No, You Don't Have to Teach History After You Get Your Ph.D.

Practicing the historian's art and craft in a commercial setting involves no more compromise-and sometimes less-than in the academy. That's a lesson I've learned working at History Associates Incorporated (HAI) in Rockville, Maryland. Currently a firm with forty-five employees, HAI has been in the history business for more than twenty years. It began after the founders succeeded in writing a history of the Three Mile Island incident even before the incident had faded from the newspapers-a possibility rejected by conventional historians. Over the years the company has branched out, providing historical research for litigation and archives and records management services as well as works of history.

As the Director of the History Division and author of several of HAI's books, I am always aware that I work for a client and need to produce a work that meets that client's needs. While our histories draw upon the best insights of social, cultural, political, and economic history, none of us follows the fads or is consumed by creating the "cutting edge" theoretical constructs favored by a profession that supports novelty of a particular kind. My books, like most of our histories, are narratives. They create an authoritative record while telling stories that offer enlightening, but not heavy-handed, lessons about people and their institutions. Old fashioned? Perhaps, but what's wrong with that?

Up from the Academy

Once academic historians lamented "the public's" lack of interest in history. Enter the History Channel and Ken Burns. Then it was not that the public doesn't like history-it doesn't appreciate the kind academics write. Small wonder. The best history describes the world as it is, not as the author would like it. But in history as in politics, it is too often the fringe that sets the agenda. It is refreshing, therefore, when an aspiring historian resists the pressure to find big potential in small groups and novel methodologies.

To some acquaintances in the academy my association with HAI was always a disappointment. From the first day in class to the bestowing of the sash, my graduate program was geared toward creating professors. Early on I drank deeply of this atmosphere. Although I had begun out of a desire to write the kinds of history books that I enjoyed, at some point I convinced myself that I would teach and that my writing would serve to further my standing and contribute to the body of work accrued by the noble profession.

But with a new family I also needed a job, and that led me to HAI. I greatly enjoyed the work, primarily archival research for environmental litigation, and I learned a lot. I soon knew more about the ins and outs of the National Archives and the Library of Congress than most of my professors. When I got the chance to co-author a corporate history (even though I was training in labor history and had been taught not to think well of corporations), I welcomed it. But my "other" life in history was not a welcomed topic in grad school. On a rare occasion when I brought up my latest HAI project with my dissertation advisor, he cut me off with "Let's talk about your real book."

I finally made the decision on a career at HAI for two related reasons: disillusionment with academia and understanding of the realities of the academic job market. Although it felt good to be part of the academic (and, where I attended, substantially New Left) cause, I became increasingly aware that this was more a stifling new orthodoxy than enlightenment. To his credit my advisor urged me to question it all and think independently, but too many other grad students-often with no real-world experience-enthusiastically acquired the New Left pieties that their professors had obtained in the sixties. Labor history was peculiarly tough. I had hoped to study the kinds of working-class people I had grown up with. Instead I found myself devoting much of my attention to communists and other militant minorities (all of whom turned out to be remarkably influential) and dwelling on what should have been rather than on what was.

I persevered, networking, presenting papers, publishing, and doing job interviews, but by the time the Ph.D. was in hand I had begun not to believe the things I felt compelled to say in interviews, and just walking into a conference hotel triggered an anxiety attack. My expectations were never high, but it was also apparent that with a Ph.D. from a second-tier school and a dissertation on an unpopular subject, I might eventually land a job at a small school but only after years of itinerant adjuncting. With a wife with her own professional career and a daughter in school, that was hardly an option.

Historians, Accountability, and Compromise

In the meantime, two key realizations suggested that HAI could be more than a sojourn. First, I realized that despite the talk of scholarly detachment, the imperatives of the profession put academics under pressure to compromise that was perhaps even stronger than that exerted by the for-profit sector. Second, and most important, I discovered that history for hire need not be glorified public relations and that the market helps ensure the quality of the work.

The demand for historical works by paying clients is, of course, a small one. But that works in our favor. Those who come to us almost always value history and know that somehow their organization can benefit from it. Still, few know exactly why this is, and our first job is to help them reach that understanding. Preliminary discussions usually reveal two concrete client desires. On one hand they want to get beyond the same old boilerplate histories that their public relations people have been recycling for decades or more. On the other they want to understand and convey how their story is bigger than themselves: how they fit into, and perhaps even helped influence, broader social, cultural, and economic changes.

In most cases, then, our clients do not want public relations work-they've usually got people to do that. Their requirements call for skills that PR specialists do not have but that define the historical profession. In helping our clients get beyond the timeworn (and often inaccurate) old stories, we practice the craft of history, doing painstaking research in archives, manuscripts, and internal records and conducting oral histories. To help our clients understand how their story is bigger than themselves, we apply the historian's art, combining mastery of political, cultural, social, and economic contexts with a deep understanding of the particulars to craft broad historical interpretations.

HAI historians must be generalists, not only because they must be prepared to handle a variety of topics from book to book but also because clients, understandably, want general rather than specialized histories. It can be argued that we don't pay as close attention to the negatives in an organization's history as journalists or academics might. But that is a luxury we do not have. We do not cover up the blemishes (most of our clients, in fact, insist that we do not) but we do paint with a broad brush, and from that perspective nearly every story we've told is a generally positive one. Our clients have all provided society with valued services, products, and expertise.

Do I miss the academy? I remember fondly the gratification that comes from teaching. But I also recall the game: the pursuit of respect-or flattery-from peers and professors by helping to further ideas and interpretations that the profession has deemed important. Overall I have found that there are more rewards working in a "for hire" setting and many fewer compromises. HAI may be short on respect from academia and our books do not make bestseller lists, but for hundreds and even thousands of readers it does not matter. Our work has made a difference. For most of the people I have interviewed or corresponded with over the years, an HAI book is a welcomed encapsulation of a lifetime's work. Through our work they recall, relive, rethink, and more deeply appreciate their own careers. And it is not merely the "old-timers" for whom we write but for current leaders and employees who, on better learning where they have been, gain a better understanding of where they might go.

HAI is committed to being not only a challenging but also a secure employer. But as a professional historian I'm doing much more than a workaday job-you can't leave your ideas on the desk at 5 p.m. But whenever the day does end, I know I've created a piece of a truly useable past. I respond to the market, but it usually brings out the best in me and my professional training. Can those aspiring academics who feel compelled by academic pressures to venture ever farther into the irrelevant and absurd say the same?