I thought of you immediately upon hearing of Prof. Donald’s passing and am happy to have had a chance to read your reflection. I can almost feel like I knew him. Thank you.

Amy Sheon

I missed your speech at the OAH conference, but I am glad that he was republished here.

You make many insightful points, especially about prevailing practices/ideologies in the academy. The push for instant answers—as you rightly point out—is (or at least ought to be) completely antithetical to the modus operandi of the historian. And there is, as you note, no more obvious example than the rush to declare George W. Bush the worst president in American history, while that presidency was still in motion. (I wrote a fair amount about this myself here on HNN.)

I also applaud your point about “Zinn history,” i.e., historians using history as ammo for their own political causes.

And again, you are absolutely right about opposing all those “historians for candidate X” groups that pop up so regularly during elections—and right to point out that our opposition to this foolishness is not because we don’t like candidate X but prefer candidate Y.

And finally, I think this observation of yours states an important truth about academic history, a truth we have yet to come to terms with: “Moreover, in the last generation, we as historians have become so skilled at explaining America’s shortcomings, we have too often forgotten that our job is also to explain America’s many successes – without idealizing, but also without always criticizing.”

All in all, a super job.