Thread by @KKriegeBlog

Yesterday, I accepted a tenure-track history professorship. I'm grateful and excited to work in my field! With that said, History is in trouble. For my wargaming/reenacting followers who might not know, prospects are bleak for #twitterstorians . History needs help. 1/24

Re: my job, I don't have the space here to thank everyone who helped me along the way. Pride of place has to go to my supportive parents and my loving wife. I couldn't have done it without you. I'm grateful for my professors, fellow students, and friends for their support. 2/24

I have benefitted from having two truly great mentors and inspirations in my life: Katherine B. Aaslestad (my Doktormutter) and Christopher Duffy. Both aren't with us anymore, but I've done my best to make them proud. 3/24

I'm obviously OVERJOYED to have this position. But I am also determined to not let survivorship bias influence me too much here. For those who aren't carefully watching this, ~ 1 in 4 people who do the hard work of getting a Ph.D. in History get an academic position. 4/24

I didn't beat the system: I got lucky. History PhDs who go to top programs: Harvard, Yale, Wisconsin-Madison, etc (I didn't) have a 14% chance of getting a TT job right after graduation. People like me, who went to a "below top thirty" school have a 7% chance. 5/24

If you stay on the market, as I did, that chance eventually rises to about 25%. And every year you are on the market after graduation, you know your chances are slowly diminishing. 3 years after graduation, they are pretty low. 6/24

But here is the rub: what do you do while you wait? You can adjunct: there is always a market for intensive low-wage contract work, but you can't support yourself on that. Do you get another job? Will that look bad on your CV (resume)? 7/24

You can apply for visiting positions (what I did) and postdocs. These positions are almost as competitive as tenure track jobs. The amount of time they require to apply is also not much less than a TT job. More on that later. 8/24

At every level of my education, there were students who were more gifted and successful than me who didn't make it. People who gained entrance to more prestigious programs than I did: who still didn't make it, or are still on the market. Many of my friends didn't make it. 9/24

Over the last four years (I graduated in 2021, but was on the market since 2019) I applied to 300+ jobs. Applying for these jobs is not a simple process, either. You don't just send in your resume. Each application requires a cover letter, and 2-4 specific statements. 10/24

Sometimes they require a writing sample, sometimes a teaching statement, sometimes a diversity statement, sometimes a teaching portfolio. So imagine writing a small grant, dozens of times a year, for years. You need 3,4, or 5 letters of recommendation from your professors. 11/24

That is what it is like to be on the job market: to be writing a small grant dozens of times a year for years on end. And the crushing part is, for ~250 of the 300+ jobs I applied to, I didn't even get a rejection letter. You are just left waiting, permanently. 12/24

In 4 out of the 300+ applications, I got a phone interview. This means doing hours of follow-on research on who is in the department, what they might be looking for, what classes they might need filled, etc. 13/24

In 3 cases after my phone interview, I moved on to the on-campus stage. This is a 1-2 day long interview process in which you are interviewing with faculty, administration and students at a university. In one on-campus visit, I interviewed with administrators of 5 hours. 14/24

You perform both an hour-long research presentation, and a class-length teaching demonstration, in addition to 6-12 hours of interviews. Bring a red bull. Knowing people can be a blessing and a curse: I was rejected by a committee with members who had known me for 8+ years. 15/24

Obviously, this is a hard process for people getting History PhDs. A economist might say: well, you choose this field, and so you are suffering the consequences of your actions. That might even be true, but all of this has darker consequences for the discipline. 16/24

History is a wide subject: you have all of human history to select a topic from. Practically fewer PhDs are being granted to scholars who focus before 1900. In my sub-field, in the whole of the 18,000+ history faculty in the USA, it is basically me and 3 other people. 17/24

If trends continue as they are now, and departments continue to shrink, entire fields of historical inquiry will be in jeopardy having no scholars working in them. The Civil War will be ok, so will WW2, (and these are important fields!!), but there are areas that won't be. 18/24

Again, an economist might say: study what is popular and in demand. I do believe, though, that the human past is worth studying beyond what is trendy and popular. Christopher Duffy did too. 19/24

So what do we need? We need @BretDevereaux to be president of the AHA. In all seriousness (not that I'm seriously opposed), we need younger and more aware faculty to say, "enough is enough. We are cancelling the apocalypse in the humanities."

https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1633846118454001664

20/24

We need a generation of historians who are able to make the case to millennials (of which I am one) and generation Z (who I love in my classes) that History, as a profession, is worth saving. I've written two public-facing articles this year, one in War on the Rocks... 21/24

and one in The National Interest. I have another, fingers crossed, under review. I'm looking into grant writing at my uni. Let's come together as a discipline and try to save this thing that we love.

https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1633846163303694342

22/24

I know this was a heavy and profession-specific thread. Many of my followers are wargamers, reenactors, and military history enthusiasts: this impacts you too. Professional historians are doing the leg-work that makes your rigorous enjoyment of the past possible. 23/24

I promise a lighter (not that history of battle is a light subject) thread on firepower tomorrow. Please, share this around. I've been lucky and fortunate, but so many haven't. History needs help. #Historyneedshelp 24/24