Blog CCXXVII (227) More of the Logevall and Osgood Debate

There has been more on the debate that Fredrik Logevall and Kenneth Osgood started last August on the pages of The New York Times.  I suspect this debate will go on for quite a while and will probably be best measured in months and years rather than weeks and months. 

Some of what follows is stuff that I should have gotten in my first posting on this debate and some of it is fairly new.  There will, of course, be more.

James M. Perry, the former chief political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, endorsed these views in a column he wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  He attributed a lack of political literacy to the rise of Donald Trump.

In September, K.C. Johnson, one of the very, very few historians that specializes on the Congress, wrote an essay "The Alarming Decline of U.S. Political History" on his blog and also posted on his twitter feed endorsing the views of Logevall and Osgood.  He made similar points in 2003 when he testified to Congress.  His essays is much like Blog CCXXII, but is better in its argumentation.  He also noted some of the same patterns in the negative reactions to the editorial.  He is a bit skeptical that anything will come of the Logevall/Osgood essay, though. 

At the most recent meeting of the American Historical Association, a session was devoted to debating the state of political history.  The fact that it occurred Sunday morning, when many people are heading to the airport or raiding the book display for the good deals, limited the turnout.  (I know of what I speak; I have been in an AHA session on Sunday morning.  There were a few more people in the audience than on the panel, but only a few.)

Getting more attention is a exchange of essays in the January 2017 issue of Perspectives on History.  Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State, published "Political History and the History of Sexuality." Stein, who writes on sexuality, decided to criticize the essay from the perspective of his specialization. "Here I want to offer a perspective rooted in my little corner of the world, which is filled with historians of sexuality who work on politics and historians of politics who work on sexuality."  He began the essay by complaining about the language that the two used.  "More problematic, from the perspective of my little corner of the world, was the fact that their formulation erased the work so many have done to integrate political history with the history of social movements and the history of race, gender, and sexuality."  He began by listing the books on his shelves that were political history.  Like many other critics, he confused political history with other topics.  I noticed one book was about strategic bombing in World War II.  He then discussed the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which excluded, in the words of the act, "sexual deviations."  Stein observes, "But in my little corner of the world, which includes a large number of US political historians, this law was also a political manifestation of larger dynamics that established, maintained, and strengthened the supremacy of family, heterosexuality, and marriage in the United States. And if we cannot recognize that this is and was political, the future of political history is dire indeed."

Logevall and Osgood responded with a lengthy essay—which is in fact, longer than their original New York Times piece—entitled: "US Political History—Alive and Well?"  The two note: "Reasonable people can differ here, and Marc Stein is more apropos than perhaps he realizes with his repeated references to the view from his 'little corner of the world.' The challenge for us all is to take a broader perspective, to take stock of the good and the bad, and to have an open dialogue about the state of the field as seen from all points on the compass, not just our own."

They are clear on who and what political history should be studying: "Those who have held predominant power in American society—presidents, Congress, state governments—the elections that brought them to office, and the formulation and impact of policies that resulted from the exercise of that power." There reasons are fairly simple.  "In our daily lives, we take for granted the importance of these manifestations of our politics, but—as several correspondents rightly noted—too often we lose sight of it in our research, at least pre-tenure, and in our decision making on matters of curriculum design and faculty hiring."

A number of people have contacted them to either express support or disagreement.  Many have argued there is little academic history on both Congress and state government. "We agree. To a large degree, we’ve ceded this territory to our colleagues in political science. For the past quarter century, history grad students who express an interest in pursuing a dissertation centered on high politics have usually been gently steered in other directions. It’s old-fashioned and elite-centered, they’ve been told, not sufficiently cutting edge, too—egad—'traditional.' And 'it won’t get you a job.'" 

That point is exceptionally important.  After having been part of a couple of search committees, I can tell you that a  dissertation topic can play a powerful role in determining who advances in the search.  Letters of recommendation help, sure, but the dissertation topic is far more important.  In the end, Logevall and Osgood candidly observe that "the savvy grad student who wants to maximize her chances on the job market would still be well-advised to steer clear of a topic on high politics."

Stein responded with an essay that was longer and more insightful than his original piece.  He noted, "Self-proclaimed guardians of political history have regularly issued jeremiads about the decline of our field." He is direct in his criticisms of Logevall and Osgood on this matter: "One clue about why they do so can be found in their discussion of my 'little corner of the world.' Apparently, they missed my sarcasm; my point was that my corner is actually pretty popular. Instead, they urge us to 'take a broader perspective' and examine 'all points on the compass, not just our own.' I couldn’t agree more." 

He then argues that historians writing history in his field are doing impressive work: "Sarcasm alert: I sure do wish that political historians who focus on class, gender, race, and sexuality would stop looking at things from provincial and parochial points of view and focus on larger political issues like capitalism, colonialism, democracy, equality, justice, war, and peace. As for their efforts to provide further evidence for the decline of political history, I am not convinced that their research methodology is up to the task, primarily because of the questions they are not asking."

Stein's essay becomes quite powerful when he starts asking some significant questions: "First, do most US history textbooks and survey courses still privilege political history? If so, what is the relationship between this and the patterns that Logevall and Osgood have identified in history specializations and job advertisements?"

He get at a really important issue in his next point: "Second, how do we measure the changing popularity of political history."  He notes that the boundaries between topic such as "diplomatic, legal, and military history" are nebulous.  That point is particularly strong, but I would argue that the boundaries are clearer to people in the fields than those outside of them.

His next two points are interesting: "Third, is it possible that more and more dissertations integrate political history with other approaches? Has there been a generational shift whereby new historians are less invested in older field designations?" He follows with: "Fourth, while quantitative studies of job advertisements are interesting, is it possible that political historians are favored in job searches that do not mention politics (such as searches in US history, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and chronologically defined subfields)?" 

Stein's last point is perhaps his best, "All of this begs the question of how we should define “the political.” It is sometimes said that if everything is political, the concept of politics as a distinct conceptual domain loses its utility. But surely we can come up with a definition that encompasses less than everything but more than national elections, political parties, and a small set of individuals and institutions."

My response: that is a reasonable question.  My assessment based on anecdotal evidence is a simple: no.

Political history has serious issues to discuss that other fields are going to have a difficult time addressing.  These include questions like:

• Why does the United States have a binary political system when most other industrial, democratic societies are multi-party?
• Has the United States had a radical element in its political tradition? On the right?  The left?  Why? Why not?
• Has Congress been an active force in national politics? Or is it more passive,  responding to special interest groups and the executive branch?  Does Congress initiate significant policy proposals, and national agendas?
• Do people vote on the basis of issues?  Partisanship?  Or image/emotion?

I am sure someone could come up with even more, but these are kind of big.

This point gets to another that I notice when I was writing Blog CCXXII (my first assessment of the Logevall and Osgood debate).  There appears to be a lot of bait and switching going on among the critics of Logevall and Osgood.  Historians often try to pass off one type of history as another particularly in job searches when they are having to fill a position in a field that they do not like.  (You also see this phenomenon in fellowship applications).  Put another way, if a political historian wrote a biography of Margret Chase Smith—she spent nine years in the U.S. House of Representatives and then was a U.S. Senator from Maine for four terms—would that individual be a viable candidate for a job teaching women's history?  Probably not, but a lot of people think that if that historian specialized in gender studies and wrote the biography that he or she could pass them self off as a political historian. 

Blog CCXXVII (227): Debate Prequel

This post is one that I really wish I had written before Blog CCXXII (222): The Logevall and Osgood Debate.  In May of 2011, Perspectives on History had a special issue on political history "Political History Today."  There were seventeen articles that studied various aspects of the topic.  In many ways, this special issue was a prequel to the Logevall/Osgood guest column in The New York Times last August. 

The articles are eclectic.  Three articles are about teaching, and another three are about research resources available to historians interested in U.S. political history.  Although it is clear the intention of the editors was to focus on U.S. political history, there are essays on South Asia and Early Modern Europe. 

The more important articles in this issue are those that are "think pieces" on the direction of the field.  Of these the one that is probably the most important is the one from Julian E. Zelizer of Princeton University.  His article "The Interdisciplinarity of Political History" is a condensed version of the first part of his book Governing America: The Revival of Political History (2012).  Political history is seeing a Renaissance, he argues, because it has become interdisciplinary.  Historians

must be certain to explore the full range of scholarship that exists outside history departments to see and profit from all the possible partnerships. For example, in political science there are subfields like public opinion that have important findings for political historians, such as the difficulty presidents have encountered in actually changing public opinion. Larry Bartels has produced some intriguing findings using historical data to show that what matters most to voters—even in landmark elections like those of 1936—are the immediate economic conditions, which determine what happens at the ballot box. His work has also raised significant challenges to conventional history that we have on how working class whites abandoned the Democratic Party after the 1960s. Psychologists are producing stunning findings about how voters make their decisions based on first physical impressions rather than speeches or policy arguments. Sociologists have also been developing extremely important work on the role of networks in spreading information and shaping the reputations of particular actors. 

The good news is that an interdisciplinary approach is in the bloodstream of any good political historian.

On the other hand, Steven Pincus of Yale University and William Novak of the University of Michigan in "Political History after the Cultural Turn" state: "Traditional political history is dead and is still dying. Over two decades ago, Lynn Hunt observed, 'Social history has overtaken political history as the most important area of research in history.'" They also add:

Practitioners of both the new social history and the new cultural history have been at one in denouncing (and moving speedily past) the traditional techniques, narratives, and perspectives of the old political history. Tony Judt, certainly not an uncritical advocate of either the new social or the new cultural history, captured a widespread contempt for political history after the social-cultural turn. "Traditional political history continues on its untroubled way," he observed, "describing in detail the behaviour of ruling classes and the transformations which took place within them. Divorced from social history, this remains, as ever, a form of historical writing adapted to the preservation of the status quo; it concerns itself with activities peculiar to the ruling group, activities of an apparently rational and self-justifying nature." Whatever their internecine differences, practitioners of most new historical subdisciplines have come to view traditional political history as an essentially conservative and crabbed way of approaching an increasingly rich and diverse range of historical material.

All of this comes in the first paragraph. 

Pincus and Novak are not dismissing the study of public affairs.  "Recent events have made the importance of 'the political' even more manifest," they concede. "Post 9/11, no one can seriously doubt any longer that state activities—domestic as well as international—deeply affect our everyday lives."  They also issue a call for action:

What we are calling for, then, is not a return to a political history of elites making decisions which affect other elites. The last generation of social and cultural history has successfully cut off the king's head, and the future history of the political refuses to be confined to the conventional terms of critical elections, high-profile politicians, and official action. The political history that we would like to see elevated in the next generation of historical scholarship is precisely a place of constant interaction and interconnection between state and society—a space where issues of national identity and belonging, democratic participation and exclusion, state-building and state-resistance, discrimination and equal protection, and competing visions of the good life are ceaselessly brought into focus, debate, and often coercive resolution. The political does not constitute itself independent of and external to society—but is a place of almost continuous sociopolitical interaction and conflict. It marks a distinctive site of collective action where the terms of the life in common—whether local, regional, national, or international—receive a particularly comprehensive (and not infrequently coercive) form of articulation (for better or for worse).   

That is all well and good, but—and this is a big but—state activities are not always political.  Pincus and Novak conflate law enforcement, military affairs and foreign policy with politics.  There is overlap, but they are distinct topics.  I also think there is an odd disconnect at play here in the dismissive attitude they hold towards historical investigation of high ranking politicians and elections, and the reactions in academia to the elections of 2008 and 2016.  Scholars seem to care about who is in the White House—at least those during their lifetimes.

Part of the problem with this debate is that many people are confused about what is and is not "political history." This reaction was clear in the early, negative reactions to the Logevall/Osgood  op-ed.  It also becomes clear in reading all the articles in this special issue. 

Case in point, four of the articles in this issue, focus on diplomatic history.  While diplomatic history and political history might seem the same thing to people outside of the two fields, they are distinctly different. Diplomatic history has a been a well-defined sub-field of U.S. history for roughly a century, focusing on the making and execution of policy, or to be more specific, U.S. foreign policy.  Although politicians play important roles in these studies—54 of our 66 secretaries of state have been lawyers/politicians.  Many people outside of the field assume diplomatic history is limited to the activities of how diplomats talk to one another.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Diplomatic historians often focus on professional diplomats, but they also look at pressure groups, businessmen, demographics, economics, and public opinion.  They have also been "internationalizing" U.S. history for a very, very long time. 

All of these points become clear in looking at the career of Samuel Flagg Bemis (1891-1973).  Bemis was president of the American Historical Association in 1961.  He won his first Pulitzer for his book Jay's Treaty: A Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (1924), which was the product of research in archives in the United States, but also those in the United Kingdom and France—which was no easy thing to do in 1916; his ship was hit by a German U-boat. More to the point, his book and research makes it clear that politics and policy are distinctly different topics.  There is no real reason for a political historian to look at developments in France or Britain, while there is a very strong reason for a diplomatic historian to do so. 

Bemis's career also shows how diplomatic and political history overlap.  He won his second Pulitzer for the first volume of his biography of John Quincy Adams.  That book focused on Adams and his diplomatic career.  The sequel covered his presidency and post-White House life as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Returning to the main topic of this essay, this special issue makes for interesting reading in light of the Logevall/Osgood debate.  These articles show, for better or worse, what they two of them were pushing against when the went to The New York Times with their essay.  In many ways the issue helps their cause.  If you disagree with that assessment, despair not.  I suspect there is a lot more coming in this debate.

Blog CCXIX (219): "The History Ph.D. as..." Series Revisited

"The History Ph.D. as...." series never died officially.  (In fact, you might see two new entries fairly soon.)  I just ran out of contacts and good ideas on how to structure some of the articles.  Other historians that blog, though, have been doing the same thing as me, and a couple of these essays are quite good.

The most commented on post in the eight year history of this blog was Blog XXXI: "The History Ph.D. as a Librarian."  Mark Danley, then of the University of Memphis and now at the U.S. Military Academy, wrote about the challenges and rewards of work in a library.  The blog of the American Historical Association has an article "A Historian in the Stacks: Finding a Professional Home in the Library" from Annie Johnson on much the same topic.  I like Danley's essay a lot, but Johnson, who works at Temple University, has written a pretty good essay as well.  Probably because she got her Ph.D. from USC. 

Two weeks before Danley wrote his post, Sarandis "Randy" Papadopoulos added to the same series with Blog XXIX (29): The History Ph.D. as a Government Historian: Still the “Improbable Success Story”?  Over at The Ohio State University, Mark Grimsley turned his blog over to a guest blogger, Frank Blazich, a colleague of Papadopoulos at the Naval History and Heritage Command.  Blazich's post "Beyond the Academic Cage: Observations of a New Federal Government Historian" discusses his experiences finding work outside of academia.

Geoffrey P. Megargee, a historian working at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, contributed to the series with "Blog XXXV (35): The History Ph.D. in the Museum."  Rachel Feinmark discusses her path to museum work and the role the Public Fellows Program of the American Council of Learned Societies played in that process with her article "Who’s Afraid of Being a Generalist? On Being a Historian outside the Academy," which appeared on the AHA's blog earlier this year.

Individuals interested in these topics should read the two "twined" essays.  I am both proud and grateful for the essays from Danley, Papadopoulos, and Megargee, but the postings from Johnson, Blazich, and Feinmark add to our understanding of how to make a career outside of a history department.

Blog CCXVI (216): More Writing Roundtables

The roundtable listed in Blog CCXV was not the first one to discuss  the importance of writing well in history in recent years.  There was a session at the 2014 American Historical Association Annual Meeting on this topic: "Writing History for the Public."  Elizabeth Covart reported on this for John Fea's blog The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  There are, again, very interesting insights offered up in her summary.  Covart expands on her reporting of this session with a posting on her own blog.

Covart also has a question and answer series on her blog about Megan Marshall's views on writing.  Marshall won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for her biography of Margaret Fuller, and was a participant in the 2014 AHA meeting...sort of.  (Plane delays kept her from attending in person; her comments were read by another participant).  The first post is on the importance of narrative over argument.  The second is on art of writing biography.  The third is on the origins of Marshall's writing style.

Covart also has an extended assessment of the writing advice that journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff offers on how to write for your readers.  Ann Little in her Historiann blog offers her own assessment: "This is all good advice, but I think the issue of journalists who write books that people buy versus historians who write books for other historians is oversimplified, and ignores the question of resources, platforms, and marketing that work to the advantage of the journalists who write a history book or two."  Despite this difference of opinion, Little, who has real talent as a writer, agrees with most of Covart's post about the importance of writing.  Covart's response is basically one in which she agrees that platforms are important.

It is hard to argue with either one.  As Brandon Proia point out in his article quoted in Blog CCXV, any number of things can go wrong when trying to write for a larger audience, and Little is right: it is easier for people with a public platform to get those big contracts.  The rich get richer, although Proria argues can work to change that factor.  Covart is also correct to emphasize working on making your writing better.  It is a skill set that does not get developed much in graduate programs.

Blog CXCIX (199): Reviewing the Official Historian

HONOLULU, HAWAII—A few weeks ago I read an article that John M. Carland, a historian working in the office of the Secretary of  Defense, wrote in Headquarters Gazette, the newsletter of the Society for Military History.  In "Why the American Historical Review Will Not Review Official History and Why It Should" he documented his discovery that the journal of the American Historical Association will not review in its book review section official histories produced by the various armed services.

In his article Carland quoted at length from his correspondence with Robert A. Schneider, the editor of the AHR:  "Indeed, on the face of it, [he continued] there certainly shouldn’t be any distinction between scholarly books based upon their provenance—it’s the scholarship that should count. That is, if the book is scholarly—and if it meets our other criteria, then it should be reviewed by the AHR as well as other journals. The fact is, however, that these 'other criteria,' not the origins or publisher of the book, are often what disqualifies it."  The journal Schneider notes gets a lot of books and basically does not review biographies, collections of documents, edited volumes, textbooks, second editions, or books aimed at a general audience.

In crafting his response, Schneider also turned to his book review editor who was direct, if ill informed.  “It is the commission that is problematic: what are its terms and limitations? How much of the source material is publically [sic] available, and how much requires access only granted to scholars who agree to certain conditions?” In further communication, Schneider doubled down on this point.  The problem with official histories is that they "often rely upon sources that cannot be verified or often even consulted by outside historians. I think it’s reasonable at least to assert this as a potential obstacle. Furthermore, there is the question of the disinterestedness, independence, and autonomy of a historian who is employed by or belongs to the institution or enterprise which he’s investigating."

There are a number of problems with these responses.  First, as Carland discovered, the AHR has over the years reviewed official military history from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany and Russia.

A second problem is that it leads the journal to ignore major events on its own home turf.  McNamara, Clifford, and The Burdens of Vietnam by Edward Drea was a volume in the official series on the development of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  It got a lot of attention for its findings.  “This is not your standard, bland official history,” George C. Herring of the University of Kentucky, one of the leading scholars on the Vietnam War noted in a news story The Washington Post did on the book.  The coverage of that book was nothing compared to Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea by William Bowers, William Hammond, and George MacGarrigle.  The 24th Infantry was one of the last segregated, all-black units in the U.S. Army and many veterans of the unit spent 17 years lobbying the U.S. Army to commission this book, arguing that the first volume of the Army's official history of the Korean War, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu gave a devastating account of the regiment's performance in combat when it stated the regiment broke under fire and ran from the enemy.  When Black Soldier, White Army failed to exonerate the unit, showing that the 24th had indeed collapsed in combat, veterans of the regiment threatened to sue to prevent the release of the book.  This controversy was the subject of news stories in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, and USA Today.  This book was the subject of a four-page review from Russell Weigley, a former president of the Society for Military History, in Reviews in American History.  And yet, nothing in the AHR.  That seems wrong.

A final problem with the AHR's criteria is that it is based on ignorance and a tad bit of exaggerated self-importance.  In most ways, the official history program is designed to help large government agencies learn about what worked and what did not work, and why.  The program—at least in the U.S. Army—has been implemented to facilitate historical coverage, not offer sanitized version of what happened that glorify the military.  General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower made this point clear in the order authorizing the U.S. Army in World War II.  Historians working for the military—who almost always have Ph.D.s—have often been concerned about being considered court historians.  Ronald Spector, the first civilian ever to serve as the chief of Naval History and now a professor at George Washington University, pushed back against the court historian view in a famous article: Ronald Spector, "An Improbable Success Story: Official Military Histories in the Twentieth Century" The Public Historian vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1990), 25-30.  As Spector shows, the system they work in mitigates against such a development.  The regulations governing the official histories, require detailed citation to the documents.  These historians can use any source material they wish; memoirs, oral histories (that they often conduct themselves), and official documents.  If they use documents that are still classified, the publication of the official history becomes grounds for those documents to be declassified.  Forrest C. Pogue, who is considered by many public historians to be a pioneer in the field, said one of the reasons he worked on the official Army histories was to facilitate the declassification process.  One final point: many things make policy: state interests, politics, etc.  History is not one of them.  At least in the United States.  The Secretary of Defense—and his staff—are busy people, dealing with difficult issues involving Russians in the Ukraine and Iran's interest in nuclear weapons.  They do not really have time to worry about Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea or even McNamara, Clifford, and The Burdens of Vietnam.  If the people at the American Historical Review think that historians have that kind of influence, or that components of the military that are dealing with contemporary issues are concerned about events from four to seven decades past, they are fooling themselves.  Americans—even those in the in military—just do not hold on to historical issues for long.

As you might tell, I have mixed reactions to this little controversy.  First, I am a book review editor myself for Presidential Studies Quarterly and I understand the American Historical Review perspective.  I really do.  We do not get the volume of books the American Historical Review does, but one of the first things you learn as an editor is how much of the literature you do not know.  If I am facing this problem with books about Theodore Roosevelt—is this book important? Who do I ask to review the book?—I suspect the folks at the AHR are facing this problem on a much, much larger scale.  The second thing is that you will get books that are just not appropriate for the journal.  You have to have criteria for saying no.  It must be professional in nature, and you have to be able to explain it clearly to people that are going to be disappointed with your reply.  (All of this has happened to me.)

On the other hand, it is the AHR.  Although people like to claim that this journal is the flagship publication in the historical profession, it is not.  There are just too many people, working in too many diverse sub-fields for one journal to claim to be the publication of record for all historical time periods and topics.  The AHR made sense the 1910s when the history departments at major schools like the University of Wisconsin or the University of Texas had four and five members, and one of them might have been "the Europeanist" or "the Americanist."  Even after the journal outlived its usefulness, book reviews in the AHR still served a real purpose when it reviewed major works in various fields.  The purpose of a book review is to let you know what books you need to read, and which ones you do not.  A journal that offered a comprehensive and broad collection of books about various historical topics and time periods was really, really useful.  The AHR managed to do that until sometime in the early to mid-1990s.  You can have a good career without getting reviewed in the AHR.  Of my five books, all listed to the side, only one—the Olympic book—has been reviewed in that journal. (This point was driven home during a research trip I took in August to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.  I was waiting for the archivists to deliver some documents I had requested and was thumbing through several journals that were available on the rack of current periodicals to which the Library subscribed.  The AHR was one of them and I went to the book review section, and was stunned at how nothing in the entire section seemed even slightly relevant to my research, teaching, or simple history buff interests.  Maybe that is just me, but it is generally not a good reaction for a journal that wants to be the main publication in the field of history.)

The criteria that the Review uses also seems to be counter to its own interests.  The AHR does not review biographies.  That seems quite shortsighted to me.  I do not even understand why.  There is an entire Pulitzer Prize category for biography.  Another wrong call, is the refusal to review books that are aimed at the general public.  Some of these are simplistic trash, but others are quite innovative and have significant impact on the historiography of their field.  Even if they are not that good, they get attention that the field has to respond to, if for no other reason than to dismiss it, and one of the ways it does that is through the review process.  Bad reviews have utility. Just to repeat myself: the purpose of a book review is to let you know what books you need to read, and which ones you do not.

The biggest reason the AHR and its staff are wrong is that the history profession might be on the verge of undergoing a fairly large transformation.  Back in October 2011 Anthony T. Grafton and James Grossman, the president and executive director of the American Historical Association wrote an article "No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History" in which they said history departments need to realize that that many or maybe most of their graduate students would end up pursuing non-academic jobs and careers.  I was a bit skeptical about that article, but it does seem that the AHA has increased efforts to support initiatives in this direction.  If the AHA is serious about supporting scholars in non-academic careers, then the Review needs to be serious about treating scholars doing non-academic work seriously.  If people are writing about history and getting an audience, even if it is not through peer reviewed publications, the AHR needs to be offering assessments of those works.

Then again, maybe the Association is not serious about its Plan B efforts. Or maybe there is a schism in the AHA that I am not aware of; one branch of the AHR might be refusing to support the effortr of another branch.  I do not know.  One thing is clear: for their own good and the good of the profession the staff and editors of the AHR need to rethink their policy and/or offer a better explanation.

Blog CXCIII (193): What I Do

The American Historical Association started an interview series called "What I Do."  Representatives of the Association have interviewed historians that are using their Ph.D.s outside of traditional academic venues.  This series is featured on both the organization's web site as well as its YouTube channel. The videos below and their captions are taken directly from these locals and are provided to give readers of this blog some more ideas on how they can use their degrees outside of a traditional academic venue.

Rachel Reinhard talks about her role as the director of the University of California, Berkeley History-Social Science Project, which serves, she says, "as a bridge between the university and K-12 classrooms, and to support the professional development of K-12 instruction."

Carol Geary Schneider speaks about her role as president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and how she uses her background in history to further the AAC&U's mission: advancing and strengthening liberal education.

LuAnn Jones talks about her role as a historian in the Park History Program, and how she uses her background in oral history to train and teach in a variety of interdisciplinary settings.

John A. Lawrence sits down for an interview and talks about his time on Capitol Hill and how a historian's training helped him see what's really important, in any environment.

Lincoln Bramwell, Chief Historian, U.S. Forest Service, discusses his career path, which began as a volunteer firefighter alongside his graduate degree work, never imagining that these two interests would ever combine. He describes his daily work at the Forest Service and the surprising ways in which he was able to bring his training in history and passion for firefighting together at the Forest Service.

Blog CLXXV (175): A Study

Guess what? The job crisis in history is over. At least that is the impression a report by the American Historical Association suggests. Or—and this is important—it gives hard data that shows how dire job market is for the history Ph.D.

This examination is the first of two studies on job placement in history that all of us should read and consider seriously.  (I will get to the other study in the next posting on the blog.)

Returning to the AHA report—this study did a random sampling of 2,500 Ph.D.s earned from May 1998 through August 2009, which the researchers took from the 10,976 names that appeared in the AHA’s Directory of History Departments and Historical Organizations during that period.  It found that 50.6 percent of the individuals it sampled had tenure-track jobs at four year institutions.

In the Perspectives on History article announcing the findings of this report, Allen Mikaelian, the newsletter's editor, and Julia Brookins, a member of the AHA staff observed that it was “a perfect half—empty, half-­full finding. In sharing this discovery informally with historians and graduate students, we’ve found that people tend to take it as evidence of their already-­formed attitude—­be that optimistic or pessimistic.”

Other important findings: sub-fields are important to the history profession and this study found that non-Americanists had a better chance of finding jobs than Americanists.  Job placement broke even on gender.

My take: these numbers are better than what I expected.  The thing is, though, a half-full glass is actually not that great considering the amount of work that an individual invests in getting the Ph.D.  I should also note that there is a big difference in having a job in some place like Chicago versus an isolated region of the country, like southwestern Nebraska.

The 16-page study is available on the AHA website: L. Maren Wood and Robert B. Townsend, The Many Careers of History PhDs: A Study of Job Outcomes, Spring 2013—A Report to the American Historical Association, http://historians.org/Documents/Many_Careers_of_History_PhDs_Final.pdf 

Blog CLXXIV (174): The History Ph.D. as a Lot More of Things

Over the past couple of years the American Historical Association has had a feature on its website called "AHA Member Spotlight."  These biographical profiles, offer short professional sketches of various historians.  After going through all of these postings I have come to the less than startling conclusion that most AHA members are primarily academics.  No big surprise there.  Every once in a while, though, there were some outliers.  Below are a series of links to the "Spotlight" of AHA members that are doing something that is a bit unique; that are teaching in departments other than history; that are working overseas; that teach in high schools; or those that are public historians of one sort or another. These features are highlighted here in the hopes that they might give the viewers of this blog unconventional ideas about future employment.  The "Spotlights" were not developed with that purpose in mind, but a highly creative mind can look at these features analytically and find new insights in them.  Enjoy:

• Peter Kizilos-Clift, independent scholar

• Blaine Brownell, academic administration, University of Alabama at Birmingham; University of North Texas; University of Memphis; Ball State University; University of South Florida

• Ellen Griffith Spears, New College/American Studies, University of Alabama

• Nancy McTygue, Executive Director, California History-Social Science Project, University of California, Davis

• William M. Ferraro, editor, Papers of George Washington 

• Carl Abbott, Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University

• David J. Trowbridge, Director, African and African American Studies, Marshall University

• Ronald J. Granieri, historian, Office of the Secretary of Defense

• Craig Perrier, high school social studies and history specialist, Fairfax County Public Schools

• Daniel Geary, Trinity College, University of Dublin

• Marty Blatt, Chief of Cultural Resources and Historian, Boston National Historical Park/Boston African American National Historic Site

• Amalia D. Kessler, Stanford Law School, Stanford University

• Colin F. Wilder, Associate Director, Center for Digital Humanities, University of South Carolina

• Michael Cullinane, Department of Humanities, Northumbria University 

• Beth Boland, historian, National Park Service

• Taylor Stoermer, historian, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

• Jeffrey S. Reznick, Chief, History of Medicine Division U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

Blog CLXI (161): Progress and the Job Crisis

It would seem that a number of scholarly organizations in the field of history are beginning to take the job crisis seriously.  It is one thing to talk about the crisis and to publish articles, bringing attention to the problem, but it is a whole different thing to actually take action.  The American Historical Association had its annual meeting a month ago and the sponsored a job fair at the conference.  Individuals representing organizations and specialties, including the National Library of Medicine, the U.S. Department of State, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Department of Education, National Council on Public History, St. Albans School, the RAND Corporation, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Compass Lexecon, the Naval History and Heritage Command, US Army Center of Military History, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Museum of American History, and DC Public Schools had booths and talked about employment opportunities with their institutions.  This enterprise lasted four hours and was well attended. The AHA plans on having another one at its next meeting.

The other main organization in history in the United States, the Organization of American Historians has created the OAH Career COACH®—Creating Opportunities for Advancing our Community of Historians.  The COACH is an online job center that the Organization designed to help OAH members find non-academic jobs.  According to the OAH's website: “There are many good, interesting, and intellectually stimulating jobs outside the academy. Having historians in these positions ensures that the public is exposed to 'good history.’”  The website also explains, “The OAH’s Plan A is to help both students and advisers understand this market and the varied and rewarding jobs in the field of American history and extend value to its members through this Web site.”  You must be a member of the OAH to access the content.

There are also things that the smaller history organizations can do.  At its most recent annual conference this past June, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations had mock interview sessions.  Established scholars—which is to say those that have jobs and have been part of selection committees—ran practice sessions with grad students and newly minted Ph.D.s to help prepare them for going out on the job market.  They also offered critiques of their vitaes.  I also chaired a panel: "Jobs for the Ph.D. Outside Academia" at the meeting.  Each of the participants had a Ph.D. in history, but work outside of a tenure track position in a history department.  Jason H. Gart of History Associates talked about working for a public history firm.  Jim Carafano of the Heritage Foundation talked about working for a think tank.   Luke Nichter, who is now teaching at Texas A&M University—Central Texas, but was formerly a producer at C-SPAN, discussed working as a journalist. Steve Luckert of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was with on the panel at the 2011 AHA meeting.  Luckert is a curator at the Museum and gave the same talk, which is what I wanted him to do.  Sarandis "Randy" Papadopoulos is a historian for the U.S. Navy and discussed working for the U.S. government. William Morgan teaches at the U.S. Marine Corps War College, but before that was a career Foreign Service Officer.  He discussed taking the Foreign Service exam and working in the State Department. Benjamin Huggins is an editor for The Papers of George Washington, and his talked focused on work in historical editing.  It was an exceptionally well attended session and there were some good exchanges in the question and answer session. 

All of these developments are good news.  It seems that the Plan B debate is having some influence...to a degree. As welcome as these developments are—and they are—these initiatives are baby steps.  Mock interviews are good, but if there are only three jobs in a certain field, it only makes the competition that much more fierce.  A career fair is an important new development, but it would be even better if non-academic organizations were actually interviewing at the meeting.  More is needed. 

Blog CLIII (153): Alternative Careers and the AHA

There are growing signs that the American Historical Association is taking some real steps to address the biggest issue facing the profession--the job crisis.  Starting in September, Perspectives on History, the AHA newsletter, has been running columns from history Ph.D.s who have found employment outside of a history department.  The first article, "A Historian on the Hill" came from John A. Lawrence, who served for 38 years as a staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives after attending the Berkley campus of the University of California.  In the October issue, Camille Henderson, a University of Chicago Ph.D., wrote about her work as the head of the Agios Pharmaceuticals, a firm located in Cambridge, Massachusetts in "Study Change to Affect Chang: A History Ph.D. in Human Resources."  The November issue presented a discussion between four historians who are academic administrators.  They are Lauren Apter Bairnsfather, an institutional research analyst for the University of Texas; Pam Lach, a Digital Innovation Lab manager at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jason Myers, a faculty and staff support specialist and operations coordinator for the University of Denver; and Anne Mitchell Whisnant, a deputy secretary of the faculty and also adjunct associate professor of history and American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This feature in Perspectives is a good step.  The AHA newsletter has a bigger audience than this blog and these articles basically perform the same function as the "History Ph.D. as..." series that appeared in this blog.  It is my sincere hope that more initiatives from the AHA will follow.

Blog CXLIX (149): "Reform Time" Part III

A new hard copy issue of Perspectives on History is out and I now feel like I can reproduce in full my article that appeared in the April issue.  If you want the traditiona citation it is: Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "Reform Time: Some Proposals to Help Solve the Job Crisis" Perspectives on History, vol. 54, no. 4 (April 2013), 38-39.  Here is the article:

The biggest problem now facing the history discipline is the job crisis. In 2011, Anthony T. Grafton, then president of the AHA, and James Grossman, executive director, published "No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History" in Perspectives on History, generating much discussion. "We're trying to say, 'Wake up. Times have changed. There are more opportunities and that's a good thing,'" Grossman said in a subsequent interview.

Grafton and Grossman realize the history business has serious problems and made an effort to be constructive: offering more sessions at the AHA annual meeting on career issues and using the AHA website to make the profession "less hierarchal." Still, they argue that solutions to the job crisis must come from history departments that produce the PhDs.

I understand their view, and it is legitimate—the AHA is an umbrella organization and can hardly order a history department to do something—but they are arguing for their limitations. I found much of the essay vague, but I was also disturbed by an important implication of their approach. The authors have written off scholars who have finished their PhDs and are now in the unemployment lines. They discussed making changes to shape the future, but said little about helping some of the most vulnerable members of the AHA in the present.

There is still a lot that the Association can do even within the existing structure. The purpose of this article is to offer some realistic ideas in that regard:

1) Sponsor a conference on what the AHA can do: Make this a weekend, nonacademic conference. Invite 30 to 40 historians (much more and it becomes counterproductive) who have taken the lead on job issues. Make the mission of this conference one of brainstorming on concrete initiatives for the AHA to undertake. Maybe there's little the Association can do, but outside perspectives might generate new ideas that the AHA had not considered.

 

2) Sponsor a conference on what departments can do: This will prevent departments from having to reinvent the wheel. Make this a weekend, nonacademic conference, like the one above. Invite 20 to 30 department chairs and directors of graduate education, who can speak for their institutions and are deeply involved with graduate student education, to brainstorm and generate ideas. Possible discussions might include creating departmental alumni networks, reducing the course load, time given to write the dissertation, and so on.

 

The two ideas above are different from the AHA's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded initiative to explore nontraditional careers. While this project will be extremely helpful in garnering data, my proposed conferences are about tapping into the significant creative energies of the profession, being "less hierarchal," leveraging the authority of the AHA, and pointing a diffuse discipline in certain general directions.

 

3) Create a new AHA division for K–12 teachers. This division can offer important advice to interested AHA members on the requirements for teaching jobs, which can vary significantly from state to state. The AHA has secondary school representatives on the Teaching Division and the Council, but these individuals cannot offer systematic programs to help AHA members find employment.

 

4) Discount advertising: The AHA should offer steep discounts to organizations other than history departments—archaeology departments, public history firms, state agencies that do historic preservation, etc.—for job announcements in Perspectives. By steep discount, I mean one dollar per ad, two dollars for longer ads.

 

Apparently this idea has been discussed and rejected. Some members of the AHA Council believe that budget-constrained departments should not pay more than a corporation. The problem with this argument is that it puts the interests of departments ahead of the larger needs of the discipline, newly minted PhDs, and the AHA itself. This suggestion would make the AHA an asset for organizations other than history departments, in order to be inclusive to all those who study the past; increase employment opportunities for AHA members; and increase the membership of the organization.

 

5) Add other disciplines to the AHA presidency rotation: In the past the AHA had presidents in closely related disciplines like political science, library science, and archaeology. Since the end of World War II, the AHA has been dominated by academic historians. It is time for the AHA to make efforts to bring others into the organization. Broadening the leadership of the AHA is the first step in expanding the organization's knowledge of other careers where the history PhD can find employment and contribute to our understanding of the past.

 

6) Develop an AHA alternative career speaker series: Most AHA members have gone from grad school to employment as professors, and often do not have ideas about or contacts in other fields. Many historians in alternate careers have done significant trailblazing that the rest of the discipline does not appreciate. An AHA-sponsored speaker series can make these experiences better known while enhancing the reputations of archaeologists, political scientists, librarians, archivists, journalists, documentary filmmakers, historical preservationists, professional writers, museum curators, and editors who explore the past. This series will start the conversations that Grafton and Grossman want to have take place. Academic historians are not talking to these professional communities regularly and the AHA should take the lead in initiating these conversations.

 

7) Develop conversion programs: The AHA should invite a number of these other professions to a series of small weekend workshops on the skills needed to work in other fields. While a PhD in history is a great credential, the training does not always translate easily to other professional career paths. The AHA needs to help its members find ways to leverage the assets of the degree.

So, how does a history PhD trained to become a professor convert to another field? To provide an answer, a conversion program needs to address certain questions: Will new PhDs need another degree? Are internships important? Where do you go to find these jobs? In which organizations and conferences should one participate?

 

The products of these small workshops can include: a series of AHA pamphlets, such as The History PhD as Documentary Filmmaker, etc.; a series of sessions at the AHA annual meeting; templates or syllabi for similar efforts by history departments; or an AHA speaker series on alternative careers. At the last annual meeting, the AHA took a good, first step in this direction with "The Malleable PhD" mini-conference—eight sessions exploring employment opportunities in business and government. More such efforts are needed on a systematic basis.

 

8) Develop an incentive program for closing down PhD programs: Many of these proposals are designed to alleviate symptoms. The root of the problem is the overproduction of history PhDs. None of the symptoms will go away until that problem is resolved. Reducing the number of individuals holding the history PhD is a good thing for those who already have it; when supply goes down, demand—the form of job opportunities and salaries—goes up.

As a result, the AHA should encourage departments to shut down their PhD programs. Market forces will necessitate this type of action anyway. The number of history departments with PhD programs is not sustainable because faculty in these programs often carry light teaching loads, and PhD programs do not generate as much revenue for departments as undergraduate courses. The problem is faculty will resist because professional reputations are bolstered by advising PhD candidates. Another consideration is that the AHA has no authority over departments.  

The AHA can, however, offer incentives to encourage departments and individuals to do voluntarily what administrators will force on them eventually. The AHA can offer free job ads and lower rates on departmental directory listings to departments that drop their PhD programs.

This is unlikely to be enough; departments are made up of scholars who place their careers above the interests of their institutions. The AHA, however, can appeal to their concerns. Members of departments that voluntarily shut down their PhD programs can be rewarded with guaranteed inclusions in AHA publications: five book reviews in the American Historical Review; a promise by the AHR to review their next two books; an article in the journal within five years, or a promise that their submission will only be sent to three reviewers and that only two positive reviews will be required for acceptance; or a guaranteed article in Perspectives for each member of the department. These historians can also be promised sessions at the annual meeting. The AHA can hedge its bets by limiting this program to, say, the first five or ten departments that downsize.

Okay, these are my ideas. I am offering them in an honest effort to follow up in a tangible way on the "Plan B" article. If readers of this publication have better suggestions I would love to hear them, and I suspect so would the AHA.

Blog CLXVII (147): "Reform Time" Part II

My article "Reform Time: Some Proposals to Help Solve the Job Crisis" is now fully available on-line.  The AHA staff opened the article to the general public (members and non-members alike), so readers will not hit a paywall if they try to access the article. Rather than reproduce it here, I am linking to the AHA's website.  If you want citation information, it is: Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "Reform Time: Some Proposals to Help Solve the Job Crisis" Perspectives on History, vol. 54, no. 4 (April 2013), 38-39.

Blog CXLVI (146): History vs. Applied History vs. Public History

I wrote an article for the AHA newsletter Perspectives on History that is out in the current issue.  I basically use it to push some reform recommendations on the AHA that will help the organization improve job opportunities for those who are looking for work.  A good deal of editing was involved to get the article down to the required word limit.  I dropped a couple of my recommendations and also eliminated a discussion of history vs. public history vs. applied history.  The purpose of this posting is to expand on that last point since very little of it got into the final version. 

The term “applied history” is not common.  I see “applied history” as disciplines that use existing historical knowledge to address practical problems in other fields and professions.  I wish I could claim it as my own, but the first time I heard it was in 2001 at a teaching workshop when Andrew J. Bacevich, a historian teaching in an international relations department, used it to describe the courses he taught.  It is a pretty good description of the courses that I teach at the Naval War College.  These classes are about two-thirds history (military and diplomatic) and about one-third political science (international relations and political theory).  We are using the history to develop analytical skills among our students so they can become strategists for the armed services (our students are military officers or civil servants working for various agencies of the U.S. government—State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigations, etc.).  Some of the questions we explore are historical in nature, while others are designed to test theories or answer ahistorical issues.

Applied history is also a good term for a number of other professions that study the past on a regular basis.  These career paths include historians teaching in other disciplines, archaeologists, social scientists, librarians, archivists, and editors.

History—and by that I mean the type of study that one regularly encounters in a department of history at a college or university—develops information to explain and understand phenomena, events, and trends of the past.  We can call this “history,” or  “academic history,” or “basic history” or “pure history.”

The real question then is how is “applied history” different from "public history”?  In some very real ways it is the same thing.  As I understand it, the term “public history” replaced “applied history” as a basic descriptor.  Needless to say, this term is a bit confusing.  Consider this comment from James McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian who served as president of the American Historical Association in 2003: “I cannot remember exactly when I first encountered the term 'public history.' It does not seem all that many years ago. And I am embarrassed to confess that I initially thought public history was the story of public events—the kind of history that most of us taught and wrote before the private lives of ordinary people in home and family became an important field of historical inquiry.”

While the term “public history” is one that many historians might recognized instead of “applied history,” it is incredibly vague.  It is often used to describe some very different activities that have little to do with the public sphere. The job duties of "applied historians" like myself and Bacevich are not that much different than what an academic historian at some place like...oh, say...the University of Kansas or Kansas State University might be doing.  In fact, Bacevich is an academic; he is a tenured faculty member at Boston University.  My job is also pretty much the same as some one at Kansas or Kansas State, I grade papers, run seminars, read books, and do service work for the college and my department.  There are many other people that use history to explore the issues relevant to their academic fields and they are often housed in different departments at a college or university.  They include people studying: economics, music, math, art, kinesiology, and business.  Most archaeologists, social scientists, librarians, editors of historical paper collections, and archivists are also academics.

Public historians, I would argue, are primarily those that are interfacing with a large audience comprised of the general, non-academic public. This description is not to say that doing intellectually irrelevant work or having little interchange with academics.  The big difference for them is that history is very often a consumable product for their audiences that might exist for educational purposes, but could also exist for entertainment or for issues specific to certain professional disciplines.  Teaching is usually not in their mission set.  People in these fields include historical preservationists, journalists, documentary filmmakers, professional writers, national historical park staffs, museum curators, staff historians of government agencies, and individuals working for research firms.  Public historians might have a Ph.D. in history, but many times it is something they earn along the way to bolster their other professional experiences and credentials. (In this sense, the Ph.D. is not a two way street; while it helps someone in these fields, the degree does not in and of itself make one qualified to do this type of work).

Much of this discussion got cut from the Perspectives article, which was appropriate.   It took the article off target.  I also wrote at great length about public history in Blog XLVI (46): The History Ph.D. as Public Historian.  It is a good essay and has been one of the more popular postings on this blog.  This discussion, though, explains a major thrust of that previous article.  There is a big, huge divide between historians working in academic history departments and those scholars working in applied or public history.  In Blog XLVI, I quoted Alexandra Lord, a historian for the U.S. Public Health Service, on this matter: “While researching about different careers and the many ways in which one can practice history, I was struck by the academic community’s failure to regard those outside academia as historians engaged in scholarly and valuable work.  Having embraced these foolish prejudices as a graduate student and then a professor, I have come now, as a nonacademic historian, to wonder why these prejudices are so pervasive. What does it say about our profession when we believe that historians who work with senators, reporters, policy analysts, and the general public should not be the among the best of our profession? What does it say when we dismiss the historian who uses his or her degree in a unique and innovative fashion that promotes the study of history?”

So, why is this relevant to an article about reforming the AHA in the hopes of improving the job market?

Glad you asked.  A basic problem the AHA faces—even if it don't know it—is it isolated.  Most AHA leaders have gone from undergrad status to graduate school to faculty positions, and have very little knowledge of other professional opportunities for historians.  The AHA needs to make efforts to reach out to other fields.  One way as I discuss in the article is to open up the AHA presidency to people in these other fields.  That recommendation is in the article. Another way—which got cut—is to create an "applied history" division within the AHA to reach out to scholars working in other disciplines and/or public history.  My hope is that the organization can sponsor conferences and sessions at the annual meeting, arrange for the publication of articles in Perspectives, and provide services like including "applied/public historians" in the annual directory of history departments in a noticeable way (maybe make it a directory of institutions rather than departments) or make advertising jobs in perspective cheap and affordable for other organizations.  The ultimate goal of all this broadening activity is to alert AHA members—be they mentors to young scholars or the job seekers themeselves—to the employment opportunities that exist beyond the history department. 

Blog CLXIV (144): "Reform Time"

The April issue of Perspectives on History, the newsletter of the American Historical Association, is out and it includes an article I wrote "Reform Time: Some Proposals to Help Solve the Job Crisis."  My arguments will not be new to the readers of this blog, but I wanted to alert readers to be on the lookout for this piece.  I will have several references to it in the next couple of weeks.

First, I want to note that Allen Mikaelian did an impressive job of editing the essay.  I am not sure if he bought my arguments or not, but in a good give and take, we cut the article down to 1,500 words without doing much damage.  I did remove a couple of items, but why I did that I will explain later. 

Second, the AHA staff reads this blog regularly.  This fact, I think, made them receptive to publishing my article, since they have known for a while that I have been trying to offer alternatives and ideas to solve professional issues, but they are looking for other voices.  Here is Mikaelian's assessment:

We who work on Perspectives on History and AHA social media find it all but impossible either to regard the public as a straw man or to please only ourselves, because our reading public—AHA members, nonmembers in the discipline, interested parties in other disciplines, reporters looking for a story—are always present. As creative, thoughtful people in the habit of writing and discussing, who are also plugged into social media, they let us know quickly and in many formats exactly what they think of the ideas presented in the latest issue or blog post... 

The articles in this issue by Johann Neem and Nicholas Sarantakes are exactly what we want to see. Neem responds to the Tuning project with a cautionary tale from the history of higher education, and Sarantakes reacts to the "Plan B" and "Plan C" articles offered in these pages by Anthony Grafton and James Grossman. When we receive more articles like these—thoughtfully critical of AHA projects, publications, or positions; well written; offered in the spirit of advancing the conversation—we will publish them. As editor, I'll even work to make their arguments sharper.

Much the same goes for comments and blog posts on other sites that concern things we've published. We want to link to them and promote them. They should be part of the conversation, but that can't happen if we don't know they exist.

The Tuning Project is an AHA exercise in studying and then defining what a student should be able to understand and do when they graduate with a history degree.

In the closing of the article, I said that my ideas were a constructive effort to help solve professional problems that historians are facing.  You might not like the ideas—and that is okay—but if you like my ideas or have better ones to solve employment issues—and that is the real issue, not praising or criticizing my article—I hope you will offer up your voice and let the AHA know in some form or fashion.

Blog CI (101): The Plan C Debate

The Grafton/Grossman vs. Lemisch debate was interesting, but not that instructive. Lemisch has a point that the AHA has not done enough, but his specific ideas are not feasible and vastly exceed the resources of the history profession. Grafton and Grossman have as a follow up to their Plan B article published another article in Perspectives on History entitled, "Plan C."  It is a clever title, but the main thrust of the article is to emphasize a second time the arguments they made in their “Plan B” article. The two certainly realize that the history business has some serious problems and they want to be constructive in finding solutions, like offering more sessions at the AHA annual conference on career management issues and using the AHA website to make the profession “less hierarchal.”

They also make it clear in this article that the AHA will not be taking the lead, which only underscores Lemisch’s complaints about the organization. They argue that solutions to the job crisis need to come from history departments that produce Ph.D.s. They advocated a program similar to the one I suggested in Blog XCVI, but they also make it clear that good projects like these must be the responsibility of individual institutions.

What are we to make of those positions? I understand their view and it is legitimate—the AHA is an umbrella organization and can hardly order the history department at Stanford (or at any other school) to do something—but they are arguing for their limitations. With that attitude, there is no doubt that those limits will sure enough be theirs and that of the entire organization. I also found much of the essay vague. What specifically do they want to see happen? Details are absent. Finally, I am a little disturbed with an important implication of this essay. They have basically written off those scholars that have already finished their Ph.D.s and graduated. They are talking about making changes to shape the future, but very little about helping some of the most vulnerable members of the AHA.

With those points made, there is still a lot that the Association can do even within the existing power structure of the history profession. My suggestions are listed below. Some of them are issues I have discussed before, but many are new:

1) Sponsor a Conference on What the AHA Can Do: Make this a weekend, non-academic conference. Invite roughly 30-40 historians (much more and it becomes counterproductive) who have been taking the lead on job market issues. Make the mission of this conference one of brainstorming and idea generation on concrete initiatives that the organization can take to solve the problem. Maybe the answer is very little, but some outside perspectives might also generate new ideas that no one in the leadership had considered.

2) Sponsor a Conference on What Departments Can Do: There is no anti-trust laws applying to departments talking to one another and trying to initiate similar programs that can move the profession in certain directions. This type of meeting will help a number of university officials across the country from having to reinvent the wheel over and over again Like the first proposal, kake this a weekend, non-academic conference. Invite roughly 20-30 historians from leading departments who can speak for their home institutions and are deeply involved with graduate student education. (Department chairs and directors of graduate education are probably the best type of people rather than distinguished, award-winning star of the department). Make the mission of this conference one of brainstorming and idea generation on concrete initiatives on what departments can do.

3) Subsidized Membership for Applied Historians: Grafton and Grossman made it clear they want to broaden the membership of the AHA as a way of expanding the career paths open to history Ph.D.s. The term “public history” is often used to describe these positions, but that is a misleading phrase and describes some very different activities that have little to do with the public sphere. I prefer the term “applied history.” The people that study the past other than academic historians include: archeologists, political scientists, librarians, archivists, journalists, documentary filmmakers, historical preservationists, professional writers, museum curators, and editors. There are a number of sub-divisions within those categories. Many of these people doing this type of work often hold a Ph.D. in history; many do not and do not need one. For example, a degree in architecture might be more useful for a historic preservationist than one in history. Many of these professions have their own professional associations that already attract the attention, time and money of people working in these fields. If the AHA wants to broaden its base, it needs to make membership in the American Historical Association attractive to these individuals and one way to do that is to make it very cheap for a several years until an awareness of the AHA and what it can do seeps into other fields.

4) Create Two New Divisions: The first should be for school teachers. This division can offer important advice to AHA members that want to go into this field of teaching on the requirements for getting teaching jobs that usually vary from state to state. It can also offer summer workshops that help keep school teachers well versed in history. The second should be for “applied history,” which is to say scholars in other academic fields that are often housed in different departments and colleges and usually require specialized skills (like fine art; legal; medical; and mathematical historians) and people that are doing history out in the public sphere. This division should develop programming that helps bridge the divide between history and other academic disciplines.

5) Discount Advertising: The AHA should offer steep discounts to organizations other than history departments wanting to put job announcements in Perspectives. These organizations would be institutions like archeology departments, public history firms, state agencies that do historic preservation, etc. By steep discount, I mean $1 for a certain word length, and $2 for a larger size. The idea behind this suggestion is that the AHA has to make itself an asset for organizations other than history departments, if it is truly going to be an inclusive to all career types studying the past. At the moment, other professions have done pretty well without much interface with the AHA. It is quite easy for people to advertise on H-Net and not bother with the AHA newsletter. A discount for these institutions is a loss-leader for the organization. The AHA might lose money in the short run from this advertising, but by making more services available to members, it makes membership far more rewarding and useful and will maintain and even increase the numbers of people that join the AHA.

6) Add Other Fields to the AHA Presidency Rotation: The AHA had several presidents who came from other closely related fields like political scientists, library science, and archeology. Some like Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt did not even have Ph.D.s. Since the end of World War II, the AHA has been dominated by Ph.D.s in history departments. It is time for the AHA to begin making efforts to bring others into the organization. Broadening the leadership of the AHA, the flagship organization in the history business, is the first step in expanding the organization’s knowledge of other professional career paths where the history Ph.D. can find gainful employment and make a contribution to our understanding of the past.

7) Develop an AHA Alternative Career Speaker Series: Most AHA members have gone from grad school to professional employment as professors and often do not have good ideas or contacts in other fields that can help their students. Many historians have had to do a lot of trailblazing on their own that the rest of the profession does not appreciate. Why reinvent the wheel again? A speakers series that the AHA sponsors can make these experiences better known to the professorate ranks and will enhance the personal and professional reputation of these “applied” or “public” historians. It is a good way to get the conversation started that Grafton and Grossman want to see take place. These communities are not talking to one another and the AHA needs to take the lead in initiating these conversations.

8) Develop Conversion Programs: The AHA should invite a number of these “applied historians” to a series of small, weekend workshops or conferences designed to explain the skills that a new historian will need to find work in one of these fields. While a Ph.D. in history often bolsters the credentials of an applied historian, the degree often does not make one qualified to do this type of work. This was a point that a number of public historians made in Blog XLVI. Put another way, the degree is not a two way street, and the AHA needs to help their junior members find ways to use the assets the degree does bring.

So, how does a history Ph.D. trained to become a professor convert to working in another field? To answer that question some of the issues this type of program needs to address include: Will newly minted history Ph.D.s need another degree? A masters in library science is usually mandatory for most librarian positions; on the other hand, a historic preservationist might only require a certain number of courses in architecture. What other type of criteria are required? Clippings from magazines, newspapers, and websites are often crucial for people wanting to enter journalism. Articles and book reviews in academic journals are never really appropriate. Are internships important? In documentary filmmaking, this often the case. Where do you go to find these jobs? These type of jobs are rarely advertised in the AHA newsletter and there are specialized websites that list historic preservation jobs, museum positions, etc. What organizations should one join and which conferences should a budding scholar attend? Just as if you were a military historian, you would want to join the Society for Military History in addition to the AHA, there are professional museum organizations that one might want to join if you want to be a curator.

The product of these small workshops can come in several formats: a series of AHA published pamphlets that can be offered on the organization’s website: “The History Ph.D. as Documentary Filmmaker,” etc.; a series of sessions at the AHA annual meeting; template or syllabi for programs that history departments can use to convert their Ph.D.s into these career paths, or an AHA speaker series on alternative careers.

Blog C (100): The Plan B Debate: Counterargument and Rebutal

The same day that the History News Network published Response to Jesse Lemisch's essay "History is Worth Fighting For, But Where is the AHA?", they also published a counterargment from Anthony Grafton and Jim Grossman entitled: "Response to Jesse Lemisch: It's Not Enough to Just Wish for Change."  That essay was a counterargument to Lemisch's original essay.  In it the mention their Plan C article, which is not what Lemisch was responding to when he wrote his original essay.  (I will have more discussion on that essay in a new posting).  The HNN then ran a rebutal from Lemisch.  Both are published in this posting:

Professor Jesse Lemisch has raised important and thoughtful objections to our recent essay, “No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History,” and we assume he would offer a similarly trenchant critique of our follow-up column, “Plan C.” The essence of his argument rests here:

What they propose is indeed too modest, almost tragically so. What we need is not cutbacks and accommodations but rather vastly expanded funding for higher education, plus a program for historians like the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project. . . . [Grossman and Grafton] . . . accepted as a given the collapse of public support for the public good, and they seek to accommodate to it. What’s lost in this is the high value that we place on history and a complex that connects history to civilization itself. History is worth fighting for, and its importance goes far beyond the current vogue for saleable skills and narrow vocational justifications for education.

As historians who are accustomed to writing narrative, we will take the liberty of abandoning our normal style, in the interest of brevity, since as usual Professor Lemisch’s points are clear and straightforward:

1) We have not advocated cutbacks.

2) “Accommodation” is a slippery term. It can mean accepting an unacceptable status quo; it also can mean advocating change while working within an existing framework to accomplish things that ought to be accomplished. Yes, we need vastly expanded funding for higher education. AHA advocates for such funding where it has leverage. Yes, the first “Obama stimulus” should have included money to the NEH for projects to employ humanists (more realistic than “a program for historians like” FWP). Many of us pushed for such a program. But it didn’t happen and now we are here.

3) But the reality is what it is, at least in the near future: for decades colleges and universities have not offered enough tenure track positions to provide work for more than two-thirds of those who take doctorates in history, and now they are offering fewer of them than they did two or three years ago. Our choice—which is not new—is to train fewer historians or to find a more diverse array of employment opportunities. Like many AHA members, we as individuals wish the occupiers Godspeed, but as officers of a membership association, we also have a duty to serve the needs of the many members of our profession who need jobs now and will need them in the next several years.

4) Like Professor Lemisch we insist on the “high value that we place on history and a complex that connects history to civilization itself.” This is why we disagree with his assumption that broadening employment opportunities for historians is somehow wrong. History should be part of public discourse, and historians should produce some of that discourse. They can do this if they find employment across a wide variety of institutional environments, including government and business. Trained historians bring to their work a set of professional ethics, we hope, rooted in the AHA’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct, which emphasizes the importance of evidence, civil and open debate, and freedom of inquiry. We want the values and insights of historians to work their way into every corner of American public life. To increase our influence, we must broaden our perspective on employment.

Here is the rebuttal from Lemisch that the HNN ran:

I’m glad that Anthony Grafton and Jim Grossman support a break with the hierarchalism that has marked our profession’s view of non-academic employment, and I wish that the AHA, together with other professional organizations, would really get behind a new WPA. But once again Grafton and Grossman invoke “reality” to justify their accommodation to cutbacks in higher education and in history, at a time when the national and international mood is, “enough is enough!” Their goal is limited "to train[ing] fewer historians or to find[ing] a more diverse array of employment opportunities…"

Finding that the profession is cruelly preparing graduate students for jobs that do not exist, Grafton and Grossman propose to solve the problem by preparing graduate students for other jobs that also, unhappily, do not exist! This (as we say in New York) is reality? Indeed, in their “Plan C" in November's edition of Perspectives, they cite William and Mary College’s apprenticeships in archival and museum management which, according to James Axtell “have disappeared for budgetary reasons.” Not only can the College not support them, but, those of us who are indeed concerned with reality must ask which archive and which museum has the money to hire such people amidst the general collapse? How can you advocate “public history” in the absence of public funding? Reality, indeed.

Like many, I avidly leaf through the AHA program as soon as it arrives, mark it up, and fold back pages. In the content of papers to be presented at the Chicago meeting, I see a thriving historical enterprise (as they used to call it). But I see no sense of crisis. That crisis is the reality that we must face, and I see precious little evidence that this has dawned on the AHA. Grafton and Grossman want to limit the AHA’s activities to “working within an existing framework” and functioning as a “clearinghouse.” I live a couple of miles north of Zuccotti Park. More and more people, here and around the world are finding that a sense of reality dictates that we refuse to work within the diseased existing frameworks and refuse to simply adjust, as Grossman and Grafton advocate, to shrinking budgets. Enough of this deck-chair stuff while the historical enterprise steams ahead towards the iceberg.