Academics are fully capable of taking history (or physics) and putting it into a wood chipper feet first if it doesn't fit squarely into whatever system they're absorbed into. Mao's useful-idiot student protestors decimated the great wall of china because it was "old". Literally tore down hundreds of kilometers. And when they weren't going to town on the Great Wall of China they were pushing bogus physics because the Big Bang theory was bourgeoisie.