BY JOHN K. WILSON
Mary Grabar, a fellow at the right-wing Alexander Hamilton Institute, has written an essay praising Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) for introducing the Saving American History Act of 2020, “a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts.” This is the right-wing version of “cancel culture,” except it adds government repression to the mix, making it far worse.
Grabar endorses censorship because she dismisses the idea that teachers are competent professionals who can be trusted to analyze complex concepts: “few teachers have the ability or the time to teach beyond the materials given to them.”
Grabar compares the 1619 Project to Howard Zinn, about whom she wrote a book called Debunking Howard Zinn because “Howard Zinn was bad–a communist, a corrupt teacher, a fraudulent historian, and an anti-American agitator.”
Like the 1619 Project, legislators have tried to ban Zinn from schools. Grabar complains that “When in 2017 Arkansas State representative Kim Hendren, introduced a bill to prohibit the use of Zinn’s book in state-funded classrooms,” the Zinn Education Project “framed the attempt as censorship.” Yes, how shocking, to describe legislation literally banning a book from public school as censorship.
I should note that Grabar, bafflingly, makes an offhand mention of me in her essay:
John K. Wilson, co-editor of the Academe blog and 2019-2020 fellow at the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, also argued for keeping the curriculum and using it in “’two book’ programs with conflicting ideas.” But I have my doubts about this author of President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire and Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies.
“I have my doubts”? This is the essence of an ad hominem argument. My idea is suspect because I am suspect, due to my thoughtcrimes of daring to criticize Donald Trump and defend academic freedom. But the point is clear: Grabar is unwilling to allow the 1619 Project to be taught anywhere, even when opposing ideas are included.
Grabar concludes her essay by reiterating her call to ban the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn from schools: “A curriculum as flawed as The 1619 Project should no more be allowed in the classroom than should a book that repeats the claims of a Holocaust denier or that calls slavery by something other than its rightful name.” Welcome to the world of right-wing political correctness, where the ideas you disagree with are suppressed, not debated.
I just read Graber’s opinion piece–it’s more simplistic and incoherent than I thought it might be, full of uncheckable insinuations and bait-and-switch trickery. As I understand it–and I last visited the project in 2019–the 1619 project is intended to write the histories of people typically left out of the Early American story. We all should be intellectually curious enough to open the focus wider and consider that there is more to the story of the founding of this country. The 1619 project reminds us that slavery was present in the first colonies in British-held North America 400 years ago. It reminds us that the earliest colonists traded in enslaved people. That is a fact. Why would anyone be so afraid to consider this aspect of American history that she gets mired in somehow justifying the transatlantic slave trade system by pointing out that other countries like Morocco were also using enslaved labor? (Why is “everyone else was doing it too” even part of her argument? How does that explain anything about why she thinks the 1619 project is bad history? The scope of the 1619 Project is not the history of the whole international slave trade, but the history of the colonial spaces that would become the United States.) Additionally, I can’t understand why she gets Howard Zinn mixed up into the commentary–or why his warm lovely face is used as the artwork illustrating her critique. Zinn wasn’t involved in the 1619 project, and furthermore he died 10 years ago! I’d surmise that it’s because she also once wrote something critiquing Zinn and wanted to use this opportunity to sell her old book?
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” — George Orwell, 1984 (published in 1949)
You have to separate, a bit, the messenger from the message. I couldn’t comment on all the innuendo and partisan objection to her. I can comment on the “1619” project, however, and her legislative support, and Senator Cotton’s concern: they are fundamentally sound. By sound I mean their correct perception over two problems: the introduction of an agenda-based, special-interest historicism as a systematic (rather than consultative) pedagogy platform; and two, the effective dismissal and replacement of texts and materials broadly considered by historians, to be of far higher fidelity and scholarship standards. Her letter and the Senator’s public service, isn’t an act of “canceling” anything except “junk” history; by junk history I mean an intellectual instrument offered to “buyers” (students, parents, teachers, school boards) that can’t compete on its own merits in historical scholarship, so is maneuvered through public relations and political patronage, and through federal and state purchasing architecture, and in part through the extortion and shaming routines that coincide with BLM. Moreover, from meaningful reports of outright professional rejection of the 1619 agenda by seasoned, professional historians at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Chicago, with no political axe to grind, one has to pause and focus on the actual integrity of this textbook project and why serious historians find it defective and manipulative, if not intellectually distorting to young adults. It appears by the weight of academic professional integrity against it, to be fraudulent. I don’t think framing the issue in such partisan ways, here in this post, is really getting at the heart of the matter.
Regards, ’96, The University of Chicago; ’84, The University of Texas at Austin
The fact that some historians criticize a controversial approach to history does not make it “junk history” or fraudulent or justify political bans, and I doubt those professional historians support these legislative bans (actually, someone should ask them). Historians have been criticizing history textbooks for ages; should those be banned, too? I think the worst kind of junk history is homogenized history crafted by politicians, committees, and bureaucrats. A long time ago, the idea of “academic freedom” applied to all teachers, not just those in college. We need to embrace academic freedom for K-12 teachers, and allow them to decide whether and how to incorporate the 1619 Project in their classes. The result will be far better than having history decided by pandering legislators.
John K. Wilson, it is obvious that you failed to understand the meaning of my article or did not read it. Your dismissal of me as “right wing” proves the point I make about you. If you read that article and my book, you will notice that I cite historians on the left who have made legitimate critiques of both Zinn’s book and The 1619 Project. As I predicted, your fallback is to accuse me of censorship while ignoring the reasons I give for keeping Zinn’s book out of the classroom: it is demonstrably false. In my book I painstaking show Zinn’s misquotations, misrepresentations, distortions of words (to their opposite), character assassination, and plagiarism. My over 900 end notes come from books written by historians of the left and right, and primary source material from the Library of Congress NAACP collection, the Alice Walker papers at Emory University, the SNCC papers at the MLK, Jr., research library in Atlanta, and the Howard Zinn papers at Tamiment Library. In the past, textbooks used in southern classrooms sugarcoated slavery, and I make the argument that they should not be used. By the same measure, books that present America as uniquely racist and built on slavery should not be used. Nor should books written by such Holocaust deniers as David Irving be used. If you read my book you will see that I review his libel trial and demonstrate that Zinn used the same strategies (with the addition of plagiarism). Furthermore, Zinn actually uses one of Irving’s books to make a central claim about World War II, thus perpetuating the lies of a Holocaust-denying historian. Would you defend the use of this book in a classroom?
Sincerely,
Mary Grabar (that is the correct spelling)
Dr. Grabar (my apologies for my spelling error), I absolutely would defend the use of Zinn’s book (and the 1619 Project) in a classroom. The fact that a book may be imperfect and has critics is not a sufficient argument against it. And even if I thought a book should not be used in a classroom, I would strongly oppose politicians banning its use. Educators, not legislators, should judge books.
John K. Wilson, Once again, you are ignoring my statements. If you would deign to look at my evidence, you might change your mind. Zinn’s book is not “imperfect.” I present case after case where he distorts the evidence. There are errors and DELIBERATE FALSEHOODS on just about every page. This is all DELIBERATE. Had one of my freshmen in college even done a fraction of the plagiarizing that Zinn does that student would have faced severe penalties or been expelled.
I have enough documented evidence to prove my points and my book has been reviewed by some of the most highly accomplished historians in the country. The points in the 1619 Project similarly have been been shown to be false and not just by “right-wingers,” as you so disparagingly refer to those who don’t vote the way you do. Academics, especially those associated with this organization (AAUP) have failed to perform their duties. In fact, as I reveal in my book, the AAUP was defending Zinn against his boss, a black man, whom Zinn likened to a plantation overseer for simply insisting that Zinn do his job (and not turn students against the black administration). Zinn was rightfully fired for “insubordination.” He also had a “morals charge” hanging over his head because of his behavior with his students. And the AAUP shamefully defended the use of Zinn’s book when Mitch Daniels tried to keep it out of Indiana schools. Please know that when you defend the use of Zinn’s book you are defending a book that uses as a source a Holocaust denier, plagiarizes, and willfully distorts sources.
You demonstrate the need for legislators to come in and keep the disinformation out of classrooms.
I stand by my belief that we should never endorse having politicians force books to be banned. Never. Ever. So when you say, “but this book is bad,” my answer is that you are free to persuade educators to reject it, but we must not support book banning by law. Never. Ever.
You seem to argue that professors should be fired for insubordination if they criticize a black administrator. I vehemently disagree, and I suspect you would disagree as well if anyone other than Zinn was fired for that reason.
I haven’t read your book, and I’m not a Zinn fan who wants to defend his work. But I think it’s noteworthy that you argue here that Zinn should be banned because you claim he wrote deliberate falsehoods, plagiarized work, and cited a scholar who later became a Holocaust denier. None of those accusations apply to the 1619 Project, which you nevertheless claim must also be banned by legislators. For that reason, I think describing you as a right-wing advocate of censorship seems completely accurate. Perhaps you think that demonstrates the need for legislators to ban me and all disapproved ideas from classrooms in order to protect students from disinformation, but I think we have much more to fear from the people who ban books than from allegedly bad ideas in books.
Wow. I think I will go back to my study of the sophists. You exemplify them quite nicely. I said Zinn was fired for insubordination because he did not teach. He agitated the students, encouraging them to defy the administration. You misrepresent what I say, engage in name-calling, misrepresent David Irving, misrepresent Zinn, present yourself as the advocate of free speech. No wonder the AAUP has you blogging here. No wonder they defend Zinn to the death. You are a bankrupt organization. How many historians (including socialists) have to tell you that The 1619 Project is inherently false?
We can’t persuade educators because there are too many like you who have taken control, who use ad hominem arguments, who falsify evidence, who refuse to seriously look at another perspective unless it agrees with their far-left political positions. .
Zinn talks about his book and the need for it as a counter to how bad standard textbooks were then (and still are now–however, they are getting better). When you say his book is bad and leaves things out or misrepresents…well, have you not seen what books most schools use. See the Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen…or just pick up any standard history textbook for k-12. I think all that you are saying can also be said for those books that get things wrong constantly. Do we ban those books?
Jon, first read my book. Then we’ll talk.
The “1619” project is not being presented to the school system by a distributor, as an academic scholarship product; it is instead a political program. If it sought to compete with dozens of other texts, and hundreds of other sources, that is one thing. But since when does a “textbook” come with such a full-scale political armada and multi-million dollar lobbying campaign?
Senator Cotton is quite correct as a public servant, to seek legislative remedy, as the 1619 program leaves no choice, as it is precisely being advanced through political and institutional channels. And not merely as an ‘alternative” text source through textbook channels, but as the primary authoritative source–one that explicitly displaces other history texts in a formal, policy-prescribed manner. It comes loaded with identitarian coercion that few teachers would even question–it is considered politically radioactive and to challenge it, a career killer. It is otherwise the textbook equivalent of tearing down a statue by force, and replacing with another by fiat.
Moreover, if as even-tempered and respected a historian as emeritus professor Gordon Wood, Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize award-winning US history scholar at Brown University–and joined by dozens of professional scholars of every political and racial affiliation–utterly rejects ‘1619,’ then one must pause, and ask some difficult questions. Apparently Senator Cotton, and Ms. Grabar, are.
Regards, ’96, UChicago