Harold James stabs his discipline in the back—fairly, I think. There should are a rule that any historian who opines needs to present a menu of five different historical analogies and parallels for their piece to be taken as a treasure for all time: Harold James: Stories That Can’t End Well: "The sheer depth of political and economic uncertainty turned historians into pundits whose critiques of conventional social science are overly biased toward random pet narratives. Worse, many historians have begun to lend their academic authority to policy prescriptions that are even more problematic than anything pre- or post-crisis economists ever proposed.... Peddling fallacious assertions about the centrality of sovereignty... historians have played a devastating role in precipitating the Brexit crisis. They would have British voters believe that leaving the European Union is no different than Henry VIII’s declaration of sovereignty in opposition to the Roman pontiff.... Historians... when they advance simple narratives that imply specific policy prescriptions, they are even more dangerous than social scientists...
#noted
