One of my early critiques of the anti-1619 literature from the older generation of tenured historians wasn't that the 1619 Project is sacrosanct -- it very clearly isn't -- but the tone and stridency of their critiques was very clearly going to be weaponized by the right.
Conversation
And the same is very much true of Sweet's essay, which is now being seized upon by such diverse figures as Ph*l M*gn*ss and R*ch*rd Sp*nc*r as brave truth-telling shouted down by the legions of woke historians.
In short, a cudgel to delegitimize the discipline.
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And all of this is very much predictable!
What I find so incredibly frustrating is that there's a particular subset of tenured historians who seem willfully blind to the predictable political consequences of their public interventions.
This is why the Sweet blog post, in particular, was so bad.
Because he's not just another tenured historian. He's the president of the American Historical Association!
In a meaningful way he represents *us* as a discipline.
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Quite frankly, you shouldn't be the president of a major scholarly association if you don't understand the inherent political implications of your public statements and their likely consequences.
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Let me translate this for the non-credentialed rubes infesting the fruited plains....Academics are upset that a historian attempting to be accurate is blind to the political problems his attempt at fidelity to history will cause.
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Why do you think the political consequences of their academic statements are important? Bad actors seize on the closest weapon at hand. Academics have responsibilities to accuracy, not politics.
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A historians job is to try to arrive at an accurate account of the past using evidence. Political consequences fall outside the purview of their duties.
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