The statistics are in for history as a profession, and they are dire. The number of tenure-track positions open for history professors fell to an all-time low in 2021, according to an American Historical Association report. The AHA blamed the COVID-19 pandemic. But while that explains the dip after 2020 and 2021, it doesn’t explain the broader and longer trend of history departments at most institutions shrinking. Nor does it explain why increasingly fewer students are taking history classes.
In 2021, the AHA noted that “history has a majors problem.” The number of students who earned history degrees “fell precipitously after the Great Recession of 2008,” the association said, “and while the decline became a bit more gradual before the pandemic (especially when including double majors), it has continued to slip.” Clearly, the problem is bigger than merely the flawed institutional responses to the pandemic.
In the last decade, history as a profession in the United States has accelerated its transformation into a home for activism more than a faithful relating of human experience through written narratives. Moreover, it’s been given over to a deeply problematic iconoclasm. At best, this shift best makes history as a vocation primarily about morally scolding American citizens. At worst, it aims to tear down the intellectual, cultural, religious and social frameworks that uphold the republican liberties guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
