A few weeks into my freshman year at Stanford, a friend asked if I wanted to join him for a lecture delivered by David Kennedy. I was not at all enthusiastic. I had heard historians in high school who have the remarkable ability to ramble without any excitement in their remarks. My friend, to persuade me to accompany him, told me that Kennedy was going to talk about his forthcoming book, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and that he had a reputation of being a terrific lecturer. I agreed to go and I remain glad that I did to this day. Kennedy’s remarks had me completely captivated. He started with a narrow story that expanded into a huge narrative that included economic and cultural analysis and talked about both social and political history in his presentation. Kennedy talked for nearly an hour, and I could have sat for an hour more.
After hearing Kennedy, I considered majoring in history. How Kennedy presented was anything but dry or esoteric, his words and ideas seemed relevant to the politics of the year 2000. Because of Kennedy’s lecture, I shopped a host of history courses the next term. Sadly, the professors were nowhere near as dedicated to lecturing and presenting history so dynamically as Kennedy.
In the two decades that have elapsed, I have met some truly remarkable historians who are not only great writers but are captivating teachers. However, they are the exception and certainly not the rule. Students are not excited by history classes, and scores of students have shared their similar frustrations over history classes with me.
Unsurprisingly, students are fleeing history departments. The American Historical Association has sounded the alarm for years and justified this decline with a host of explanations, including job market considerations and the rise of interdisciplinary majors that draw students away from general history departments, to perceptions of the courses being too rigorous. Of course, historians never note that a decline could be caused in part by the fact that history departments have become incredibly left-of-center and faculty see their jobs as social advocates.
But there may be another, even more direct explanation—the courses themselves are just terrible; they are not engaging, nor are they made relevant to students because teaching is not a priority to many historians today.
A fascinating new study by Burkholder and Calder looked at 150 professional obituaries of historians published in Perspectives on History between 1996 and 2021. Their content analysis revealed that “the amount of obituary-column space devoted to research dwarfed that of teaching and service, sometimes by a factor of greater than 10 to one.” They noted that “not only was teaching undervalued in the obits, but it was also often mentioned even less than service, a category of faculty work that typically is the weakest” when looking at a scholar’s professional standing. If obituaries reveal what academics truly value, then it is the case that “research is perceived as a far more significant career achievement than is teaching or service.”
This study should give historians pause. There is now strong empirical proof of how little academic historians value teaching, and this fact may be why enrollments in history courses continue to languish. This does not mean, however, that interest in history does not exist. Just the opposite. Many want to better understand history and, given the present political events, want to place the 2024 election in a historical context. When I meet with professionals in the tech and financial sectors, they are always reading and thinking about history and want to engage with the past; the history book market is now growing. One of the most well-known scenes in the film Wall Street involves the “tulip bubble” and market speculation. While the facts in that scene were not entirely accurate, almost all finance professionals know this scene and are keenly aware of the power of understanding history.
Commenting on the teaching of others will not win me many friends. Historians will point out that many other academic departments do not have norms that reward or emphasize teaching either. When I first became a professor, a senior colleague in the politics department saw the time and effort that I put into working with and knowing my students. That colleague said that I was sending the department the message that I was not a serious scholar by caring about teaching. But, given this new evidence about teaching, historians would be well served to remember that there is a marketplace for courses. Focusing on dynamic and innovative courses and teaching will be rewarded—there is an interest and a hunger for understanding the past, but so many history departments are simply not meeting that demand.
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