The Right Side of History

I have friends who are regularly harassed by TPUSA students who write hate speech in protected course materials. I have a friend who is a Russianist who cannot do any more archival research because of the tense relationship between the US and Russia. Legislation in states like Florida explicitly targets History education both at the college level and in ordinary public school. As one of the final acts of the administration, Trump released the 1776 Project - an effort to remodel history education in the US around conservative propaganda, which had no actual historians involved in its production.

This piece is weird. It seems to set up a wild strawman that no criticism of The 1619 Project is warranted or that Sweet has somehow been made a pariah - but this isn't the case. There has been ample criticism from the academics that would be described by DeSantis as woke propagandists. Sweet's faux-pas AHA was criticized as tone-deaf - and it was. The concern with the piece was not criticism of the 1619 Project. Oodles of academics have criticized that. That's pretty much what academics do when they get together, they shit talk a lot of work.

Like, I really don't think the article is being honest about the actual thing that happened to Sweet. It seems to speak about everything he did other than the specific portions of the article that people were concerned about and instead cast the field as critical of the broader elements of his article that were utterly uncontroversial.

If you hold this belief, you have no defense against all the charlatans that wish to deceive you.

Facts do exist--even in the humanities. Part of the job of modern history is actually to unearth the evidence that both contradicts and exposes the lies that have been promulgated.

But who's to say which political 'side' will win? Who's to say it'll become 'better' from our point of view, rather than slide into authoritarianism and dictatorships? Feels like there's no guarantee either way...

While there's not always a "right" side, your stance on a position at that point in time can be deemed correct by future generations.