Taiwan's top official historian is stepping down with a warning that the island's politics have grown so hostile that the two sides act like enemies — a bleak read on Taiwan's internal divisions.

• Academia Historica director Chen Yi-shen leaves his post in September after more than seven years, saying only that political appointees should not stay too long.
• He described Taiwan's public debate as poisonously split, with rival camps treating each other as if in a civil war.
• His fix: both major parties should claim shared credit for Taiwan's democratization, since both took part in the 1990s constitutional reforms.
• Under his watch, the Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo diaries were returned from Stanford to Taiwan after years of litigation and are now being opened to researchers.
• He pushed back on Beijing's "80 years since retrocession" framing, arguing Taiwan needs to interpret its own history rather than accept how China, Japan, or the US define it.

Outlook: A successor takes over in September as the archive keeps digitizing presidential records and contesting Beijing's version of Taiwan's past.