Next to the study of literature, the discipline of history has
suffered most from the depredations of multiculturalism, political
correctness, and all the unlovely epistemological cesspits that
congregate under the rubric of “postmodernism.” Even the idea of
empirical truth—an idea without which the discipline of history is
impossible—has been widely and variously attacked, as the
Australian historian Keith Windschuttle shows
brilliantly in The Killing of
History (Free Press). We were heartened, therefore, when we
heard that a group of distinguished historians, including Donald
Kagan, Eugene Genovese, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Forrest McDonald, and
Alan C. Kors, had decided to form the Historical Society,
a new academic group “open to all who want to do serious history.”
Currently, the profession of history in this country is dominated by
the American Historical Society, an increasingly ideological
organization that stands in relation to the discipline of history as the Modern
Language Association stands to the discipline of literature: namely,
as a bastion of PC orthodoxy and radical sentiment. If the
Historical Society can successfully challenge such orthodoxies,
it will have made an immense contribution to American intellectual
life. The distinction of many of its charter members gives us hope.
Nevertheless a caveat is in order. Reform does not come without
struggle, and struggle inevitably involves controversy. In the press
release announcing the formation of the Historical Society, we were
dismayed to read that its members “have no interest in endless
controversies and ‘culture wars.’” The “culture wars,” alas, are a
given of American intellectual life in the 1990s: any
organization hoping to fight for truth will have to engage
in them. To pretend otherwise—to pretend that the battle is taking
place elsewhere or can be successfully ignored—is a guarantee
of impotence. Today, the decision “to do serious
history” involves a decision to stand up publicly for the truth.