No less important, the “traditional” fields of diplomatic and military history most often championed by the political right and the methodological conservatives suffer from exactly the same type of scholarly weaknesses as they accuse the non-traditional fields of having. Where an identitarian historian sniffs at archival research as the fetishization of documents, a diplomatic historian who had lunch at several archives in several countries now claims expertise in all. Where an identitarian historian began their academic journey as one of the ninety-two percent of undergraduate students in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale to get A’s, a military historian got their doctorate from a war/strategic studies degree mill. Where an identitarian historian seeks contemporary relevance by reducing the complexity of the past into a tale of white supremacy, a diplomatic historian seeks the same relevance by reading the past backwards through today’s foreign policy categories—and both twist the historical evidence to conform to their present-day agenda. I could go on. And if you think that diplomatic and military historians do not plagiarize, fake their footnotes, and wave their buddies’ lousy work through peer review, then I have an exciting time-share opportunity on a river in Egypt that I’d like to discuss with you.
In other words, as in the broader culture wars, each side of the history wars accuses the other of behavior of which it itself is guilty. Seeing themselves and encouraging others to see them as opposites distracts attention from what they share. Much as the MAGA right and the identitarian left betray a lack of commitment to liberal values, so the supposedly opposite methodological and ideological poles of the historical profession betray a lack of commitment to scholarly standards.
In the historical profession, as in a liberal democracy, there must be a single set of standards that applies against all comers. If historians’ left-wing ideological commitments lead to better scholarship than that produced by historians with right-wing views — as was the case with so much women’s, African-American, and working-class history in the 1950s and 1960s — then great. If historians’ right-wing commitments lead to better scholarship than that produced by historians with left-wing commitments, then great. Ideological commitments do not delegitimate scholarship, but they do not legitimate it either. Scholarship must stand or fall on its own, according to professional standards of originality and importance, evidence and argument, much as citizens are entitled to due process regardless of their political beliefs. If “woke” history does not meet those standards, then it is bad scholarship. If “traditional” history does not meet those standards, then it is bad scholarship.