In their "Open
Letter to the American People,"released
last week, a group called "Historians Against Trump" declared that "the
lessons of history compel us to speak out against [Donald] Trump." Their
motives, they insisted, were not partisan in the least, but rather they were
simply a collection of schools, teachers, public historians, and graduate
students united by their common conviction "that the candidacy of Donald J.
Trump poses a threat to American democracy." There followed an indictment whose
list of particulars gave no hint of academic expertise but could have been
assembled by anyone who owns a television or computer, much less reads a
newspaper now and then. Yet the statement suggested that a well-defined
professional skill set left its historian-signatories well equipped to topple
the Trump campaign and build "an inclusive civil society in its place.
As is frequently the case with
letters or other statements drafted by a committee whose members are passionate
about the rightness and importance of their cause, this one occasionally waxed
a bit grandiose in some of its language and imagery. In this and the exposure it received, the
historians' impassioned missive amounted a big, fat, hanging curveball tossed
squarely in the wheelhouse of none other than the switch-hitting,
language-bending, career-contrarian critic of practically everything, Stanley
Fish. Once tagged,
ironically enough, as "the Donald Trump of American academia," in his early incarnation
as a literary theorist and campus wheeler-dealer, this "brash, noisy entrepreneur of the
intellect," seemed to stoke much the same public outrage against the
Academy that the shape-shifting Fish now undertakes to exploit himself,
courtesy of the bully platform afforded him by The New York Times.
At any rate, the historians' "open
letter" afforded an irresistible
opportunity for Fish to do precisely what he loves best, i.e., play word
games, preferably, as in this case, with unsuspecting adversaries. For example, mocking the writers' insistence that "as
historians, we consider diverse viewpoints while acknowledging our own limitations
and subjectivity," he found "very little acknowledgment of limitations and
subjectivity" in their apparent conflation of "political opinions" with "indisputable,
impartially arrived at truths," as in: "Donald Trump's presidential campaign is
a campaign of violence: violence against individuals and groups; against memory
and accountability; against historical analysis and fact." "How's that," Fish asked, "for cool, temperate and
disinterested analysis?"
Possibly a bit juiced by his merciless flaying
of yet another offending text, Fish went on to boldly declare that historians "are
wrong to insert themselves into the political process under the banner of
academic expertise." He may have barely worked up a sweat in puncturing the
presumptuous rhetoric of writers whose zeal may have occasionally run roughshod over their
discretion, but he was not exactly free from presumption himself when he lectured
the parties to the document on the actual nature of their job, which is, to wit:
"To teach students how to handle archival materials, how to distinguish
between likeable and unreliable evidence, how to build a persuasive account of
a disputed event, in short, how to perform as historians, not as seers or
gurus."
Not
surprisingly, like many academics, some historians have taken none too kindly
to being told where "their competence lies" or having the parameters of their
discipline defined by someone who is neither a fellow practitioner nor much of
a fan of parameters himself. Taken at face value, this little interdisciplinary
dustup might seem at first glance like little more than simply another tempest
in the faculty lounge teapot, and a largely contrived one at that. I no more
believe that the overwhelming majority of the people who signed on with "Historians
Against Trump" really meant to suggest that their academic credentials entitle
them to speak more authoritatively on current affairs than others--nor do I
believe that Stanley Fish actually believes it either--than I believe that
either Fish or anyone else can make a legitimate argument that those
credentials should inhibit such activity.
Even if, as I suspect, this
latter suggestion was offered largely as a deliberate provocation, it requires
at least something of a response because, regardless of the trappings in which
it might be delivered, we have never been in more urgent need of historically
informed social and political commentary than we are right now.
Though they are certain to face
accusations of favoritism from one side or the other if not both, historians who
venture into these waters incur no obligation to the candidates themselves. If
they have done their dead-level best to offer their readers a balanced,
detached view of relevant historical phenomena from which they may reach their
own conclusions, scholars are not party to partisanship simply because the
implications of their work prove more favorable to one aspirant than the other.
The matter of what parts of the past are deemed relevant will inevitably be
shaped in large part by the candidates' positions on the most salient issues of
the campaign, although the obvious concerns that go largely unaddressed in the
partisan sphere are still fair game in the historical arena. For example, the
effects of the high tariff policies of the 1920s in fostering and exacerbating
economic distress at home and abroad clearly deserve attention in light of Donald
Trump's apparent disposition to protectionism in some form and circumstances.
On the other hand, however, there is the equally critical issue of already
enormous and still widening gaps in wealth and income that were generally blown
off by the Republican administrations of the pre-Depression era and, though
they loom equally portentous today, still seem closer to the margins of the
current campaign than the core.
Clearly, candidates who embrace
what are perceived to be extreme positions are inviting the most expansive
examination of their historical antecedents, and this year's GOP nominee is no
exception. Flipping through the pages of
American history, it is pretty hard to find much of an upside to recurrent
appeals to xenophobia, which have never ended other than badly, either for the
demonized immigrants themselves or for the nation as a whole. When it comes to
the politics of fear and guilt by association and innuendo, Donald Trump may
still be a dive or two shy of plumbing the depths reached by red-baiting
Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, but it is hard to imagine McCarthy
resisting a knowing wink at Trump's suggestion of a link between Sen. Ted Cruz's
father and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Trump's
unfiltered addiction to the spotlight virtually mandates a search for his
personal and policy precursors. This does not mean, however, that Hillary
Clinton, who has, for obvious reasons, sought aggressively to minimize the
exposure of her past, has earned any reprieve from the historical third-degree.
Clinton, for example, has been more circumspect in her attitude toward recent
controversial free-trade agreements like TPP, but like her husband, she should
forever bear the yoke of the hideous NAFTA treaty, which ruined the lives of
thousands of U.S. textile and apparel workers, devastated their communities, and
left them crippled in their efforts to recover. Though Clinton has tried to
distance herself from NAFTA, President Obama was on the mark back when he
quipped that she said "great things about NAFTA until she started running
for president." It is also worth noting
that Hillary's email fiasco is hardly the first manifestation of an obsession
with secrecy and a desire to use it for political protection and
aggrandizement. If you don't find this a troubling inclination for a
presidential candidate, then you're either too old or too young to remember
Watergate and the national trauma it inflicted.
Anyone cognizant of historical
processes and the critical importance of the discrete contexts in which
particular events and trends have played out also understands that such
comparisons and analogies should be advanced as cautiously by scholars as they
are received by readers. Proceeding cautiously, however, is not the same as
proceeding timidly, and in this case, it is eminently preferable to not
proceeding at all. Stanley Fish and
others may well be content to give the last word to the old duffer in the New
Yorker cartoon who allows that while "Those who do not study history are
doomed to repeat it. . . .Those who do study history are doomed to stand
by helplessly while everyone else repeats it." I trust, however, that the great
majority of my colleagues will agree
that no one who is possessed of a genuine historical consciousness is by any
means "helpless," much less "doomed"--or perhaps even entitled--to simply "stand
by" and allow whatever lessons the past affords to go not just unheeded, but
unheard.
(This piece also appears on The History News Network, albeit under a less forthright and somewhat unrepresentative title.)
