The Past Speaks

I would like to draw your attention to a great article in the TNR by historian John Summers about the politicization of historical research and teaching.

The article focuses on Staughton Lynd, a New Left historian who wrote explicitly politicized books about topics such as the American Revolution that were designed to create usable pasts for his own political causes, such as desegregation or opposition to the Vietnam War.

Lynd denounced the idea of detached, apolitical scholarship about the past as wrong, if not immoral. Some of the material in this article will be familiar to people who have read Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream: the American Historical Profession and the Objectivity Question. John Summers makes an interesting observation when he compares Lynd to the right-wing radicals who invoked the American Revolution for their own purposes.

I liked this bit:

“To compare Lynd’s attempt to revive the Continental Congress for the 1960s with today’s conservative revival of the Boston Tea Party is to scratch the surface of such ironies. From radical historians to the conservative faction on the Texas Board of Education and the Arizona government, everyone today wants their country back, by way of their own, “alternative” history. Eager to discover what the past can do for them, few seem as eager to know what it may demand of them.” This article is about the teaching of United States history in the United States, but the lessons can easily be applied to other countries.

Reactions to the piece can be found here, here, and here.