I've been in a bit of a scuff with the r/history discord mods over what the 20 year rule means in the context of historiography. I think historiography is a vital part of history that it's necessary to address the ways which modern politics plays a role in our narratives. I'll include the relevant part of my response to their linking of the 20 year rule below because I think I fleshed out my reasoning behind my thinking reasonably well, but it's not necessary to read to answer my question, which is this: Don't historians in an academic setting constantly have to address contemporary political settings to understand why we understand events a certain way? I do want to know where that line is and I admit, if I were in charge of moderating a discussion on historiography I wouldn't know where to draw the line myself. Is there any uniform way this problem is addressed by journals or in reviewing peers or any general guidelines? Is the 20 year rule still generally used in the context of historiography?
"I understand the basis for the twenty year rule and even in the academic history community, I think that's generally accepted best practice, but I think what I'm saying does not apply to that. I think that's a very incorrect understanding of that rule. I'm not asking to be able to talk specifically about events going on right now. I'm not asking to be able to say "Look at Hong Kong now, this is why it's like that", for more reasons than I wouldn't be able to actually answer that. I just think that without the ability to even note how modern political perceptions impact the way we discuss historical events, it isn't really history. The example that continues to remain at the front of my mind is Madeline Hsu's 2003 critique of almost all historical accounts of Chinese sojourners ignoring homosociality in Chinese American history. Chinese sojourners were almost all male, living in closely knit, all-male communities for years and decades without seeing their wives or children. The need historians felt to continuously place these men in the context of hetero-normative, traditional families was one that reflected a society that hid non-traditional family forms in the early 1900s but even more reflected a society that continued to deal with non-traditional families by waving their differences away and saying they continued to *actually* exist in our comfortable view of the family as it exists today. It was political of her to say that, and it was political of her to question our motives in our analyses, but it gave a new, more accurate narrative to discuss the reality faced by these men. It would have been political for her to not say what she did. It wasn't soap-boxing, it was acknowledging how modern politics impacted our approach to a historical narrative."
I think it's important to be distinct about academic practice and the way in which a subreddit such as this one is run. There is no 20-year rule in academia. Historians, and more broadly other researchers, are trusted to use their own discretion as to how far to bring contemporary ideas, politics and perspectives into their analysis - though, equally, they may find it difficult to convince their audience that their approach is justified if they take this too far. This means that a piece of writing which leans too far on contemporary politics might either be poorly received, or fail to pass peer review altogether. In practice, everyone draws their own line in these matters, based on their own research, beliefs about the nature of history writing and, inevitably, how they think it will affect their careers.
The 20-year rule here is in place not because historians are unable to process anything that recent, but because the purpose of this subreddit is to provide trusted information about the past. That mission is impaired if it becomes yet another forum for people to disagree about current politics in, or for asking historians to justify their political beliefs for them. In this sense, the rule is a blunt instrument, in place because it solves a practical problem rather than as a matter of absolute principle.
As you note, there is a historiography exception to the rule, to allow users to discuss the way that other historians have approached the past more recently than 1999. This rule is intended to facilitate normal historical discussion rather than provide a loophole through which politics can be introduced. As such, while there is obviously a grey area, it is enforced on that basis: if the post is likely (intentionally or not) to provoke political debate rather than facilitate historical discussion, it runs afoul of the exception. However, the goal is not to make users feel bad about breaking a rule, especially in good faith, but to preserve the functioning of the space we're all using.