History Needs to be More Accessible for Historians

Tim Lacy is worried that historians are engaged in "a dichotomous conversation" based on their ability to pay for (and thus access) historical sources. This follows a similar concern he expressed about the costs involved in doing good intellectual history. In short, Tim thinks there is a class problem whereby better-financed historians have access to journals that lesser-financed, and usually younger, historians do not. At the same time, the latter are generally more reliant upon--and willing to use--on-line (read "free") sources. The essence of his point is this:

It seems to me then that digital subscription issues tend to detrimentally affect non peer-reviewed output by history professionals more than other kinds of writing. This means writing on subjects where historians are acting as public intellectuals. Of course this also extends to audience---print and online audiences are only seeing writings by those who work in each medium. It's an obvious point, but it is important to remind ourselves of the consequences.

If historians can't afford the time, energy, and money to go to their home institution's library to read print subscription output, their non-peer reviewed, public-intellectual work will likely be based on easily accessible web resources, resulting in two tracks of professional conversation about larger subjects.

Tim is seeking input, so here's mine: You bet it's a problem, especially for independent types like me. As a non-academic making my living in an entirely separate field, there's no way I can regularly keep up with the latest in scholarship. However, I also understand that I'm significantly in the minority and that the entire profession needn't change to suite me!

That being said, it is worth considering how younger historians on an academic track regard these access and financial roadblocks. As a profession, historians had better work towards easier and more cost-effective individual access to journals. A new generation that is used to operating on their own (ie; without having to be "affiliated") and having vast amounts of information at their fingertips is coming fast and they correctly expect that the "scholarly superstructure" of their profession is up-to-date and "user friendly." Right now, their in for some considerable disappointment.

Free JSTOR

Manan Ahmed points to both Danah Boyd's decision to publish in only Open Access Journals and Harvard's decision to require that all scholars affiliated with it allow free publication of their work. Thus inspired, he has decided to instigate a "Free JSTOR" campaign. Why? As Manan writes:

One of my biggest complaint about our academic world is about the inaccessibility of research to anyone without institutional affiliation or a hefty bank account. The impact of which is that, academic work in the humanities remains largely confined to a handful of readers and commentators.

I couldn't agree more. As a non-affiliated, "independent" historian, I can't access JSTOR from home because I can't justify paying the single-user fee. Of course, I can do so from one of the many libraries around, but having to take a trip to the stacks sort of takes the spontaneity out of history blogging. Being able to access them online for free, or even a minimal charge, would certainly be better!

Barzun on History (via Nat'l Review)

The November 19, 2007 issue of National Review contains an "Appreciation" of Jacques Barzun by M. D. Aeschliman. Similar pieces have been penned in the New Yorker and New Criterion and all were inspired on the occasion of his 100th birthday. The plaudits are well deserved. Barzun is the sort of public intellectual and polymath that we rarely see nowadays. I was first exposed to Barzun when one of my former professors (a practicing psycho-historian) sent me along a selection of articles on psycho-history, including an excerpt from Barzun's Clio and the Doctors, a skeptical critique of quantitative and other "scientific" methods of doing history. Later, I read much more of Barzun in my historical methods class (his book with Henry Graff, The Modern Researcher, was an assigned text) and have enjoyed his work on historical theory (among other things!) ever since. Here's a bit from the NR piece:

It is Barzun’s contention that history is fundamentally made by individuals, and that all forms of determinism are grievously mistaken and destructive. Human liberty is an absolute datum of consciousness and reality: The human person’s “supreme pleasure and prerogative,” he writes, “is to feel himself at once a moral being and a natural philosopher.” No subjectivist, Barzun is nevertheless a rootand- branch opponent of two dominant modern intellectual extremes and errors: scientific reductionism (“what it reduces is the individual”) and histrionic subjectivism, dominant in the modern arts, a kind of permanent childishness: “We are permissive, not from love of liberty, but because we lack self-control and fear restraint as such,” he wrote 40 years ago. “We praise innocence because we want the license to behave like an infant.” These extremes congeal into intellectual attitudes and institutional forms in the culture and the schools: the scientistic worship of material procedures and objects, and the anarchic exaltation of aesthetic eccentricity and “self-expression” (what C. S. Lewis called “a world of incessant autobiography”).

***
Though inevitably and consciously a philosophical historian, Barzun is rightly suspicious and critical of all works on “the philosophy of history”—from Marx and Hegel through Spengler and Toynbee—that deny human agency and novelty. “A trend is variable and may be reversed,” he wrote in 1964, “as history, which is the graveyard of trends and the birthplace of counter-trends, amply shows.” Communism is dead, though its Western historical trumpet E. J. Hobsbawm is still alive and sounding. There is no monocausality and no determinism in history:
The “relentless” modern “drive to de-anthropomorphize,” to “unman” the human person, Barzun writes, must be shown to be not only logically false but emotionally demoralizing and politically harmful.

In addition to his timely 1941 critique of Marxism—at the high point of Western intellectual sympathy for and collaboration with Communism—Barzun’s lifelong hostility to the implicit, incessant, invalid philosophizing of Darwin and the Darwinians (increasingly explicit and vocal today) isone of his most courageous and illuminating achievements as an intellectual historian and civic moralist. In the 1870s the German Darwinist biologist Haeckel wrote to Darwin to congratulate and praise him for having “shown man his true place in nature . . . thereby overthrowing the anthropocentric fable.” Barzun’s teacher Hayes, Barzun himself, his student Fritz Stern, and Richard Weikart in his recent From Darwin to Hitler have shown in detail how historically and morally disastrous this transgressive philosophical dehumanization was for the Western mind. Barzun quotes a 20th-century “positivistic” French jurist as writing: “Responsibility, which is the foundation of the penal code, eludes scientific analysis and is thus a source of error and confusion.” Like Dostoevsky and C. S. Lewis, Barzun repeatedly argues that “learned foolishness” is the most dangerous folly of all, especially when clothed with the authoritative mantle of high science as in “the behavioral idea that mind and purpose are illusions.”

Barzun’s rationality is never reductive or arbitrary: “Life, which spurs desire and fills the mind, is wider than science or art or philosophy or all together. Mind encloses science, not the other way around.” Yet the radical voluntarists and irrationalists—whether historians or artists—are also mistaken: We are conditioned rational beings with implicit obligations to civilization as an ideal and partial reality. Among early modern thinkers, Barzun particularly admires Erasmus and Swift in this regard. In “Swift, or Man’s Capacity for Reason,” he wrote in the somber year 1946: “The axioms of social reason have a long history in Western culture, and Swift met them again and again in his favorite authors . . . Herodotus, Lucian, St. Augustine, Dante, Rabelais, and Montaigne.”

Why a Family Guy Won't Get a History PhD Any time soon

When I went back to school to get a degree in History for the fun of it, I thought (naively) that getting an MA was a logical first step. But as I progressed--and despite urgings from various prof's to go for the PhD, practical considerations came into play. First, assuming I could get into a "local" (ie; southern New England) History PhD program, it would be too expensive and take too long (h/t Ralph) for a guy trying to raise a family.

For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.... Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.

Well, since I started my MA at 34, I was already behind the curve! Oh well. I may not have been elite enough (via PhDinHistory) anyway:

First, doctoral students in history have come and continue to come disproportionately from relatively privileged family backgrounds. Second, the proportion and number of students in doctoral programs from first-generation college families is declining. This trend—if the weak data are sufficient to speak of a real trend—is relevant to both diversity and opportunity questions. And the data point to a third, more speculative point. The uncertainty of employment in history may be discouraging students from first-generation college families from pursuing history careers. One can understand their preference for more secure career paths, but the profession loses vitality and students of potential lose an opportunity to pursue what may be to them a substantively if not practically appealing life work.

Neither of my parents got their B.A., but all of their children have. For myself, I always loved history. Heck, in high school, I wanted to be a History teacher and a HS Soccer coach. But my parents steered me into engineering because, as they pragmatically pointed out, there is always a need for engineers. They were right. Sure, I still like History, but a PhD wasn't even on my radar coming out of High School.

Besides, being an engineer led to financial stability such that I could finally scratch that itch and get the MA. But the PhD just isn't practical for me right now, even though I'd absolutely love to do it.

PhDinHistory adds (check out his charts that illustrate the below):

I think we should be concerned by the way that history has suddenly become more elitist than almost every other major discipline in the humanities and social sciences. Like the authors in The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century, I worry that history faculty will have less and less in common with their students. I am concerned also that smart history majors from lower- and lower-middle-class households will be increasingly steered away from entering graduate programs in history. Lastly, I share the fear of the authors that this problem stems, at least in part, from the mismatch between PhD production and the demand for history faculty in the job market.

I think he's right on. Many of those "smart history majors from lower- and lower-middle-class households" already survived the temptations of following other, potentially more lucrative educational paths. They need to be encouraged to keep climbing the ivory towers. More diversity and more perspectives will strengthen profession. And maybe someday, people who have lived a portion of their adult life outside of the ivy walls will be better able to open the gates and climb the tower stairs.

Goodbye AHA

Its object shall be the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history. -- Article II, Constitution of the American Historical Association

=======================================================

Resolved, That the American Historical Association urges its members through publication of this resolution in Perspectives and other appropriate outlets:

1. To take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession; and

2. To do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.

Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession, March 12, 2007.

When the second quoted item--the AHA's Iraq War resolution--was passed, I wrote,

I don't think the average person gives a crap about what the AHA has to say about Iraq. And I guess I don't either. My only decision is whether or not such an organization deserves my dues.

Since then, I've neither seen nor heard anything from the AHA regarding standing-up for the profession other than when it is against the Bush Administration and an Imperial Presidency. Nothing about the Clinton's stonewalling the release of records or of their former crony Web Hubbell absconding with historical documents from NARA. No hue and cry about the history lost. Oh, they reported it in one of their "Inside Washington"-type columns, but didn't see fit to decide or "resolve" over it. I guess actually stealing and destroying documents isn't as bad as putting a hold on them while we are at war. I'm sure the AHA was all over FDR for the same things.

Anyway, enough is enough. I'm letting my membership lapse and am discontinuing my affiliation with the AHA. I'm fed up with their inability to resist immersing themselves in ideological politics while under a veneer of doing so to safeguard the "values necessary to the practice of our profession." Sure, there are other, practical ($) reasons why I'm checking out of the professional side of the, er, profession. Basically, the services the AHA offers an "Independent Historian" like me (basically, access to book reviews and a few articles in AHR) are easily found (for free!) here on the web. Frankly, because I wasn't going to be going for a PhD or teach any time soon, it was never a perfect match to begin with. Face it, the AHA is of, for and by the PhD's, all of their wailing and gnashing of teach about the "role of the MA" or "public historians" aside. And that's fine, but ain't for me. No harm, no foul....and no more money from me.

Have Master's Degree, Will (Can)Teach

I like this idea from Victor Davis Hanson:

To encourage our best minds to become teachers, we should also change the qualifications for becoming one. Students should be able to pursue careers in teaching either by getting a standard teaching credential or by substituting a master’s degree in an academic subject. That way we will eventually end up with more instructors with real academic knowledge rather than prepped with theories about how to teach.

If I wanted to teach History in Rhode Island, I'd have to go back to one of the teacher mills to get all of the proper credentials over-and-above my MA. I'm sure the other facets of "doing my time" or "paying dues" wouldn't go away, but it would certainly save me a little money and time!

Maybe Someday....

Well, maybe someday-when the kids have grown and I can really think about making a career change (or I hit the lottery)--I'll be able to apply for a job such as this:

Medieval/Ancient World

The Department of History at Wheaton College (MA) seeks a tenure-track assistant professor with scholarly and teaching expertise in the fields of classical, late-antique, and/or medieval history. The History Department is especially interested in social or cultural historians whose thematic expertise includes gender, popular religion, material culture, cross-cultural contact, or the history of science or the environment. Geographic field open; preference for Celtic world, northwestern Europe, or southeastern Europe. Ph.D must be in hand at time of appointment. Send letter of interest, CV, and three letters of reference by November 26, 2007 to Alexander Bloom, Chair, Department of History, Wheaton College, Norton, MA, 02766. Preliminary interviews will be conducted at the 2008 AHA annual meeting. For more information, please contact hr@wheatonma.edu. AA/EOE. Wheaton College seeks educational excellence through diversity and strongly encourages applications from women and men from historically underrepresented groups.

Within an hour of my home. Possibility of working with a really interesting English professor. Damn the practical bent!!! Ok, vent over. Seriously, if I had the time and money to go for a PhD, I would. But I've got a couple kids to raise, and they come first! Besides, my engineering job ain't bad.