Thread by @nils_gilman

This piece on the "slow motion suicide of the historical profession" by Frank Gavin and Hal Brands has been doing the rounds. I have some thoughts in this thread. 1/18 warontherocks.com/2018/12/the-hi…

It’s indubitable that enrollments in history have fallen off, albeit more or less in line with other humanities fields. So we can agree that there is a crisis, and one that needs explaining. 2/18

But it’s simply not true that, “In recent decades, the academic historical profession has become steadily less accessible to students and the general public — and steadily less relevant to addressing critical matters of politics, diplomacy, and war and peace." 3/18

Nor is it true that there is a “retreat of scholarly history from the public square” or that history has “become more specialized and inward-looking.” At least, it's no more true for history than for any other field of the humanities & social sciences, and I would argue less so.

And the idea that the fall-off is a result of a dearth of military and diplomatic historians is not just self-serving on the part of a couple of diplomatic-military historians, it’s also almost certainly wrong. 5/18

Indeed, a big part of what motivated cultural and social history in the first place was precisely the perception that maintaining the "relevance" of the discipline required doing history not just of elites, but of ordinary people who looked like the students themselves. 6/18

(This claim that the social/cultural history focus is what has caused the drop-off is empirically testable: are enrollments in social and cultural history falling off faster than enrollments in political or diplomatic history? No, they are not.)

In fact, the real reason why history enrollments are falling off, in the first instance that is that history is a humanities major, and, like other humanities majors, a lot of students don't seem to think that such a major will "get you a job." 8/18

With that said, Frank and Hal are not wrong to detect that there is something that has changed about the nature of diplomatic and political history's instructional and research foci which may be, ahem, not quite what "the public" would like. 9/18

They observe that contemporary “historians tended to shun constructive engagement with policymakers in favor of a more confrontational approach premised on ‘speaking truth to power.’” I think this is right, but it sort of dances around the issue. 10/18

Here's the skinny: most current US historians don't think the preponderance of the historical evidence supports the powers-that-be's preferred master narrative about a benign American hegemony & democracy-friendliness abroad, or for "win-win" capitalist uplift at home. 11/18

Given that historians don't find that the evidence supports the Establishment's just-so stories, they're not telling such stories. That's what folks with a vested interested in having such stories told mean when they lament the lack of "relevance" of what historians are producing

In fact, pace Hal & Frank, *plenty* of historians are “in the public square” these days -- more than at any time since the 1960s, I'd argue. But they're not entering that square to tell stories that incumbent elites (and those who support or wish to join them) want to hear. 13/18

Consider @dimmerwahr's marvelous new book HOW TO HIDE AN EMPIRE. It's original, smart & cleverly written—in other words, totally "accessible." Daniel’s also going on NPR etc. to promote it, and it's being reviewed in major newspapers—in other words, totally "in the public square"

But HTHAE operates like historical sandpaper on efforts to justify the continued operation of the sprawling US archipelago of bases and other imperial accoutrements. In short, the "problem" is not that it lacks relevance; it’s that it's at odds with the hegemonic project. 15/18

(Same could go for the work of any number of other historians: @GregGrandin @SarahAriella @BrianDeLay @stschrader1 @vanessahistory @marydudziak @PatrickIber @bradleyrsimpson @RebeccaAHerman @nikhil_palsingh @stephenkinzer)

In other words, when I see people like Hal & Frank (who I like & respect as people & scholars) suggest that historians are "committing suicide for lack of relevance," what I hear is ideological condemnation of history that doesn't promote the nationalist-hegemonic agenda. 17/18

In sum, these guys are trying to explain a trend toward lower enrollments in the humanities by the fact that the historical profession (& the historical record) isn't providing grist to their political priors. That's not good history -- it's ideological confirmation bias. 18/18