By Mark Bernhardt

As academics we have an obligation through our roles as authors, peer reviewers, and editors to ensure that only quality work gets published. That includes an obligation not to lower the bar for prestigious scholars in the field because of who they are. The consequences of not upholding our standards go beyond just publishing bad scholarship; it can result in serious offense and harm.

During the first-year research methods course in my PhD program, a fellow student told the professor that he had found a partially plagiarized sentence in a book and asked to whom he should report it. The professor, a late-career academic, responded that in such a scenario it should be reported to the book’s publisher. However, he cautioned, if the author was a major scholar, it was best not to report a minor plagiarism incident because doing so could result in professional blackballing. And so, I learned that the research and scholarship rules that I was being taught to follow meticulously did not apply to eminent late-career academics (and I include retired professors in this classification) because others would protect them.

It was many years before I directly witnessed what a renowned late-career academic could get away with. I serve on a committee that reviews the articles published in a prestigious journal and selects the winner of the sponsoring organization’s best article award. One year I read an article that analyzed the styles of three film directors who were blind in one eye, with the author asserting that their vision impacted the films they produced. Reading about the first director, the author revealed that, according to medical professionals, there are relatively minor difference in the way people with vision in only one eye and people with vision in both are able to see and it would not affect one’s view through a camera lens. What support was there then for the author’s thesis? Not finding it in the discussion of the first director, I moved on to the second. Nothing there either. And then came the third, who the author divulged was not even blind in one eye but only wore an eyepatch as part of the persona he created for himself, with photographic evidence showing that he switched between wearing the patch over his right and left eyes! I was dumbfounded. How did such a poor piece of scholarship get published in such a prestigious journal? Did the editor have the misfortune of selecting the world’s worst reviewers to evaluate the manuscript for the double-blind peer review process? Then I looked at the author’s bio. Not only was she an accomplished late-career academic, she was also a former editor of the journal and former president of its sponsoring organization. I strongly suspected I had found the answer to my question.

I do believe that these incidents are not common in academia, though I may be naïve, and that the vast majority of late-career academics are not willing to aid fellow late-career academics in publishing subpar work as a favor. That it happens at all, however, creates a bad perception for early- and mid-career academics who are held to higher standards. They may also feel that they cannot be too outspoken about the problem because late-career faculty could derail a tenure and promotion application and often run the journals and discipline-specific organizations, which puts them in positions of power through which they can hinder someone’s career advancement.

Recently, an essay published in a journal that is clear about not being peer reviewed but that does aspire to be scholarly, got me thinking about the ways publishing poor quality work can cause serious harm. The author, a late-career White man, mischaracterized the work done in the subdiscipline of social history, made false claims about how historians are using postmodernism, and included a misogynistic and racist assessment of multiculturalism’s detrimental impact on history as a discipline and how Black and women historians behave as colleagues. It is a problem when a late-career scholar is ignorant of how a field has developed, and it becomes a bigger problem when a journal disseminates that ignorance to others. Additionally, under no circumstances should a scholar make claims for which there is no supporting evidence. Peer reviewers and editors have an obligation to reject such manuscripts.

I found the author’s discussion of multiculturalism the most disheartening component of the essay. He begins by saying that most multiculturalists reject unity in American national identity, articulating his preference for a single national narrative that encourages pride in the nation. The author then expresses concern that multiculturalism may fracture the “common culture” that has prevailed on campuses. Regardless of whether that happens, he claims to have noticed a difference in the “colleagueship” of Black and women historians, which he attributes to multiculturalism’s influence.

As a history professor at Jackson State University, Mississippi’s largest HBCU, I can attest that my students would scoff at the notion that multiculturalism is detrimental. It is only because of multiculturalism that the history of women, people of color, those who identify as queer, and other underrepresented groups in academia have gotten to have their stories told. They were not part of the single national narrative pushed by the discipline until the late twentieth century. Scholars had to fight hard for change, often at great personal cost. While a truly inclusive single national narrative might be nice, it is only through multiculturalism that we have any chance of constructing one, and the likelihood for success is hardly apparent. At the moment, it is conservative politicians who are working hardest to develop a single national historical narrative—specifically one that rejects multiculturalism and downplays or disregards past bad acts. Recently, the AJHA took a strong oppositional stance to such censoring of history and placing restrictions on those who teach in the discipline. Regarding his concern about multiculturalism fracturing the common culture that previously prevailed, my students would advocate smashing it because they know well that the university they attend exists because they were never intended to be part of that common culture.

As troubling as his views are—and some of his claims are obviously incorrect—it is far more troubling that his views were published. I understand that disagreement is a driving force within academia as we all put forth arguments supported by evidence that others critique and challenge. Wrestling with controversial ideas is a component of this. In the case of history, it is essential that such dialogue be published to further our understanding of the past. Outdated understandings of the discipline, misinformation, misogyny, and racism provide nothing to advance that dialogue—they hurt it—and no scholarly journal should provide a platform for those views.

Finally, as for any difficulty he finds in his working relationships with Black and women colleagues, I guarantee that multiculturalism is not the root cause. Unfortunately, not only do women and people of color in the academy have to deal with such ugliness, some editors prove no help by giving their prejudiced peers a forum through which to be heard.

We all must be vigilant about maintaining high standards regarding everything that is published in scholarly journals. Those standards must apply to everyone. When a different standard exists for late-career academics, as it sometimes does, it hurts us all, and can do so far more severely than just by granting individuals undeserved publications. Yes, we should be wary about censorship and silencing voices. However, in some cases it is clear that what is being said is harmful. Scholarly journals should not be a forum for harming anyone.