Hypocrite Tikvah Fund Jews Against WOKE Identity Politics (1): Bret Jewish Genius Stephens Attacks the 1619 Project, Forgets His Embrace of White Supremacy Eugenics
David Shasha
This Is the Other Way That History Ends
By: Bret Stephens
The End of History was supposed to have happened back in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell and Francis Fukuyama announced the conclusive triumph of liberal democracy. We know how that thesis worked out. But what happens when the other kind of History — academic, not Hegelian — starts to collapse?
That’s a question that James H. Sweet, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the president of the American Historical Association, tried to raise earlier this month in a column titled “Is History History?” for the organization’s newsmagazine. It didn’t go well.
Sweet’s core concern in the piece, which was subtitled “Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present,” was about the “trend toward presentism” — the habit of weighing the past against the social concerns and moral categories of the present.
The column offered some muted criticism of The Times’s 1619 Project (along with jabs at Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) and warned that “bad history yields bad politics.” It immediately raised howls of protest on Twitter from left-wing academics. Within two days, Sweet produced a groveling apology, in which he indicted himself for a “ham-fisted attempt at provocation” that “alienated some of my Black colleagues and friends” and for which he was “deeply sorry.”
We should now feel deeply sorry for Sweet, who probably didn’t realize that, in the cancel culture we inhabit, apologies intended as bids for forgiveness are almost invariably taken as admissions of guilt. But the larger shame is that Sweet had important things to say in his thoughtful column — things that the reaction to the column (and the reaction to the reaction) now risk burying.
Between 2003 and 2013, a dwindling number of history Ph.D.s, he noted, were going to students doing work on topics preceding 1800. At the same time, historians were producing works that “collapse into the familiar terms of contemporary debates,” particularly those connected to identity politics.
“This new history,” he wrote, “often ignores the values and mores of people in their own times, as well as change over time, neutralizing the expertise that separates historians from those in other disciplines.”
Put another way, Sweet was warning that historians risked doing an injustice both to their own profession as well as to the past itself by falling victim to “the allure of political relevance.” His main example came from a recent visit to the Elmina Castle in Ghana, which had once been one of the principal sites of the Atlantic slave trade. These days, he wrote, the castle has become a kind of shrine for African Americans seeking a place to memorialize enslaved ancestors.
But, Sweet says as a historian of Africa, “less than 1 percent of the Africans passing through Elmina arrived in North America” — most enslaved Africans who survived the middle passage ended up in Brazil or the Caribbean. And those who were enslaved were often first brought to Elmina by other African brokers who promoted the slave trade just as cruelly and greedily as the Europeans with whom they did business.
That does nothing to diminish the evil of the trade, much less its relevance to America’s past and present.
But it helps put it into a global context in which the roles of victim and victimizer seldom fall neatly along a color line. If that challenges current orthodoxy, it’s only because that orthodoxy is based on a simplistic understanding of history. The proper role of the historian is to complexify, not simplify; to show us historical figures in the context of their time, not reduce them to figurines that can be weaponized in our contemporary debates.
Above all, historians should make us understand the ways in which the past was distinct. This shouldn’t prevent us from making moral judgments about it. But we can make better judgments, informed by the knowledge that our forebears rarely acted with the benefit (or burden) of our assumptions, expectations, experiences and values. There’s a lesson in humility in that, as well as a reminder that we are only actors in time whose most cherished ideas may eventually seem strange, and sometimes abhorrent, to our descendants.
All this should have been a useful antidote to what Sweet correctly lamented as “the idea of history as an evidentiary grab bag” for people “to articulate their political positions.” Instead, his column — which bent over backward to showcase his liberal bona fides — ignited the usual progressive furies. Anyone looking for further confirmation that modern academia has become a fundamentally ideological and coercive exercise masquerading as a scholarly and collegial one need have looked no further. It will be interesting to see if Sweet manages to hold on to his post as the American Historical Association’s president.
Meanwhile, in 2019 only 986 people earned history Ph.D.s, the first time the number had fallen below 1,000 in over a decade, according to an A.H.A. analysis of available data. That number is still nearly twice as high as the number of advertised job openings. If people are wondering how history ends, maybe this is how: when a scholarly discipline tries to turn itself into something it isn’t, making itself increasingly irrelevant in its desperate bid for relevancy.
From The New York Times, August 31, 2022
Nikole Hannah-Jones has taken over the history profession
By: Peter Wood
Professor James H. Sweet is a temperate man. He seeks to avoid extremes. But he also seeks to be bold in his temperance. You can do that by emphatically stating an opinion that seems above reproach. But Professor Sweet miscalculated. His emphatic bromide blew up, and he was left offering emphatic apologies.
For those who have not followed this little academic circus, Professor Sweet, who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is also the president of the American Historical Association (AHA). That’s an important post. The AHA has over 11,500 members. It publishes the American Historical Review, “the journal of record for the historical profession in the United States.” And AHA holds a huge conference each January. The coming conference is in Philadelphia. Among other things, these conferences are job fairs, where recently minted Ph.D. historians go to get noticed for the relatively few academic positions that are available.
To be president of the AHA is to preside over an organization where getting noticed matters a lot, and one of the best ways to get noticed these days is to proclaim a grievance. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that AHA is an arena in which contestants battle it out for most noticeable grievance. History was once among the most popular majors in college, but it has suffered a catastrophic decline. According to the AHA itself, “As of 2019, history accounted for slightly less than 1.2 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded, the lowest share in records that extend back to 1949.” Surely every professional historian worries about this picture, and who would worry more than the president of the AHA.
But this is where Professor Sweet stumbled. He suggested a reason for the decline that ran athwart the sensitivities of some of his members. He did this by publishing a column in one of AHA’s journals, Perspectives on History, in which he temperately and oh-so-cautiously broached the idea that maybe historians today are trying a little too hard to shoehorn the past into the dominant cultural categories of the present. He titled his column, “Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present.” To mention “identity politics” without a deep bow of respect was itself a risky move, but it got worse. Sweet noticed that the number of Ph.D.s awarded to those who studied the period before 1800 had declined relative to those who study more recent periods. And this shift coincided with “plummeting undergraduate enrollments in history courses and increased professional interest in the history of contemporary socioeconomic topics.”
Could Sweet have been more explicit about the danger of what he calls “presentism”? Well, yes, he could have been. His next paragraph included a couple of sentences that landed like drone strikes on the radical left’s oil refinery:
If we don’t read the past through the prism of contemporary social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism—are we doing history that matters? This new history often ignores the values and mores of people in their own times, as well as change over time, neutralizing the expertise that separates historians from those in other disciplines.
Perhaps Sweet got carried away. Did he really mean that historians obsessively twisting every fact into a narrative about systemic injustice is somehow discrediting the profession? One might have read it that way.
In fact, Sweet goes on to describe some of the deep inaccuracies in Nikole Hannah Jones’s The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, admittedly the work of a journalist and not a professional historian, but a work which was anointed by the profession: “professional historians’ engagement with the work that seemed to lend it historical legitimacy.” Sweet gives reasons why Nikole Hannah-Jones’s account (and others like it) are not to be trusted. He is “troubled by the historical erasures and narrow politics that these narratives convey.”
But Sweet is also at pains in his short essay to distance himself from any views that might be considered “conservative.” Indeed, he mischaracterizes much of the conservative reaction to The 1619 Project, saying, “Conservative lawmakers decided that if this was the history of slavery being taught in schools, the topic shouldn’t be taught at all.” As someone who has been talking with those lawmakers for almost three years, I have yet to meet one that expressed this view. The consensus is that the teaching of American history should definitely continue to include the history of slavery, but that it should be told factually and accurately, not as a collection of suppositions and fables.
That points to a problem that differs from the “presentism” that Sweet decries, though there is a connection. It is easier to justify making stuff up if you think you have a social justice mandate to tell a compelling “narrative.”
Sweet’s canard about conservatives attempting to “erase” slavery from history classes is followed by a few paragraphs slamming Justice Clarence Thomas for a different kind of “presentism” in his originalist jurisprudence in “overturning New York’s conceal-carry gun law” and slamming Justice Samuel Alito for his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson. These paragraphs may reflect Sweet’s real opinions but they seem tacked onto his article to assure his readers he is on their side. He too hates conservatives, and he doesn’t want his strictures against “presentism” to be mistaken as some sort of endorsement of conservative concerns. Pray not.
But his doubling back did Sweet no good. No sooner was his essay published than the engines of outrage began pouring teleologies of indignation on the hapless Professor Sweet.
Being a man of character, Sweet did the honorable thing of publishing a groveling apology. I’ll skip the expressions of outrage, which are as routine as nose rings on student nostrils, and go directly to Sweet’s recantation. Highlights:
I take full responsibility that it did not convey what I intended and for the harm that it has caused. I had hoped to open a conversation on how we “do” history in our current politically charged environment. Instead, I foreclosed this conversation for many members, causing harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association.
If my ham-fisted attempt at provocation has proven anything, it is that the AHA membership is as vocal and robust as ever. If anyone has criticisms that they have been reluctant or unable to post publicly, please feel free to contact me directly.
I sincerely regret the way I have alienated some of my Black colleagues and friends. I am deeply sorry. In my clumsy efforts to draw attention to methodological flaws in teleological presentism, I left the impression that questions posed from absence, grief, memory, and resilience somehow matter less than those posed from positions of power. This absolutely is not true. It wasn’t my intention to leave that impression, but my provocation completely missed the mark.
Once again, I apologize for the damage I have caused to my fellow historians, the discipline, and the AHA. I hope to redeem myself in future conversations with you all. I’m listening and learning.
What is there to add to this? And what lessons if any should we draw from the affair? The simple lesson is that Nikole Hannah-Jones wins again. She bestrides the American history profession like a colossus. The other lesson is that the historian profession under the auspices of the AHA is just plain doomed. When it makes a half-hearted attempt to get something right, it then falls back into humiliation.
History will survive all this, but the teaching of history in our colleges and universities? The prospects are cloudy.
Peter W. Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars. A former professor of anthropology and college provost, he is the author of Wrath: America Enraged and 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project.
From The Spectator World magazine, August 25, 2022
Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present
By: James H. Sweet
Author’s Note (Aug 19, 2022)
My September Perspectives on History column has generated anger and dismay among many of our colleagues and members. I take full responsibility that it did not convey what I intended and for the harm that it has caused. I had hoped to open a conversation on how we “do” history in our current politically charged environment. Instead, I foreclosed this conversation for many members, causing harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association.
A president’s monthly column, one of the privileges of the elected office, provides a megaphone to the membership and the discipline. The views and opinions expressed in that column are not those of the Association. If my ham-fisted attempt at provocation has proven anything, it is that the AHA membership is as vocal and robust as ever. If anyone has criticisms that they have been reluctant or unable to post publicly, please feel free to contact me directly.
I sincerely regret the way I have alienated some of my Black colleagues and friends. I am deeply sorry. In my clumsy efforts to draw attention to methodological flaws in teleological presentism, I left the impression that questions posed from absence, grief, memory, and resilience somehow matter less than those posed from positions of power. This absolutely is not true. It wasn’t my intention to leave that impression, but my provocation completely missed the mark.
Once again, I apologize for the damage I have caused to my fellow historians, the discipline, and the AHA. I hope to redeem myself in future conversations with you all. I’m listening and learning.
Twenty years ago, in these pages, Lynn Hunt argued “against presentism.” She lamented historians’ declining interest in topics prior to the 20th century, as well as our increasing tendency to interpret the past through the lens of the present. Hunt warned that this rising presentism threatened to “put us out of business as historians.” If history was little more than “short-term . . . identity politics defined by present concerns,” wouldn’t students be better served by taking degrees in sociology, political science, or ethnic studies instead?
The discipline did not heed Hunt’s warning. From 2003 to 2013, the number of PhDs awarded to students working on topics post-1800, across all fields, rose 18 percent. Meanwhile, those working on pre-1800 topics declined by 4 percent. During this time, the Wall Street meltdown was followed by plummeting undergraduate enrollments in history courses and increased professional interest in the history of contemporary socioeconomic topics. Then came Obama, and Twitter, and Trump. As the discipline has become more focused on the 20th and 21st centuries, historical analyses are contained within an increasingly constrained temporality. Our interpretations of the recent past collapse into the familiar terms of contemporary debates, leaving little room for the innovative, counterintuitive interpretations.
This trend toward presentism is not confined to historians of the recent past; the entire discipline is lurching in this direction, including a shrinking minority working in premodern fields. If we don’t read the past through the prism of contemporary social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism—are we doing history that matters? This new history often ignores the values and mores of people in their own times, as well as change over time, neutralizing the expertise that separates historians from those in other disciplines. The allure of political relevance, facilitated by social and other media, encourages a predictable sameness of the present in the past. This sameness is ahistorical, a proposition that might be acceptable if it produced positive political results. But it doesn’t.
In many places, history suffuses everyday life as presentism; America is no exception. We suffer from an overabundance of history, not as method or analysis, but as anachronistic data points for the articulation of competing politics. The consequences of this new history are everywhere. I traveled to Ghana for two months this summer to research and write, and my first assignment was a critical response to The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story for a forthcoming forum in the American Historical Review. Whether or not historians believe that there is anything new in the New York Times project created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project is a best-selling book that sits at the center of current controversies over how to teach American history. As journalism, the project is powerful and effective, but is it history?
When I first read the newspaper series that preceded the book, I thought of it as a synthesis of a tradition of Black nationalist historiography dating to the 19th century with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent call for reparations. The project spoke to the political moment, but I never thought of it primarily as a work of history. Ironically, it was professional historians’ engagement with the work that seemed to lend it historical legitimacy. Then the Pulitzer Center, in partnership with the Times, developed a secondary school curriculum around the project. Local school boards protested characterizations of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison as unpatriotic owners of “forced labor camps.” Conservative lawmakers decided that if this was the history of slavery being taught in schools, the topic shouldn’t be taught at all. For them, challenging the Founders’ position as timeless tribunes of liberty was “racially divisive.” At each of these junctures, history was a zero-sum game of heroes and villains viewed through the prism of contemporary racial identity. It was not an analysis of people’s ideas in their own time, nor a process of change over time.
In Ghana, I traveled to Elmina for a wedding. A small seaside fishing village, Elmina was home to one of the largest Atlantic slave-trading depots in West Africa. The morning after the wedding, a small group of us met for breakfast at the hotel. As we waited for several members of our party to show up, a group of African Americans began trickling into the breakfast bar. By the time they all gathered, more than a dozen members of the same family—three generations deep—pulled together the restaurant’s tables to dine. Sitting on the table in front of one of the elders was a dog-eared copy of The 1619 Project.
Later that afternoon, my family and I toured Elmina Castle alongside several Ghanaians, a Dane, and a Jamaican family. Our guide gave a well-rehearsed tour geared toward African Americans. American influence was everywhere, from memorial plaques to wreaths and flowers left on the floors of the castle’s dungeons. Arguably, Elmina Castle is now as much an African American shrine as a Ghanaian archaeological or historical site. As I reflected on breakfast earlier that morning, I could only imagine the affirmation and bonding experienced by the large African American family—through the memorialization of ancestors lost to slavery at Elmina Castle, but also through the story of African American resilience, redemption, and the demand for reparations in The 1619 Project.
Yet as a historian of Africa and the African diaspora, I am troubled by the historical erasures and narrow politics that these narratives convey. Less than one percent of the Africans passing through Elmina arrived in North America. The vast majority went to Brazil and the Caribbean. Should the guide’s story differ for a tour with no African Americans? Likewise, would The 1619 Project tell a different history if it took into consideration that the shipboard kin of Jamestown’s “20. and odd” Africans also went to Mexico, Jamaica, and Bermuda? These are questions of historical interpretation, but present-day political ones follow: Do efforts to claim a usable African American past reify elements of American hegemony and exceptionalism such narratives aim to dismantle?
The Elmina tour guide claimed that “Ghanaians” sent their “servants” into chattel slavery unknowingly. The guide made no reference to warfare or Indigenous slavery, histories that interrupt assumptions of ancestral connection between modern-day Ghanaians and visitors from the diaspora. Similarly, the forthcoming film The Woman King seems to suggest that Dahomey’s female warriors and King Ghezo fought the European slave trade. In fact, they promoted it. Historically accurate rendering of Asante or Dahomean greed and enslavement apparently contradict modern-day political imperatives.
Hollywood need not adhere to historians’ methods any more than journalists or tour guides, but bad history yields bad politics. The erasure of slave-trading African empires in the name of political unity is uncomfortably like right-wing conservative attempts to erase slavery from school curricula in the United States, also in the name of unity. These interpretations are two sides of the same coin. If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.
This is not history; it is dilettantism.
Too many Americans have become accustomed to the idea of history as an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions, a trend that can be seen in recent US Supreme Court decisions. The word “history” appears 95 times in Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion overturning New York’s conceal-carry gun law. Likewise, Samuel Alito invokes “history” 67 times in his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Despite amicus briefs written by professional historians in both cases (including one co-authored by the AHA and the Organization of American Historians), the court’s majority deploys only those pieces of historical evidence that support their preconceived political biases.
The majority decisions are ahistorical. In the conceal-carry case, Justice Thomas cherry-picks historical data, casting aside restrictions in English common law as well as historical examples of limitations on gun rights in the United States to illustrate America’s so-called “tradition” of individual gun ownership rights. Then, Thomas uses this “historical” evidence to support his interpretation of the original meaning of the Second Amendment as it was written in 1791, including the right of individuals (not a “well regulated Militia”) to conceal and carry automatic pistols. In Dobbs v. Jackson, Justice Alito ignores legal precedents punishing abortion only after “quickening.” concluding: “An unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” This is not history; it is dilettantism.
In his dissent to NYSRPA v. Bruen, Justice Stephen Breyer disparagingly labels the majority’s approach “law office history.” He recognizes that historians engage in research methods and interpretive approaches incompatible with solving modern-day legal, political, or economic questions. As such, he argues that history should not be the primary measure for adjudicating contemporary legal issues.
Professional historians would do well to pay attention to Breyer’s admonition. The present has been creeping up on our discipline for a long time. Doing history with integrity requires us to interpret elements of the past not through the optics of the present but within the worlds of our historical actors. Historical questions often emanate out of present concerns, but the past interrupts, challenges, and contradicts the present in unpredictable ways. History is not a heuristic tool for the articulation of an ideal imagined future. Rather, it is a way to study the messy, uneven process of change over time. When we foreshorten or shape history to justify rather than inform contemporary political positions, we not only undermine the discipline but threaten its very integrity.
From the American Historical Association Perspectives on History, August 17, 2022