THE CONTINUING INTELLECTUAL WRECKAGE THAT IS PRESENTISM.

I still remember a refrain from seventh-grade social studies (which was an amalgam of civics and history) about the error of judging past practices by our standards.  That was an intellectual failure then, and it's an intellectual failure now.

Apparently, though, even the president of the American Historical Association can't remind his colleagues that it is an intellectual failure without getting hollered at.  His essay originally opened with what seemed like a sensible observation.

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.

It doesn't produce positive academic results either, saying you're a history major means you're qualified to hold forth on potted social science, with little or no understanding of statistical inference or what constitutes a solid chain of causation. But I digress.

Within moments of his column appearing online, all hell broke loose on Twitter.

Incensed at even the mildest suggestion that politicization is undermining the integrity of historical scholarship, the activist wing of the history profession showed up on the AHA’s thread and began demanding Sweet’s cancellation.

I had no idea that social media was where peer review took place. Yes, there is, allegedly, something called "academic Twitter" which is a good place to mock people and watch them leave you alone after you mock them enough.  Apparently, though,a few sissies with blue checks can have the same force as a few Red Guards with guns and dunce caps.

In this branch of academia, it does not matter whether the 1619 Project was truthful or factually accurate. The only concerns are whether its narrative can be weaponized for a political cause or used to deflect scrutiny of the same. As is often the case in the pseudo-moralizing political crusades of academia, the loudest demands against Sweet also came from the least-productive academics – historians with thin CVs and little in the way of original scholarly research to their names, although they do maintain 24/7 Twitter feeds of progressive political commentary.

Thus, when you follow the link to Professor Sweet's column, it now opens with an Act of Contrition constructive self-criticism.

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.

Who is the bigger chickenshit, the professor, or the unnamed colleagues who lack the intellectual chops to respond to the "provocation." It's the general chickenshittery that is wrecking higher education, not provocative essays.

Note that [Lora] Burnett and the other detractors never bothered to explain how Sweet’s argument was flawed or unsupported. Nor did they attempt to pen a rebuttal, which could have produced a constructive dialogue about the role of political activism in shaping historical scholarship. It was sufficient to denounce him as guilty for holding the wrong opinions. No matter the apology that Sweet made, the campaign to eject him from the history profession’s markedly impolite company would continue.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world began to take notice of the bizarre spectacle playing out at the main professional organization for a major academic discipline. As criticisms mounted on the AHA’s twitter feed, the organization moved to shut down debate entirely. They locked their twitter account, and posted a message to members denouncing the public blowback as the product of “trolls” and “bad faith actors.”

Indeed, we have noticed.

In sum: It’s wrong to criticize left-wing journalists writing about history if you know that criticism could be used by the right to discredit those efforts. There are no enemies on the left, regardless of what they say. Jonah Goldberg had a good response to this. Why not criticize the 1619 Project for being strident and shoddy instead of criticizing critics for pointing out it’s strident and shoddy?

We're laughing at them. "How do you tell the difference between 'trolls' and the tenured faculty members of most university history departments? And how pathetic are you as a supposedly premier academic organization that you have to 'protect' your Twitter feed?"

The explanation, as set out in the online house organ for all wokeness, all the time, illustrates just how pathetic the association is.

Soon the AHA’s Twitter thread was attracting comments from those outside the field—including one from ["white nationalist" Richard] Spencer, which said, “I just read this man’s offending column; it was reasonable in the extreme. Apparently, being a Rankean historian causes ‘harm’ and ‘pain.’ It’s ridiculous.”

The AHA then restricted public access to its Twitter feed, saying in a post that “A conversation about history has been invaded by trolls uninterested in civil discourse in last 12 hrs. This is appalling. Therefore conversation is temporarily limited to our community. AHA condemns all harassment of members of our community & others who replied in good faith.”

One. Critical. Tweet. Chickenshits. "Academic history is now worse than a waste of time nearly everywhere."