Matters of ethics in the telling of history

Past Imperfect

Facts, Fictions, Fraud -- American History From Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin

Peter Charles Hoffer

PublicAffairs: 288 pp., $26

Historians in Trouble

Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower

Jon Wiener

The New Press: 260 pp., $24.95

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A handful of prominent U.S. historians have found themselves on the hot seat in recent years. Stephen Ambrose, historian of the Lewis and Clark expedition and World War II, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, were found to have committed plagiarism in some of their writings.

Michael Bellesiles grossly overstated his claims that Revolutionary War-era Americans did not own guns on a wide scale. Joseph J. Ellis, author of numerous books on the founding fathers, falsely told his Mount Holyoke College students that he served with the Army in Vietnam and had been a civil rights worker in the South.

Two timely books address different aspects of these high-profile cases and the nature of history telling today. University of Georgia history professor Peter Charles Hoffer, a member of the American Historical Assn.’s professional division since 2002, argues that the organization should better enforce its standards. UC Irvine historian Jon Wiener, a contributing editor to the Nation, contends that in the current political climate, conservatives have had more success than liberals in influencing contemporary historians’ view of the past.

Indeed, arguments about the uses and abuses of history are grounded in the well-known dictum that those who control the stories about the past are the more powerfully equipped to direct the destinies of the present.

In “Past Imperfect,” Hoffer presents the more thorough look at the progress of U.S. historiography, from the post-Revolution celebratory narratives to the ultranationalism of the late 19th century to the rise of Charles and Mary Beard and the other Progressive historians before and after World War I to the Cold War-era celebrants of U.S. democracy.

Then came “new history,” the trend to chronicling the lives and deeds of ordinary people and those previously overlooked, such as women and minorities. Inspired in part by the Annales school of French and European history, this method has been sharply attacked by Rush Limbaugh and others who believe there is only one way of looking at our past and the inspiring heroes of the U.S. story.

Over the last 40 years, some historians have shifted their political allegiances. Eugene D. Genovese, a once-Marxist historian of slavery, has moved to the right, as has Stephan Thernstrom, now a rather conservative professor of U.S. history at Harvard who once was fairly radical. Wiener concludes that the Bush administration has given these and similar conservatives unusual influence in government appointments to humanities posts.

Both books closely examine the cases of Ambrose, Goodwin, Bellesiles and Ellis. Hoffer points out that Ambrose, who with his many books and projects had turned himself into “Ambrose Inc.,” blew off his accusers, then died of lung cancer. He is tougher on Goodwin, writing that when an author from whom Goodwin lifted unattributed words complained, Goodwin paid her off and both kept quiet about it. Goodwin has since acknowledged her plagiarism and has seemingly been restored to respectability. (She recently appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to discuss the inauguration.)

Bellesiles, under heavy fire from the National Rifle Assn. for his skewed research, lost his Emory University post and his standing among historians. Ellis was punished by loss of pay and status at Mount Holyoke but has since hit the bestseller list with “His Excellency: George Washington” and writes opinion pieces and reviews for the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker and the New York Times.

Hoffer argues with powerful restraint that the American Historical Assn. should speak out more clearly against unethical practices by historians. His treatment of Ellis’ case is more nuanced. He writes that the fictions Ellis concocted about his own life “seemed to work wonders for [his] powers of historical description and insight into the character of his subjects.” Then he adds: “If one applied no other test than asking whether his conduct should be a model for all of us, however, the answer would be obvious.”

Both books make the case clearly and forcefully that historians’ violations of common standards of ethics are not to be taken lightly, by their colleagues or by their readers.

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Anthony Day is a regular contributor to Book Review.