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American Historical Association Annual Conference (January 5-8, 2023)

February 11, 2023
by Peter Feinman

The American Historical Association held its annual conference in-person in Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2023. The conference made the front page of the Arts and Culture section in The New York Times on Monday after the weekend event. It did so because of a column in Perspectives on History posted by James H. Sweet, the AHA President, back in August on the topic of “presentism.” That column and the immediate response was the subject of an earlier blog:

American Historical Association: Presidential Culture Wars Contretemps
September 12, 2022.

The October issue of the publication continued the fight. Below are the highlights made by those responding within the AHA community.

October

“(H)is thoughts are risky because … he comes off as a detractor of The 1619 Project and similar initiatives and thus social justice. In the neoliberal university, where utility is the primary virtue, this weakens this historical profession’s standing even more.”
Ken Mondschein

I am not quite clear if being a detractor of the flawed 1619 Project qualifies one as trying to improve the standing of the history profession or weaken it.

“I am glad that James H. Sweet wrote this column. It did what he intended it to do: it opened a particular conversation about how we “do” history…. As much as academic careers can be built on infighting, we daily have the opportunity to bear witness to a different world of possibility: one where historians, sociologists, political theorists, scholars of religion, and others can compare notes and enrich one another’s work without the nagging desires to police boundaries.”
Malcolm Foley

Although he was invited by AHA to respond to the Sweet column, my reaction is that he instead used the opportunity more to express his own views on the discipline of history without really engaging Sweet.

“I felt exhaustion at having to explain the harm of Sweet’s condescending portrayal of African American’s understanding of history and of his attempt, from his influential office, to delegitimize scholarship on essential topics like race, gender, and capitalism (in a manner that has now drawn the approval of white supremacists)….

“Retraction is appropriate because the essay’s flaws are pervasive and obvious…”

The responder than elaborates on how historians in the past have deployed “presentism” to serve “elite political agendas.”

“(I)n exhorting us not to project ‘today’s antiracism on the past, he [Sweet] adopts a moral superiority toward the past that [a previous AHA president] cautions against…. Sweet attacks scholarly work on ‘race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism’ as driven by contemporary social justice issues.’ The mind boggles at having to remind a fellow historian that gender and sexuality existed in the ancient world…

“To Sweet, The 1619 Project, the only ‘presentist’ book he names, fails as history because it views the past ‘through the prism of contemporary racial identity’ It is baffling that a journalistic effort stands in for historical scholarship here.”

Here the responder is encroaching into a subject that demands greater attention. No one would care if deeply-flawed 1619 Project was by an obscure publication that everyone beyond a fringe niche ignored. But instead it is a publication of The New York Times and is treated not as a journalistic effort but as historical scholarship just as the use of the books by David McCullough would be if included in the classroom [Historians vs. David McCullough – The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, January 27, 2022; History Scholars versus David McCullough: The American Revolution, January 30, 2022; David McCullough (1933-2022): No R.I.P. – The Culture Wars Continue, September 2, 2022.

“Sweet has contributed to public denigration of the discipline in a time of rampant, politically motivated questioning of humanistic expertise and resource crisis for the discipline. His complaint about a preoccupation with ‘contemporary social justice issues” offers fuel to attacks on the teaching of crucial subjects like race and slavery.”
Priya Satia

One wonders exactly how much sway a single column within the history field carries outside the academic arena.

November

“I love the well-written article [from Sweet] since it seemed to be based on speaking the truth, and I was very disappointed that Sweet inserted an apology at the front of the article…. Excellent job, Dr. Sweet: keep up the good work.”
Scott Green

Hard to believe Green and Satia were referring to the same column. That difference of opinion is an excellent example of how historians bring their own agenda and experiences to their work. How else to explain the divergent opinions of such magnitude from a single source? What a great lesson in how the history discipline works that two people can read the same column and have such contrary reactions.

“Whether intentionally or not, AHA president James H. Sweet’s misguided critique of ‘presentism’ in historical study plays into the hands of ‘presentist’ politicians who are censoring the teaching of history.”
Allan Lichtman

Is this letter-writer referring to the successful Woke effort to control the very words we are obligated to use in the classroom and in public discourse and to the content in college courses or  to the successful MAGA effort to do something similar legislatively? As the next paragraph makes clear it is the latter. The next three paragraphs are on how Sweet gives aid and comfort to right-wing attacks.

THE ATLANTIC

The squabble within the history community led to an article by David Frum in The Atlantic, October 30, 2022, entitled “The New History Wars: Inside the Strife set off by an essay from the president of the American Historical Association. The opening line was:

Even by the rancorous standards of the academy, the August eruption at the American Historical Association was nasty and personal. 

Frum describes the reaction as an “outrage volcano erupted on social media.” Frum called attention to the coverage by The Wall Street Journal as well as by Fox News. He then wonders “But all the Strum and Dang makes it harder to understand the actual substance of the controversy …Why did so many of his colleagues find it so upsetting even threatening?” Here Frum was echoing the comments of Jay Caspian Kang, columnist for The New York Times, as reported in my previous blog on the subject over the puzzlement about this academic firestorm.

Frum visited Sweet in Madison. The non-Twitter user had been deeply surprised by the reaction to his column. Subsequently, he had come under immense pressure. Sweet had discovered that many of his colleagues and in the history-reading public actually had agreed with him …even if they hesitated to say so publicly. Sweet informed Frum that he had received almost 250 emails which were almost the inverse image of Twitter comments – “’long, considered, thoughtful emails, not just 280-character responses.’”

According to Frum, Sweet worries about the move to de-emphasize the single author manuscript or book, a weakening of the cherished ideals and methods of the historical profession. Frum continues that Sweet’s attempted to erect a firewall to protect the academy from politics and power. He observes that such an effort is contrary to the dominant trend in history, especially African and African-diaspora history. Frum predicts academia will lose this battle with the American public. He declares that this quest to replace the ivory tower history with the actively involved historian for progressive social justice is one that will fail.

Frum then reports on some of the skirmishes within the field of African studies. The logical conclusion is it is more difficult for white scholars trained in African history to find jobs.

Grappling with the Past, Present, and Future: Historians gathered to discuss the influence of contemporary issues and what lies ahead – Jennifer Schuessler, (1/9/23 NYT)

With this background in mind, let us turn to the article covering the conference as if it were a sports event. After summarizing salient portions of Sweet’s column, Schuessler reports on the reaction:

The column provoked a firestorm, which spread along racial and generations fault lines. Many younger historians, cosigned to poorly paid adjunct work in a shrinking job market, saw the out-of-touch complaints of the privileged.

There was an opening-night panel at the conference to address the issue. One attendee commented “But some folks felt it as a stab.” A stab in the back? A stab like a pinprick and not a cleaver? Not clear. Sweet sat near the rear, not a participant.

Schuessler reports that the panel was “short on disagreement, and long on juxtaposition and questions, including a big one: Are the traditional methodologies extolled by Sweet an effective tool of justice and truth, or are they too enmeshed in their own racist past?” In other words, the methodology Sweet advocates for no longer is appropriate. I suspect from what I can glean from the article, that the panel was primarily politically correct and may not have reflected the full diversity of the history community.

Another issue drew Schuessler’s attention:

There was little reference to the widespread dismay that the field was (as a participant at another session put in) ‘in contraction if not collapse.   

Schuesssler quotes an historian in the lightning round of closing comments as being blunt: “’We need to talk about money.’”

Sometimes one gets the feeling that academics are like the band playing on after the Titanic has struck the iceberg.

Sweet’s Presidential Address was entitled “Slave Trading as a Corporate Criminal Conspiracy from the Calabar Massacre to BLM, 1767-2022.” He addressed a standing-room crowd which I take to be hundreds of people. For more than one hour, he spoke about a slave-trading family from Liverpool. Back in the 17th century, the patriarch of the family achieved dominance over other traders through a “’gangland-style’” massacre of 400 people in what is today Nigeria. He concluded the family, which still exists and operates today, is a ripe target for reparations.

Sweet then switched gears to speak about presentism. At this point, Schuessler does not fully elaborate on what he said. She does observe that “there was disagreement about whether genuinely open debate was really happening — or could happen. She quotes one historian at the conference saying:

“People are scared to speak honestly sometimes, even what they know to be historically true, because they don’t want to end up on the wrong side.”

These words are eerily familiar to what k-12 students and teachers say along with college students and teachers. Everyone is walking on eggshells trying to get the lay of the land so they don’t ruin their grades or diminish their chances of tenure or promotion.

This culture war puts history museums and organizations in the same battlefield as schools and academic history organizations. While many have eagerly embraced the Woke vocabulary and attitude towards American history others have not. They continue to regard history as they have in the past. As we come closer to the 250th birthday of the country the conflict likely will intensify. People and their organizations will be called on more and more to take a stand on where they stand in the culture wars.

Let me close with an observation made by Frum in his article on Sweet’s column where he reports on the backlash which has occurred.

Critical historians who thought they were winning the fight for control within the academy now face dire retaliation from outside the academy.   

It will get worse.

America’s Third Civil War: An Update

December 13, 2020
by Peter Feinman
America's Third Civil War (The Atlantic)

America’s Third Civil War is unfolding in unexpected ways. Previously I had blogged that the 2020 Presidential election would be our Battle of Gettysburg (He Really Could Stand in the Middle of 5th Avenue, Shoot Somebody, and Not Lose Voters 4/1/20) . It would be the moment when the conflict between the two sides of the Culture Wars burst forth with some violence over which side had triumphed in the showdown at high November. In many ways, such a showdown has occurred but without the violence…yet.

In the more than one month since Joe Biden won, although the results were not immediately known, the fighting has transpired primarily in the court room. In these clashes, the hero of 9/11 has made a dripping fool of himself time and time again without having any awareness of his predicament… except that he knows enough that he will need a pardon.

One surprising absence from the war has been the current Attorney General. After months and years of doing the biding of the criminal in-chief, when the final showdown came he was missing in action. In fact, he gave aid to the patriots who were defending the country from the assault on democracy by denying that the election was rigged or that fraud had occurred.

With these thoughts in mind, I am taking a trip down memory lane to one year ago: the December 2019 issue of The Atlantic with the cover title “How to top a Civil War.” Since the war is not yet over and 2021 promises to be even worse as the new President struggles to assert himself as THE President of the United States, it is worth taking a look back on what was written.  In a preview to the next blog, I note the article in this time capsule on Texas and secession could just have easily been written in December 2020 as December 2019. I am waiting to see what happens before writing about it.

A NATION COMING APART BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG

Goldberg tactfully opens his “Editor’s Note” with:

The 45th president of the United States of America is uniquely unfit for the office and poses a multifaceted threat to our country’s democratic institutions.

Truer words were never written, but I suspect they understate the problem. I doubt that Goldberg anticipated a frontal assault on the democratic process including an attempted coup to steal the election with the support of the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives and 125 accomplices. To imagine an attempted coup by this particular President requires no stretch of the imagination. To see how widespread the support was and is would have been unimaginable. These 126 traitors are from the present House of Representatives. It is quite likely that in the new House where the Democrats will have only the slimmest of margins, that the number of representatives who support the President in-exile will be even greater. There is no margin of error.

Goldberg went on to write:

The structural failures in our democratic system that allowed a grifter into the White House in the first place⸺this might be our greatest challenge.

I strongly doubt that Goldberg anticipated that the con artist only needed to ask for money to receive over $200 million from his Trumpican base. That is an astonishing achievement in the history of scam annals. He has perfected the ability to raise enormous sums of money in small amounts without having to fleece few bigtime marks.

Finally, Goldberg announced as the editor, the purpose for the special issue.

Out of our conversations, and others like it, emerged the idea for the special issue you are now reading, what we have called “How to Stop a Civil War.” … (W)e worry that the ties that bind us are fraying at alarming speed⸺we are becoming contemptuous of each other in ways that are both dire and possibly irreversible.

If these words reflect Goldberg’s assessment of the situation in December 2019, then one can only imagine what he must think in December 2020. For now the coup to steal the election temporarily has been stopped by the Supreme Court. One should expect the final stand where the last ditch effort to overturn the election will be undertaken will be when the new House convenes to ratify the vote of the Electoral College. He still thinks he can overturn the election and has roughly 126 people who will help him. The fat lady still hasn’t sung yet.

“WHEN TRUMP GOES” BY DAVID FRUM

The opening article in the war issue appropriately enough was called “Dispatches.” It was listed as the “Opening Argument.” The question raised was “Somehow, sometime, he will leave office. Will our politics get better or worse?”

Frum opened his argument with the well-known examples of the current occupant’s preference to remain in office beyond the two-term limit. By now you would have to be dumb beyond belief not to realize that is his desire. I am not suggesting he has a plan to do it, only that he would like to. Plan B I would guess is to run in 2024 and then to be succeeded by a child, probably Ivanka as the first female president. It would follow her stint as Senator from Florida beginning in 2022 where she is now relocating. For all we know, she will be the preferred Trump in 2024. Whether all that happens or not remains to be seen. What is clear is that the Trumps will be with us for years to come with a strong base in the House that will do whatever he wants.

In his Argument, Frum presents two scenarios: a narrow Democratic victory or a big Democratic victory. We know now that the latter did not occur. It did not occur in the House. It did not occur in the Senate even if they win the two runoff elections. It did not occur at the state level. Even though Joe Biden won with the same landslide Electoral College vote as in 2016 only with the parties reversed and by over 7 million votes, the Democrats’ hopes were not fulfilled.

Frum’s analysis in 2019 misses two key considerations, one of which he could not have known about.

First, the coronavirus changed all political calculations. Without the coronavirus it is quite possible there would have been another election where the Democrats won the popular vote but lost the election. Without the coronavirus there really could have been a second term.  Even with the virus, what would have happened if the vaccine had been discovered sooner? What would have happened if the coronavirus had happened a year earlier? We will never know the answer to these different scenarios, but there is one chilling fact that will haunt historians for years to come:

Did 200,000 Americans have to die in 2020 for him to be defeated that same year?

Try and imagine what it would be like to participate in that debate.  Are those deaths the price America had to pay to make him a one-term president?

Second, Joe Biden probably is the only Democratic candidate who could have won. In a previous blog, I asked the question if Elizabeth Warren could have won. We will never know but the odds are she easily might have lost despite the coronavirus. Even more so for the other potential Democratic candidates.

Frum couldn’t possibly have known any of this when he wrote his Dispatch from the battlefield last December. In hindsight we can see how the stars had to be aligned to produce the Democratic presidential victory in 2020 and there is no guarantee that they will be so aligned in 2024.

So what will happen now?

As in America’s Second Civil War, we will have two Presidents: one in Washington and one in the South. The parallel is not the same. This time the President in the south commands no armies and the only revenue he raises will be for himself. During the Second Civil War, the Confederates removed themselves from the political process. They did not remain in Congress or vote in the 1864 elections. This time Trump’s traitors will remain in Congress without suffering any punitive actions for their attempted coup to steal the election. Their loyalty will be to the rightful President in Florida and not to the Constitution or the illegitimate President in Washington.

The ongoing war then is more likely to resemble World War I than the Second Civil War but without the violence. By that I mean, everything in Congress will be trench warfare with neither side budging. Trumpicans will not accept Joe Biden as the President of their country.  They will call upon their governors to do the same … unless the state needs federal aid due to a disaster.  Care to guess to whom the Governor of South Dakota will pledge her loyalty?

America’s Third Civil War is far from over. It will continue as long as the two houses live together in one political entity. Texas has a solution for that.