Jan 10, 2006

Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

Teaching History: Max Hastings,"This is the Country of Drake and Pepys, not Shaka Zulu," The Guardian, 27 December, provokes a discussion at Harry Brighouse,"Max Hastings on History Teaching," Crooked Timber, 9 January.

AHA Convention and the Job Market: Scott Jaschik,"Measures of Equity," Inside Higher Ed, 10 January, reviews discussions of affirmative action at the convention; Jaschik,"In the Line of Historical Fire," Inside Higher Ed, 10 January, covers discussions among military historians at the convention about how the war influences their own work; Jaschik,"Improving Job Market in History," Inside Higher Ed, 9 January, offers hard data and good news; and Daniel Golden,"A Test of Faith," Wall Street Journal, 7 January, looks at religious commitments of faculty members at religious institutions. Thanks to Dave Merkowitz at Cincinnati Historian for the tip.

Hoax Watch: So, you lead a pretty sorry life and need to turn it around. Being a sorry sort, you hoax up the depths of depravity, publish a book about it, get it picked for Oprah's Book Club, and sell two million copies. Then, you're exposed by The Smoking Gun and, now, everyone from Fox News to the New York Times and Margaret Soltan at University Diaries are all over your sorry self. But, then, there's also Stetson Kennedy, who made himself a hero as an undercover Klansman. Turns out it was often someone else who was under the sheets.

Pity Party: Six months ago, Clayton Cramer was holding a pity party because he couldn't find a publisher. So, then, he claims that he found one. Good for him. Cancel the party. But, wait – his wife is editing the manuscript to cut it down to publishable size. Here's the last sentence in his post in which he announces that:

I am reminded of one review of Michael Bellesiles's Arming America that, while accepting his absurd claim, at least properly called him to task for at least a hundred unneeded pages, almost of which were of the from,"and the guns were all broken and rusty."

Pity party's on for Ms. C. C.

More Comments:

Robert KC Johnson - 1/10/2006

I noted the concern expressed by affirmative action advocates in this piece that senior ranks are less diverse than junior ranks. This complaint frequently appears in discussions of faculty "diversity" initiatives. The quickest and easiest way to end this problem would be to aboilish tenure, since many senior historians were hired in the 1970s and early/mid-1980s, when the pipeline itself was less balanced than is the case today. Stats for junior faculty hiring strike me as much more relevant to the question of whether discrimination exists among History hires than the unsurprising fact that there is an imbalance among senior ranks.

The specific subject of this article is an interesting one, to which I don't see an easy answer. On the one hand, discrimination laws prevent asking about sexual orientation in job searches, for the very good reason that (in most professions) anyone who self-identifies as gay or lesbian could very well suffer discrimination. On the other, the upshot of this article seems to be that this fear of discrimination doesn't apply to the academy, and therefore History Departments should do more to ensure that gay and lesbian candidates enjoy the benefits of affirmative action. In a society where state after state passed anti-gay amendments in 2004 and 2005, I think the gay rights movement as a whole would have to think twice before adopting the approach championed by the figures in this article.