Not long ago I identified intellectual “silos” in the fields of climate science and economics. The term refers to scholars within an academic discipline who do not communicate with one another. When one segment of a discipline doesn’t even read the prominent works of another, the discipline suffers.
What about history? In this post I will argue that history does have silos but what is troubling is not silos, but schism, that is, a “split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief.”
First, silos. If you are studying the impact of the Anglican Church on England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 you may not have much in common with the professor researching the twelfth-century Anasazi in the American Southwest. Your intellectual coterie is likely to be composed of other professionals in your field (e.g., British history in one case, pre-Columbian American history in the other).
Yet history professors are bound together by an appreciation of history and the educational enterprise of imparting historical knowledge. Today’s emphasis on research has diminished the importance of teaching history broadly, so history (like other disciplines) has less coherence.
Yes, there are intellectual silos. But schism is worse.
Current-day politics have found a home in the history professoriate. Needless to say, that politics tends to be heavily biased toward the left.
History News Network
Each week I get an email from History News Network (HNN), a nonprofit organization that claims to “help put history in perspective.” It states: “Because we believe history is complicated our pages are open to people of all political persuasions. Left, right, center: all are welcome.”
HNN fails to live up to this claim of catholicity. For a while it did contain a libertarian blog (Liberty and Power) but that blog hasn’t been operational since 2018.
HNN’s weekly email has a “Roundup Top 10”—ten articles (mostly published elsewhere) worthy of historians’ attention. Let’s look at the Roundup issued on Sept. 15, 2021.
While nearly all ten have a leftist tilt, some are genuinely historical pieces, such as the discussion of Martin Luther King’s concern with police brutality or George Washington’s near-futile efforts to end partisanship in the early Republic. Yes, HNN publishes an occasional conservative post, but only rarely—in the Sept. 15 collection, a critique of the Afghanistan departure might fall into that category.
Most prominent is a fascination with the right wing. “The Conspiracy Theorists Are Coming for Your Schools” is one headline (originally from The Bulwark). Another, from the Washington Post: “A Key Legacy of 9/11? The Way Conspiracy Theories Spread Online.” Also from the Post ” “Politicians, not Migrants, are Fueling the Pandemic’s Resurgence.” (The original Post headline added: “Scapegoating Immigrants to Allow Business to Continue Unencumbered Is an Old Tactic.”)
A flamboyant attack on capitalism, “The Melting of the American Mind: Internet Pop Psychology and the Authoritarian Personality,” also conjures up the dangers of the right wing. It was written by an assistant professor at New York University, commenting on a book, The Authoritarian Personality, published in 1950,. The book “contains many pearls of wisdom for the observer of contemporary right-wing movements, with many chilling parallels to today.” The “chilling parallels“ include “the growth of monopoly and the disempowerment of the worker; the fueling of right-wing politics through fear, anxiety, and low tolerance for uncertainty; the authoritarian’s irrational hatred of labor and taxes. . . .”
Those examples are from one week’s Top Ten. Before leaving HNN, here’s my favorite quotation, from an article in the September 3, 2021, collection, written by a history professor at Dartmouth. She describes how bad things have become (apparently due to Donald Trump):
“This demented crypto-Christian phallus-worship is to Reagan-era family values what the Charlottesville tiki-torch brigade was to the Docksider-wearing Orange County Young Americans for Freedom of the 1980s. QAnon-fueled fantasies of white child rescue and the once-and-future king have drained any nuance from the ideology of white possession and domestic dominion.”
Got it?
American Historical Association
Then there is the American Historical Association (AHA). Robert Bradley, Jr., author of a two-volume history of the U. S. oil and natural gas, reprinted on his blog a solicitation letter from the AHA. The letter promoted the organization’s activism. Here is a paragraph:
“We’ve posted official objections to positions taken by the National Labor Relations Board and other federal agencies; registered widely publicized objections to historical claims and reports generated by commissions lacking appropriate historical qualifications; taken careful but firm positions on issues relating to monuments, the abuse of history in public policy contexts, and legislative efforts that substitute political mandates for the considered judgment of professional educators.”
One of those objections (“AHA Condemns Report of Advisory 1776 Commission”) took the form of a sarcastic attack on a report written by such individuals as Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College; Carol Swaim, retired professor at Vanderbilt; Victor Davis Hanson, historian at the Hoover Institution; and Charles Kesler, professor at Claremont McKenna College (people I respect). “The authors call for a form of government indoctrination of American students,” said the AHA, “and in the process elevate ignorance about the past to a civic virtue.” (The different ways the AHA responded to this commission and the New York Times’ 1619 Project would make an interesting study.)
The New History of Capitalism
I will close with a group of historians who represent the schism I’m talking about. They are the creators of the “New History of Capitalism” or NHC, This group of scholars coalesced after the crash of 2008, as the U.S. economy was reeling. Initially they sought ”to bring together some subfields of history to see capitalism from multiple angles using multiple methodologies,” as one of them, Stephen Mihm, said in an online discussion.
Quickly, though, the focus became the link between slavery and capitalism. “[T]his school has produced a sizable body of research contending that the institution of slavery was a central building block of American capitalism,” writes critic Philip W. Magness (that contention was also the main theme of the Times’ 1619 Project). This is the case even though the scholars themselves tout the fluidity of the definition of capitalism. “It is a blank screen onto which people from a wide range of fields project their interests and ambitions,” said Mihm.
I don’t think projecting one’s “interests and ambitions” is the goal of historical study, especially when the interests and ambitions are tilted in one direction. I think that most historians would share this skepticism. That is why I call this a schism, one that could have serious impact on the future of the discipline,. After all, some schisms have been remarkably successful.
Image of split American flag is by Delpixart for iStock.
The quote from the Dartmouth history professor was just too much and your comment it “Got it” was perfect. No, I didn’t on the first reading and didn’t attempt a second.