in itself “sufficient to produce really good history.” If you are trapped by the terms of the history wars — presentism versus respect for the past; accuracy versus ideology; political conviction versus evenhanded objectivity — you will never come close to describing the mysterious admixture of archival diligence and argumentative innovation that makes good history good. Subscribe to The Chronicle Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. In her Liberties essay, Epstein likewise describes the way that the study of history has been sharply dichotomized: On the one hand, there are traditional military and diplomatic historians. Broadly speaking, they see themselves, and are seen by others, as continuing to study old topics (hard power, high politics, dead white men, and so on) using old methods of archival research. On the other hand, there are nontraditional historians of race, gender, and sexuality, who see themselves, and are seen by others, as studying new topics (knowledge production, the personal as political, historically marginalized groups, and so on) using new methods of critical theory. The methodological commitments of the two types are understood to imply corresponding ideological commitments, and vice versa: “Traditional” history is coded as conservative or politically right-of-center (for its defenders: hard, manly, substantial, tangible), while “woke” history is coded as progressive or politically left-of-center (for its critics: soft, effete, flimsy, intangible). Of course this dichotomy is an oversimplification, but it is one that I think many historians would recognize, however grudgingly. But she argues that any association of one of these tendencies with quality and rigor and the other with amateurishness is misleading. In fact, she says, a lapse in scholarly standards afflicts both sides: “Call it the horseshoe of scholarly incompetence.” Like Maza, who points out that some of the best history has been overtly stimulated by political conviction — she names E.P. Thompson’s classic The Making of the English Working Class, motivated both by general left-wing investments and by a revisionist attitude toward conventional Marxist accounts — Epstein holds no brief for the idea that political commitment necessarily makes bad history. “If historians’ left-wing ideological commitments lead to better scholarship than that produced by historians with right-wing views — as was the case with so much women’s, African American, and working-class history in the 1950s and 1960s — then great. If historians’ right-wing commitments lead to better scholarship than that produced by historians with left-wing commitments, then great.” But ideological polarization along lines of topic and method, Epstein suggests, means that whichever side one is on, evidentiary and argumentative standards deteriorate as like-minded peers rubber-stamp their allies’ work. And that, she says, is not just a problem of the academic left. “Where an identitarian historian seeks contemporary relevance by reducing the complexity of the past into a tale of white supremacy, a diplomatic historian seeks the same relevance by reading the past backwards through today’s foreign-policy categories — and both twist the historical evidence to conform to their present-day agenda … If you think that diplomatic and military historians do not plagiarize, fake their footnotes, and wave their buddies’ lousy work through peer review, then I have an exciting time-share opportunity on a river in Egypt that I’d like to discuss with you.” Read Sarah Maza’s “[Presentism and the Politics of History]( and Katherine C. Epstein’s “[Historians Killing History]( ADVERTISEMENT Professional Development Programs Our professional-development programs are designed to combine critical information from The Chronicle's journalism with practical skill-building workshops, seminars, and tools that will help you succeed in higher ed. We partner with leading experts and experienced practitioners to provide robust programs tailored to the evolving needs of professionals navigating an ever-changing academic landscape. [Learn more]( about our upcoming programs and reach out to workshops@chronicle.com with any questions. The Latest THE REVIEW | ESSAY [Life as a Disposable Academic]( By Jamie Bolker [STORY IMAGE]( When my college closed, I lost my tenure-track job. Then my life fell apart. ADVERTISEMENT [Life as a Disposable Academic]( THE REVIEW | ESSAY [Americans Have Not Turned Against Higher Ed]( By Kevin Carey and Sophie Nguyen [STORY IMAGE]( Americans are losing faith in the value of college. Or so we are told. 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