When Michael Bellesiles’s book “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” came out in 2000, it was widely praised as groundbreaking and a corrective to how Americans viewed the Second Amendment. Bellesiles’s career was launched to critical acclaim and was awarded the Bancroft Prize, the prestigious prize awarded for works on American history.
But soon, the prize was retracted and the historian’s career cratered after his work proved groundbreaking for the sole reason that it was based on falsified information.
This was a time when the history industry was far less politicized and far more respected. The fact that the Bancroft Prize, awarded by trustees of Columbia University, was rescinded is enough to note that the profession was then more about scholarship and less about politics. According to Phillip W. Magness, an economic historian, author, and director of research and education at the American Institute for Economic Research, the response to shoddy scholarship and politically motivated narratives in historical works would be very different now.
A Shift in Perspective
Magness points to the critically acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize-winning work of “The 1619 Project” as a prime example. The brainchild of The New York Times Magazine’s editor Nikole Hannah-Jones was an attempt to “reframe” the American founding as one built upon slavery rather than liberty. It came under attack from historians across the political spectrum, including from one of its own fact-checking historians. As Magness pointed out during an interview on “The Sons of History” podcast, the accolades continued to pour in, including the Pulitzer, while the multi-essay work was being heavily scrutinized.The economic historian, who wrote “The 1619 Project: A Critique,” pointed out how this shift from historical scholarship to political narratives over a 20-year period happened. Magness said that in the 1960s, the political disparity in the academic history industry was about 45 percent liberal with moderates and conservatives sharing the other 55 percent. He added that these numbers hardly changed into the 1990s, but in the early 2000s, the political leanings of history academics became more disparate with liberal professors accounting for anywhere between 80 to 90 percent of a given college’s history department.
“It creates an intellectual laziness among historians,” he said. “They no longer have to defend their positions with evidence or articulate their beliefs.”
Magness said there has been a shift away from rigorous fact-based scholarship and toward historical narratives that serve a political purpose. He said these narratives, which are merely polemics, utilize evidence to either prop up a political or social position to destroy an opposing narrative.
“The political goal drives everything, which means evidence is strictly a weapon,” he said.
A firestorm started last year when the president of the American Historical Association (AHA), James H. Sweet, went against the prevailing narrative. His AHA column “Is History History?” warned against the use of presentism and political motives in historical works. Magness stated that “it was a very reasonable and very mild column that called historians to task,” critiquing both the left and the right. But no sooner had the column been posted on Twitter by the association, than the Twitter mob attacked in seemingly coordinated fashion, condemning Sweet and his column, as well as demanding his resignation. In less than 24 hours, Sweet had issued an apology.
“I was surprised at how quickly the apology occurred,” Magness said. “It was like a Maoist struggle session apology letter. It was appalling to read.”
There were plenty who came out in defense of Sweet but also to condemn his apology letter, so much so that the AHA decided to suspend their own Twitter account till the storm passed. Sweet’s initial column remains, but it’s prefaced with his apology.
A Historical Silver Lining
With the success of “The 1619 Project,” the immediate condemnation of Sweet’s sensible column, and the instant arousal of the Twitter mob to defend politically motivated historical works from academia, Magness points to a silver lining.“When the general public sees commentary from historians who are supposed to be weighing in on the past as experts, they no longer trust them,” he said. “Tax dollars are used to sustain this entire system and it becomes a matter of public finance if the academic world is not actually delivering reliable information to the public. Suddenly the public may awaken and decide to turn off the tax spigot.”
Magness pointed out that the profession is already witnessing a decline in student participation. He stated that the academic discipline is imploding, while the interest in history has never had a higher demand.
“Of all the primary majors, history over the past 10 years has lost more students as a percentage than any other major, including English or poetry and other degrees that are not known for their job market. It’s unable to attract students anymore,” he said.
“The odd thing about that is that it is happening at the same time that public interest in the past has never been stronger. We have a continuous stream of historical books that are constantly on the bestseller lists. Popular history—not academic history—is continuously among the bestsellers. People plan entire vacations going to historical tourist sites. It’s a major part of the tourist economy. People are thirsty for information about the past.”
The contrast between academic history and popular history is worth noting, as it means that average Americans are becoming more self-reliant on discovering the facts of history and less reliant on blindly following academia. After the praise from historians and academia for “The 1619 Project” and the condemnation of Sweet’s column, Magness believes the AHA and academia have killed their reputation, a reputation that can only be restored by doing what it did with Bellesiles, which is to restore its integrity by revoking its embrace of polemics and returning to rigorous scholarship, regardless of the demands of the Twitter mob.
