Guest Post by AM Golden

[From your host: AM Golden has a second guest post this week, which is what happens when you send two excellent submissions that get lost in my email. This one is not only on a topic near and dear to my heart—the ethics rot in the ranks of American historians—but also on a specific historian and work that I had flagged for a potential Ethics Alarms post myself. How I love it when a participant in the ethics wars here not only saves me the time and toil of writing a post, but does such a superb job of it, which AM definitely does here. JM.]

Of the professions that have been disgracing themselves for the last 10 years or so, the betrayal of historians has cut me the deepest.

We all have biases.  Each of us has a responsibility to be aware of those biases in a professional setting and work to subdue them.  Prior to the 2016 campaign, I’d already learned to get a feel for an author’s premise before starting a book.  If an author likes Andrew Jackson, for example, he or she will likely rationalize unpleasant facts about his life.  If an author hates him; however, he or she will diminish Jackson’s triumphs.  This is unprofessional. It is also unethical. A historian should be devoted not only to fact, but also putting fact within its appropriate historical context.  Whether you like him or not, Jackson played a significant role in our country’s history.  A competent historian can produce a “Warts and All” portrayal without compromising the integrity of the subject.

Since 2016, a new practice has entered the history books:  gratuitous, sometimes barely relevant, statements about Donald Trump.  A recent book I will not name included two completely superfluous footnotes regarding secessionist states and how many of them voted for Trump.  In general, though, it’s included in the prologue or, more often, the epilogue to allow the author to tie the secessionists, the Dixiecrats or some other group of bigots (but never, for some reason, FDR’s State Department which deliberately slow-walked paperwork for desperate Jews in Europe) to Trump.

Of late, I have been fascinated by FDR’s official and unofficial cabinet.  Having read books featuring Averell Harriman, Wendell Wilkie, Harry Hopkins, VP Henry Wallace and Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, many of whom were sent by Roosevelt as unelected emissaries and envoys to foreign countries to wheel and deal and otherwise undercut the Secretary of State, as well as the U.S. ambassadors.  By the way, did you know that Elon Musk is unelected and, for some reason, that makes his opinions and advice invalid?  And that it’s a violation of “democratic norms” for President Trump to utilize unelected advisors despite influential presidential precedents like Colonel Edward House and Harry Hopkins?)

But I digress…

I had the misfortune of reading the 2025 release “Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany” by Rebecca Brenner Graham yesterday.  It is a library book; otherwise, I might have marked out large segments with a black sharpie.  As it was, I used a pencil to make a note here and there in the margins.  We can debate sometime whether or not it is ethical to write in a library book.

Having found a couple of books on Frances Perkins (above), and intrigued by the premise of the historic! (but, in this case, competent) first female Cabinet member helping Jews enter the United States, I was disappointed at the blatant Trump-bashing included in the body of the book. 

Graham starts off chapter 2 (p 29) with the following:

“In the Summer of 2016, at the height of Hamilton: An American Musical on Broadway, Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Marquis de Lafayette (Daveed Diggs) slapped hands and sang, ‘Immigrants- we get the job done!’. Crowds roared with applause. Hamilton audiences expressed their disapproval of the unabashed xenophobia of the 2015-2016 Trump presidential campaign. They wanted the U.S. to be a nation of immigrants, where scrappy revolutionaries can ascend to positions of influence, do work that helps people, and perhaps centuries later, achieve great renown.”

Once again, the mischaracterization of Trump being anti-immigrant and xenophobic is reiterated for the gullible. Trump has never argued against legal immigration. His admittedly sloppy speaking style is often reframed to argue the worst possible interpretation.

I cannot trust the scholarship of a historian who believes that 18^th century immigration policy should inform 21^st century immigration policy.  After all, should an 18^th century understanding about child labor influence our 21^st century practices (Secretary Perkins advocated the restriction of child labor back in the 1930’s)?

And the false narrative doesn’t end there.  In chapter 12, the reader is treated to glowing references to Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for acknowledging that we are a “Nation of Immigrants” before launching into four paragraphs (pages 255-257) of anti-Trump propaganda starting with, “Donald Trump built his campaign and presidency around xenophobia, from the wall to the Muslim ban to the responses to the pandemic.”

The wall?  The one intended to stop people from illegally crossing our borders?  This is not the same as admitting refugees from countries with governments that are increasingly oppressing them as was the case with Nazi Germany.  The so-called Muslim ban?  There are 49 countries in the world with a Muslim-majority population.  The order in question restricted legal immigration from 9 nations the U.S. deemed incapable of accurately vetting the identities of would-be immigrants. Only 7 of the countries had majority Muslim populations while the other two (Venezuela is predominately Catholic while North Korea is officially atheist) are not.  7 out of 49 is not even close to a Muslim ban.  This information has been readily available for years!  What is “responses to the pandemic” supposed to mean?  That he rightly blamed the Chinese government which, I guess, is apparently racism directed at all Chinese people and responsible for ignorant attacks on Asian-Americans?

Imagine driving along the highway at 65 MPH and suddenly hitting a speed bump.  That’s what it’s like reading a book about the New Deal Department of Labor and suddenly finding oneself getting a lecture on modern political campaigning.   It kicks you right out of the book and the time period in which it takes place faster than popping in a movie about ancient Egypt, seeing the pyramid opening up and spying a boom mike dropping down into the picture.  It’s distracting, it’s sloppy and it makes you question the professionalism of the filmmaker. 

With that kind of reasoning, it’s no wonder I found myself fuming at the book. How unfortunate because it is important that Americans understand the U.S. government’s response to Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied areas.  There is an  entire chapter on how Perkins helped the lily-white Trapp Family Singers extend their visas. Graham correctly explained that many Americans were far more comfortable with a former U-Boat captain and his large brood of singing children than impoverished Jews increasingly at risk of death, even Jewish children.  Inserting polarizing  political commentary can and does turn off readers.

This is significant because historians who allow their biases to infect their writing not only mislead their less observant readers, but also make their better-informed readers question the accuracy of that writing.  How do I know that Graham hasn’t framed everything else in her book using the same narrow vision?  How do I know that her opinion of Trump’s policies hasn’t influenced her understanding of pre-war U.S. policy?  How do I know that writing a book about Frances Perkins was even the goal here?

 Could Graham have decided to tackle U.S. immigration policy in the ‘30s and ‘40s solely so she could insert disparaging comparisons to Trump now?  Is her publisher looking over book solicitations and making suggestions like, “You know, we would prefer you find some way to connect this to Trump.  Could you add a few sentences here and there?” 

As our host likes to point out, “Bias makes you stupid”.  Case in point: anyone familiar at all with modern political campaigning should not give Hillary Clinton the high ground for using the catchphrase ”A Nation of Immigrants”.