They’re changing the history books! They’re restricting books in the libraries! Trying to control the narrative! Distorting the facts!
Same as it ever was.
Historians are up in arms over a wave of current attempts to change what is conveyed as history. But before we get carried away by panic, alarm, and exclamation points, we should revisit the “history” of attempts to quash history. This has happened a lot. It might even be categorized as a “neverending story.”
The New Wave of Old Censorship
At the American Historical Association conference that I attended last week, there were a number of sessions devoted to considerations the wave of recent efforts to restrict how history is taught and ban books. Flyers were left on the chairs urging support for the wording of a resolution to be adopted by the powers-that-be. I’m not quite an academic, but the one thing I’ve learned is that academics are great at sitting in meetings and adopting resolutions.
Viewing history close-up is problematic; Image from jesusgilhernandez.com
Historians are all agitated, for good reason. They’re being squeezed between two forces: a highly politicized and polarized atmosphere and a steady decline in the number of students majoring in history. But are students really ditching history? And is this climate of bashing historians even unique? This variation of an intergalactic trash compactor makes a familiar grinding sound; we’ve been here before. If you want to understand what’s going on with History as a discipline, you have take a broader view and look at…(you know it’s coming) the whole history.
This topic arose during a three-day conference of the American Historical Association that kept me wandering through the rabbit warren of the Hilton in downtown San Francisco last week. By the time I was done musing about the concerns of historians–and listening to some fascinating discussions about how AI was affecting teaching, whether women had a Renaissance, why Senegalese soldiers were recruited in World War I, and how to get published–I was full of thoughts. So many thoughts about the purported slump of the history profession that I decided it warranted two separate posts.
In this post, let’s talk about whether the number of history majors is, in fact, in a tailspin.
The Disappearing History Major
There’s been plenty of hand-wringing over the decrease in the number of history students. The decline of students was part of a trend that the Chronicle of Higher Education article had noted back in 2018: “Why Are Students Ditching the History Major?” This study of the change in college degrees awarded over a span in the 2010s showed history at the bottom–a 34% drop in degrees awarded. Science and engineering crested the top, which is why you shouldn’t mention the word STEM to history department administrators unless you want to hear a stream of invective on how they are sucking up all the resources and how they get churn out published articles by rearranging the names on the same data sent to different journals. (Hearing that from my graduate history adviser and knowing how hard my son, the physics major, worked on his articles created some major cognitive dissonance!)
2018 data from Historians.org
This study from 2018 and its continuing trend prompted other articles by the American History Association which wondered whether the decline has ended, is extended, has reversed, or has backed up and run over itself? The conference held two sessions on the topic, which I confess I didn’t attend because I wanted to learn about the complex use of the word “medieval” in South Asian History and how gender and power was reflected in the Byzantine “apple affair.” But trust me, the AHA is still worried about it.
I wouldn’t be caught dead in a casino. I don’t buy cubic zirconium or Peter Max art. I don’t drink, sleep around, eat nonstop quantities of ice cream and pizza, or sunbathe. So why in the h-e-double hockey sticks would I go on a cruise?
Let me tell you…
By the way, this one is #12.
Pokemon can be fun on the ocean, if you have Internet.
The Water Is Wide
The first cruise I went on, in 1974, was not as happy-making. My brother and I were schleeped along as teenagers with my newly divorced mother to St. Thomas and Curacao. She bought herself and I matching caftans, and I suppose that idiotic grin I’m wearing is because I’m with my tall, tall cousin. (Who is now an astronomer, how cool is that?) I won’t post the picture of mom and I when I didn’t want to have my picture taken, which is a reminder of how obnoxious I could be as a teenager. I got really sunburned, seasick, was mildly accosted by a crew member (nothing serious, just the kind of thing all girls have to put up with), and mostly remember going to the movie theater and seeing “A Touch of Class” four times. Love that movie. Cry like a baby, every time.
