While I'm aware that the idea for using the "Common Era" has been around for some time, my experience in my area (Eastern USA) is that it's use in common textbooks began in the late 1990s. How did the academic communities feel about this change (assuming it registered on their radar at all).
I'm not sure if people understood the question necessarily. I think the question was BC/AD vs BCE/CE. Correct ??
I started seeing this in 90's material more as well. Also, if the author of the material or the topic was by outside of Christianity. I even remember reading a collection of essays where the author switched and so did the nomenclature. It appears that BCE/CE appeared to be a less hegemonic more PC approach, if that can be called that. I recall no big pushback, but many didn't adopt the new naming convention out of habit.
It does seem more respectful if you think about it. If you want to talk about the Hebrews of ancient Israel, putting a benchmark that has distinct religious connotations can be viewed as giving the work a certain kind of perspective by the author when a decidedly secular label may remove all doubt.
Other students and historians might have different experiences, but I have been taught to continue using B.C. (written after the date) and A.D. (written before the date). This might be specific to Ancient History, but I'm fairly accustomed to seeing this dating system used in all of the academic works I can think of too. The only differences I see are that some don't put the full-stops in "B.C./A.D." but just write "BC" and "AD". However BC is always put after the date (eg. 509 BC) and AD is always put before (eg. AD 378). This appears to be standard in Ancient History. Perhaps in Modern History it is different?
To ask the dumb question, can someone explain this question?
More importantly, when we use "Before common era" and "After common era," aren't the "Before and after" still using the theoretical arrival of Christ as the event that caused the change in era?
Follow up question: how are years written in languages other than English? As far as I know in France we just use a plus or minus sign to differentiate dates before of after 0 (ie. -55 is 55 BCE). What do other countries use?
It's quite a polarizing issue. Scholars from various cultural backgrounds find using BCE/CE more acceptable to use, while some people feel this is a further encroachment on Christian culture. Scholars who work in disciplines where cultural background has impact, cross-cultural & cross-religious studies, tend to use BCE/CE. The Lumpen whadda-ya-gotta-change-that-for crowd are happy with the status quo. Those rotten classicists aren't convinced either way. Other historians, post-ancient world, don't need to think about it much, because their years don't need to have such clarifications stuck to them, so they are de facto "who needs it?" unradicals.
If you are a scholar who doesn't mind saying that Jesus was born in 4 before Jesus was born in 4 before... weirdness, or if you think removing BC/AD is the work of Satan, or if you just like things to stay the way they are despite the fact that discrimination by religion is constitutionally naughty, you will probably not be very inclined to worry about BC/AD or BCE/CE.
We know from spelling reform, cigarettes, Microsoft, and climate denial that resistence makes change hard to achieve. I'd guess only those disciplines in the trenches reflect an active willingness to adopt the newfangled nomenclature, such as interdisciplinary biblical studies, Islamic studies, South Asian studies. At least that is as it seems from my limited perspective.