Writing in a column in The Wall Street Journal, Richard D. Kahlenberg and Lief Lin claim that "American Studies Can't Stand Its Subject." What does that mean? Well, the basic assertion is that scholars writing about America are painting a "one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait of the U.S." Here's from the column (emphasis added):
Kahlenberg and Lin examined ... almost 100 articles ... from over a three-year period in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Published by Johns Hopkins University, it’s widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies....
We found that 80% of articles published between 2022 and 2024 were critical of America, 20% were neutral, and none were positive. Of the 96 articles we examined, our research identified 77 as critical, focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. Some articles went to absurd lengths to identify sins. One essay posited that thermodynamics—the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature—is “an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.” ...
What’s striking is the complete lack of gratitude on the part of scholars who write for the leading journal of American studies and benefit every day from the country’s commitment to liberty. Four-fifths of the world’s population can’t criticize their government without fear of reprisal. Despite the White House’s crackdown on universities (which we oppose), professors can and do regularly criticize President Trump without worrying about losing their livelihood or freedom.
American Quarterly is only one journal, but what’s found in its pages captures a much larger problem in education, particularly at the collegiate level. During our research, we contacted University of Texas at Austin historian Steven Mintz, who has analyzed the field of American studies. He told us: “A field that once asked, ‘What is America?’—exploring its myths, music, monuments, and contradictions—now too often narrows its focus to a different question: ‘Whom has America silenced, failed, or harmed?’ ”
This deeply pessimistic view of the U.S. has taken hold of many young people. When asked whether America’s founders are “better described as villains or heroes” in a poll cited by the Atlantic in 2024, about 4 in 10 Gen Z respondents chose “villains,” compared with only 1 in 10 baby boomers. The bigger problem, as Rep. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) has said, is that “a nation cannot endure if its children are taught to loathe it.”
The way the article comes across, the scholars who wrote for American Quarterly, and whose articles were analyzed by Kahlenberg and Lin, are faulted for not having been even a little bit congratulatory about America. It doesn't appear that Kahlenberg and Lin are claiming that any of the articles they reviewed were "false." They just didn't like the fact that there weren't more favorable articles, too. My impression is that Kahlenberg and Lin think that American Quarterly should have "balanced" what it published, so that the journal offered both self-congratulation and self-criticism in something close to equal measure.
I agree with Kahlenberg and Lin that there is much to celebrate when we think about our nation and its history - and I think we should be celebrating those things! However, both the journal and the scholars who wrote for it were focused on what's "wrong" with America, not what's "right," which makes me think that Kahlenberg and Lin should have written an article exploring why the scholars' "negative" slant on America was so prevalent during the period they analyzed. Instead, they just deplored this negative slant, and implied that American Quarterly should have found some way to present a more favorable view of the nation and its history.
Well, why do you think that "negative" perspective seemed to predominate in that period from 2022 to 2024? My suggestion? Read the newspapers! Think about how ICE raids in Minnesota are the antithesis of what we have always thought America was all about. That's just one example. In fact, the actual "news" over the last quarter century is, factually speaking, news about those "whom has America silenced, failed, or harmed.” A more helpful article from Kahlenberg and Lin might have pointed this out, and then said why, and called for the nation to return to the foundation principles first articulated in The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
A call for "happy talk," which is what Kahlenberg and Lin seem to be arguing for, isn't going to help us. Scholarly observers are concluding, based on the findings made by Kahlenberg and Lin, that things are going wrong.
I think it's true that things are going wrong, and instead of saying that scholars should be ignoring what the problems are, in order to highlight all the positive things, is not going to help us address the problems that the scholars have been identifying.
What we really need, I think, is not a more generous dose of self-congratulation. Rather - and calling up a phrase we hear a lot nowadays - we need a continuing scholarly commitment to outline and define what our nation actually needs to do if we want to:
Make America Great Again
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