3/27/2023 0 Comments The struggle sessionThis 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. Sweet laid out the problem, which he said is transforming the profession of historian: The American Historical Association president argued that academic historians should focus simply on bringing to life the world of people in the past as it was and as they saw it, instead of framing every historical person or event through a modern “social justice” lens. The whole episode demonstrates how American and other Western institutions have been wholly radicalized in a short amount of time, squandering their reputations and authority. Shortly thereafter, Sweet was mobbed by those who clearly didn’t like his perspective, then issued what looked like a forced confession for his crime. Sweet’s column in the American Historical Association magazine, “Perspectives on History,” argued that “doing history with integrity requires us to interpret elements of the past not through the optics of the present but within the worlds of our historical actors.” Sweet, published an essay last week arguing that scholars should bar “presentism” from history. The president of the American Historical Association, James H. Arguing for keeping “presentism” out of history seems like a straightforward argument from an acknowledged history scholar, right?
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