Historians Should Stay Out of Politics

I signed a petition once, in a professional capacity, and regretted it straightaway. This was during the last election. Someone who knew that I despised Donald Trump as a public figure—I don’t know him as anything else—gave my name to another acquaintance, and presto: Suddenly I was being asked to lend my nonexistent prestige to the cause of Republican writers against Trump.

I can hear you now: Republican writers against Trump? What broom closet did you hold your convention in? Wise guy.

As it happened, there were more than a few of us—not much more, but more—and the thing appeared in due time on the web and, so I was told, in actual print somewhere too. As you read the self-consciously noble words you could see the nostrils flare of the men and women who’d written it, these Republican writers against Trump, so deep was their revulsion, so pure was their outrage,