To the Editor:
Here they go again, and it’s getting tiresome: politically motivated attacks on the American Historical Association and its counterparts in other disciplines for policies, practices, rhetoric that bear little (if any) semblance to reality. In August, it was the American Enterprise Institute, which claimed that the AHA and other scholarly associations have “traded their scholarly mission for a political one.” The accusation wasn’t even that we had added politics to our portfolio of activities, but that we had “traded” — i.e., replaced — our scholarly mission and work with “politics.” The quantitative implications regarding our work were clear, as we were included as among those scholarly associations that “operate more like political entities than scholarly ones.” Tellingly, as I explained in Perspectives on History, none of the evidence in the AEI report was drawn from the work of the AHA. That is hardly surprising: Neither they nor anyone else can credibly claim that “more” of the AHA’s work relates to politics than to scholarship and teaching in history.
And now we’re seeing it again, this time in a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Mark Bauerlein and Scott Yenor (“Professors Ruined Gen Ed. Florida is Fixing It.” The Chronicle Review, December 16). Their brief regards a battle over general education in Florida. Apparently, the AHA is part of some kind of higher education establishment that opposes general education; the evidence is our endorsement of a statement by the American Council of Learned Societies that denounces blatant political interference in public higher education Florida.
Like AEI, Bauerlein and Yenor make assumptions without doing their homework. I challenge them to find a statement of AHA policy that opposes general education. One of the opening sessions at our upcoming annual meeting focuses specifically on general education. We are completing a major initiative on gen ed, which has culminated in both a publication and continued efforts to help our members think about the role of history and historical thinking in general education. The idea that the AHA is hostile to either the principle or practice of general education has no basis whatsoever in reality.
But evidence and reality are not what matters here. Like the American Enterprise Institute, Bauerlein and Yenor seem unconcerned with the inconvenience of evidence when they want to hurl accusations. “The MLA, AHA, and other professional associations have commended dissent while endorsing such expressions of orthodoxy as diversity statements,” they state. Just as I was unaware of the “trade” that the AEI alleged we had made, I am also unaware that the AHA has issued a position on diversity statements. Both the AHA and I personally have often articulated vigorous support for diversity of all kinds in all manner of contexts. But to support diversity is not the same as endorsing “diversity statements” as an aspect of hiring or promotion procedures.
Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is their observation that “systemic corruption can spread inside a scholarly guild, and that the very people charged with upholding professional norms flout or distort them, doing so under the guise of progress.” I recognize that “can spread” constitutes accusation by implication rather than a direct claim. But again, I issue that challenge: Show me evidence of corruption in the American Historical Association. Show me where and how the AHA has flouted or distorted “professional norms,” under whatever guise.
The “professional norms” of the history discipline are articulated in the AHA’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct. These norms include the expectation that “historians should practice their craft with integrity. They should honor the historical record. They should document their sources.” Bauerlein and Yenor would do well to adhere to these standards.
As I noted in my column on the AEI, at the American Historical Association we don’t merely assume; we do our research before we speak. We work, and speak, as historians fulfilling the mandate from our Congressional charter: “the promotion of historical studies.” That includes general education.
James Grossman
Executive Director
American Historical Association
