AskHistorians has long recognized the political nature of our project. History is never written in isolation, and public history in particular must be aware of and engaged with current political concerns. This ethos has applied both to the operation of our forum and to our engagement with significant events.

Years of moderating the subreddit have demonstrated that calls for a historical methodology free of contemporary concerns achieve little more than silencing already marginalized narratives. Likewise, many of us on the mod team and panel of flairs do not have the privilege of separating our own personal work from weighty political issues.

Last week, Dr. James Sweet, president of the American Historical Association, published a column for the AHA’s newsmagazine Perspectives on History titled “Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present”. Sweet uses the column to address historians whom he believes have given into “the allure of political relevance” and now “foreshorten or shape history to justify rather than inform contemporary political positions.” The article quickly caught the attention of academics on social media, who have criticized it for dismissing the work of Black authors, for being ignorant of the current political situation, and for employing an uncritical notion of "presentism" itself. Sweet’s response two days later, now appended above the column, apologized for his “ham-fisted attempt at provocation” but drew further ire for only addressing the harm he didn’t intend to cause and not the ideas that caused that harm.

In response to this ongoing controversy, today’s Monday Methods is a space to provide some much-needed context for the complex historical questions Sweet provokes and discuss the implications of such a statement from the head of one of the field’s most significant organizations. We encourage questions, commentary, and discussion, keeping in mind that our rules on civility and informed responses still apply.

To start things off, we’ve invited some flaired users to share their thoughts and have compiled some answers that address the topics specifically raised in the column:

The 1619 Project

• /u/EdHistory101 and /u/MikeDash discuss the project in this thread, with links to more discussion within

• /u/Red_Galiray on Southern colonies’ fears of Britain ending slavery

African Involvement in the Slave Trade

• /u/LXT130J answers “To what extent were the Dahomey a tribe of slavers?”

• /u/commustar covers the treatment of slavery by African academics

• /u/swarthmoreburke in this thread and /u/halfacupoftea in this nuance what is meant by slavery in West Africa

• /u/q203 and /u/swarthmoreburke on African response to Back-to-Africa movements

Gun Laws in the United States

• /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment

• /u/uncovered-history discusses the phrase “well-regulated”

• /u/PartyMoses on the idea of a “militia” with additional follow-ups here

Objectivity and the Historical Method

• /u/Snapshot52 answers Is Research Value Neutral?

• /u/commiespaceinvader on Empathy as the Central Skill of Historians

• /u/crrpit and /u/erissays discuss objectivity in “recent” history

• /u/MikeDash on unbiased sources

• /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov additionally on unbiased sources as well as on the impact of terminology on historical perspectives