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I'm pretty much on this guy's side here. When historians qua historians comment on contemporary politics, they're spending credibility accrued not only by thems

I'm pretty much on this guy's side here. When historians qua historians comment on contemporary politics, they're spending credibility accrued not only by themselves, but by other historians. It's not just bad for the field, it's almost certainly bad for everybody.

UncleMeat 4y ago
Historians are not just observers. They are themselves the target of political action. I'm married to a history professor and therefore an unusual number of my friends are history professors. I have friends who are regularly harassed by TPUSA students who write hate speech in protected course materials. I have a friend who is a Russianist who cannot do any more archival research because of the tense relationship between the US and Russia. Legislation in states like Florida explicitly targets History education both at the college level and in ordinary public school. As one of the final acts of the administration, Trump released the 1776 Project - an effort to remodel history education in the US around conservative propaganda, which had no actual historians involved in its production. This piece is weird. It seems to set up a wild strawman that no criticism of The 1619 Project is warranted or that Sweet has somehow been made a pariah - but this isn't the case. There has been ample criticism from the academics that would be described by DeSantis as woke propagandists. Sweet's faux-pas AHA was criticized as tone-deaf - and it was. The concern with the piece was not criticism of the 1619 Project. Oodles of academics have criticized that. That's pretty much what academics do when they get together, they shit talk a lot of work. Like, I really don't think the article is being honest about the actual thing that happened to Sweet. It seems to speak about everything he did other than the specific portions of the article that people were concerned about and instead cast the field as critical of the broader elements of his article that were utterly uncontroversial.
- throwawayacc5 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Again, criticizing racial activism is not what historians were upset about here.
    - throwawayacc5 4y ago
      Again, criticising racial activism is exactly what historians were upset about here. More specifically, Sweet was openly asking historians to pump the brakes on the performative wokeism that's taken ahold across almost all of academia. He didn't want to see history desecrated and sacrificed to the religion of wokeism; he wanted fellow historians to put their religion aside and be objective. Instead of heeding his advice he was called a heretic and nearly excommunicated. My OP in this thread: >Sweet's faux-pas AHA was criticized as tone-deaf - and it was No it absolutely wasn't. It was a refreshing call to reason in the deluge of delusional nonsense that followed the BLM "summer of love" moral panic. Tone policing is regularly weaponized by those looking to preserve a narrative. "We can't have facts/logic/reason get in the way! What you're saying is tone deaf to our righteous crusade!"

UncleMeat 4y ago

Historians are not just observers. They are themselves the target of political action. I'm married to a history professor and therefore an unusual number of my friends are history professors. I have friends who are regularly harassed by TPUSA students who write hate speech in protected course materials. I have a friend who is a Russianist who cannot do any more archival research because of the tense relationship between the US and Russia. Legislation in states like Florida explicitly targets History education both at the college level and in ordinary public school. As one of the final acts of the administration, Trump released the 1776 Project - an effort to remodel history education in the US around conservative propaganda, which had no actual historians involved in its production. This piece is weird. It seems to set up a wild strawman that no criticism of The 1619 Project is warranted or that Sweet has somehow been made a pariah - but this isn't the case. There has been ample criticism from the academics that would be described by DeSantis as woke propagandists. Sweet's faux-pas AHA was criticized as tone-deaf - and it was. The concern with the piece was not criticism of the 1619 Project. Oodles of academics have criticized that. That's pretty much what academics do when they get together, they shit talk a lot of work. Like, I really don't think the article is being honest about the actual thing that happened to Sweet. It seems to speak about everything he did other than the specific portions of the article that people were concerned about and instead cast the field as critical of the broader elements of his article that were utterly uncontroversial.

throwawayacc5 4y ago
[flagged]
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Again, criticizing racial activism is not what historians were upset about here.
  - throwawayacc5 4y ago
    Again, criticising racial activism is exactly what historians were upset about here. More specifically, Sweet was openly asking historians to pump the brakes on the performative wokeism that's taken ahold across almost all of academia. He didn't want to see history desecrated and sacrificed to the religion of wokeism; he wanted fellow historians to put their religion aside and be objective. Instead of heeding his advice he was called a heretic and nearly excommunicated. My OP in this thread: >Sweet's faux-pas AHA was criticized as tone-deaf - and it was No it absolutely wasn't. It was a refreshing call to reason in the deluge of delusional nonsense that followed the BLM "summer of love" moral panic. Tone policing is regularly weaponized by those looking to preserve a narrative. "We can't have facts/logic/reason get in the way! What you're saying is tone deaf to our righteous crusade!"