Most academic fields have succumbed to some degree to leftist demands that scholarship and teaching be reoriented toward its obsessions (race, power relations, equality, “marginalized” groups, etc.). One that has gone furthest is history, where “woke” considerations now pervade almost everywhere.
A good piece of evidence is the American Historical Review, and, in today’s Martin Center article, David Randall of the National Association of Scholars looks into its most recent issue to see what it foretells.
Randall writes, “To begin with, a transcript of American Historical Association president Jacqueline Jones’s recent conference address reviews similar speeches by previous AHA presidents. Her judgment repeats the self-satisfied conclusions of the new historians: that the old historians were narrow-minded white men who delighted to write about other white men (pp. 3, 7-8) and that the new history is ‘inclusive’ (p. 2) and thus superior. Jones’s ‘inclusive’ history dovetails with a perception of current events that aligns remarkably well with every talking point of the Democratic party (pp. 1, 24, 27-28) and with an unselfconscious embrace of radical advocacy. Her presidential address dedicates the historical profession to the political agenda of the new radical establishment.”
In short, she means to transform history. What will be covered in the future will be those things that support the “progressive” view that our past has been one of unmitigated misery, calling for radical change in the present.
Randall proceeds to briefly discuss the other articles in the issue. They’re all aligned with Jones’s view of what good history writing should do. All contain large amounts of leftist theory and speculation surrounding a scanty structure of facts.
Students thinking of going into history should beware — if they aren’t sufficiently “woke,” they’ll have a hard time in the new environment of history.
Randall concludes, “All told, the AHR is tendentious and trivial. It possesses some historical value, but it is a sad register of the decline of the American historical profession.”