The College Fix

A sign of ‘academic darkness,’ ‘moral idiocy of Woke Culture in America,’ scholars respond

A proposal by some academics to stop using the term “early America” due to “settler colonial” privilege is facing pushback from other historians.

In a critical forum published by the William and Mary Quarterly, 14 scholars “examine[d] and challenge[d] the existing periodization of the field of early American history.” They argued the term “early America” privileges a “settler colonial project masquerading as a postcolonial polity.”

But Jay Bergman, an American history professor at Central Connecticut State University, described the ideas expressed in the forum as “abysmal ignorance.”

“Even the most obscure intimation that the United States is a ‘settler-colonial project’ reveals abysmal ignorance,” Bergman told The College Fix in a recent email interview. “The United States, for all its fallings, remains what it has always been – the freest, most tolerant and most humane country in the world.”

He said the “collective character assassination” taking place only emphasizes the “moral idiocy of Woke Culture in America today.”

In the introduction to the forum, University of Kentucky Professor Vanessa Holden and Columbia University Professor Michael Witgen wrote about the histories of Indigenous peoples and slaves in relation to the timeline of “early America.”

“It is past time therefore for us to talk about the end of early America,” they wrote.

“… questions about ongoing colonial relations, imperiled and reasserted sovereignties, slavery’s expansion, and the fraught quest for freedom impel scholars and members of descendant communities to put early America’s processes and experiences into a larger chronological arc,” they wrote.

Holden and Witgen noted that the “alleged end date” for “early America” gets blurred, especially when considering other fields of study connected to the time.

“Our colleagues in other thematic subfields — politics, gender, sexuality, economics, religion, environment, health, and on and on — find themselves engaged in parallel conversations within U.S. history, and … struggle with an end date for ‘early America’ that assumes the United States as the point of reference,” Holden and Witgen wrote.

MORE: Boston U. to offer ‘Medieval Trans Studies’ class

When The Fix contacted Holden and Witgen by email over the past two weeks to ask about the forum, it received automated out-of-office responses from both. Neither responded to The Fix‘s questions about their proposal or the criticism of it.

Editors of William and Mary Quarterly also did not respond to two emailed requests for comment over the past three weeks, asking if they plan to stop using the term “early America” and how they would respond to historians who oppose the proposal.

One of the opponents, Brown University Professor Gordon Wood brought up the forum in a recent column at the Wall Street Journal, noting that it appeared in “the leading journal in early American history.”

Wood, an American historian, described the proposal as part of a “tide of academic darkness.”

Scholars in the forum argued “the colonies’ break from Britain did not end colonialism in America, since the dispossession of the lands of Native Americans blatantly persisted,” Wood wrote. “Consequently, the forum called for ‘an end to privileging U.S. independence from Britain’ in our history-writing.”

Historian Mary Grabar agreed with these sentiments, telling The Fix, “The recent call in The William and Mary Quarterly to dispense with the designation of ‘early America’ is just the latest of attempts by historians in the last five decades to delegitimize the United States as a nation.”

Grabar is the author of “Debunking The 1619 Project,” a book that refutes the claim America was founded on slavery and oppression, not freedom and independence.

In a recent email interview with The Fix, Grabar compared the historians’ argument to the writings and sentiments of Howard Zinn and William Z. Foster. These men were Communist authors who sought to villainize the history of the United States to fit their own beliefs, she said.

“Eliminating the chronological perspective eliminates the idea of a discreet nation, one that has a beginning and remains to this day. This has been the project of the Marxists, going back to the Communist Manifesto,” Grabar said.

MORE: Erasing history: American leaders’ names, artifacts removed from campuses

IMAGE: Mark Carrel/Shutterstock

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter