Historians Who Succeeded in Getting an Op-Ed into the NYT

Beginning in the early 1970s the New York Times transformed journalism with the inauguration of the op-ed page, which gave writers and intellectuals from outside the newspaper the opportunity to weigh in on important public issues.

This year HNN has kept track of the historians who have been published on the New York Times op-ed page (see below). For many historians publication on the op-ed page marks a major milestone in their careers. But to whom did the New York Times grant the privilege? And on which topics were they allowed to write?

Basic statistical data shows that history on the op-ed page remains his story. Of the twenty-six historians published through Thanksgiving in 2003, only four were women. American historians also got most of the ink. The Times only published five foreigners—four Brits and one Israeli. It appears that historians from non-English speaking countries have not won the editorial board's favor. The op-ed editors, with one exception, did not accept multiple pieces from the same person. The exception was the conservative Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who had the distinction of seeing his name on the op-ed page three times.

Prestige and fame in areas related to events heavily covered in the news or of timely interest were the best bellwethers of success in 2003. Eight of the published historians hold academic positions—nearly all of them endowed chairs at elite universities. For example Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell, wrote about Donald Rumsfeld's comparison of Iraq with the founding of America. Nearly all of the other op-ed historians have published widely acclaimed best-selling books. Antony Beevor, author of the number one bestseller, Berlin : The Downfall 1945, compared the situation in Iraq to World War II. Richard M. Ketchum, considered one of the most eminent historians of the American Revolution and the author of more than ten books on the subject, published a piece on the history of July 4 th.

In the international arena, an unsurprising eleven columns concerned the war in Iraq. These articles covered many facets of the war. Two discussed the history of Euro-American diplomacy with regard to Iraq, while another two compared the Iraq war to past U.S. wars. Several other articles elucidated different aspects of the region's history. No article, however, focused on any other international issue. The editors of the op-ed page chose not to print pieces from historians that focused on Liberia, North Korea, or Afghanistan. (Some articles related to these subjects found their way into print in the less-visible NYT's Week in Review, which in 2003 featured more than a dozen articles by historians. Just this past week Niall Ferguson, one of the NYT's favorite scribes, wrote a piece published on the front page of the Week in Review. But it is the NYT's op-ed page that remains the most prestigious real estate in American journalism.)

Domestically, the Times published a wider variety of pieces, but the majority dealt with national politics. Six reflect the president-centric view of American journalism. There was one each on Nixon, Reagan and Lincoln, two on George W. in comparison to other presidents, and one on the militarization of the presidency. Two additional articles focused on the history of party politics – one on the Democratic Party and one on the Republican Party, an apparent bow to bi-partisanship.

The Times also published four regional pieces, two on the history of New York City, which was not surprising, and two on California. One piece discussed the historical antecedents of Proposition 13, the anti-tax legislation sponsored by the late Howard Jarvis, and the other dealt with the fear of SARS. Finally, the NYT published two pieces on the history of science—one on NASA at the time of the Columbia accident and another on death penalty technology.

That historians had much more to say about public affairs than the NYT op-ed page might suggest is obvious given the plethora of articles published weekly here on HNN.