The Chronicle of Higher Education

dents whose dissertations I have advised to date at N YU. About a quarter have gone—as a first choice—into nonacademic careers in museums and archives, or into community advocacy, editing, filmmaking, writing nonfiction for young adults, university administration, and news production. Those students included some of the best I have supervised, including one of the three advisees who won the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians for the best dissertation. For those students, nonacademic careers had much to offer. We need to work hard to get beyond the Plan B mentality.

I do not have solid evidence on this point, but I think the notion of academe as the only suitable outcome of doctoral education is a myth generated by the highly untypical period from the mid- 1950s to about 1970. My sense is that the historical profession (and the human sciences generally) became much narrower and more academic in the decades after World War II. Oddly, not only was this narrowing nourished by the flush times of the so-called academic Golden Age that ended in the early 1970s, but it has even accelerated during the hard times since. We have to get past that Golden Age myth, which turned out to be fool’s gold, and recover our deeper roots of being in both academe and the larger world, using history to change the world as well as to describe it.

In line with that, we need to think about a richer curriculum for undergraduate and graduate historians. That will require working with colleagues in other departments and schools of universities to challenge the fear of change and establish new tracks and new majors.

We should think much more about joint efforts with professional schools and programs; we should more aggressively describe history as a pre-profes-sional major for certain nonhistory careers, most obviously law and public service in both the domestic and international realms. And I would add business as well. Thinking about history as a major or co-major in those ways would not only increase enrollment but also provide a strong historical and liberal education for those who practically shape the world we live in. I want them to do that work with the knowledge and the analytical and communication skills we teach to historians.

But it will require more than catalog
copy. It means developing appropriate
courses. How many history depart-
ments offer a course on the history of
the Constitution? Or any form of legal
history for undergraduates? How many
have a prelaw adviser?
Why should we not take
over the prelaw con-
stituencies from political
science and economics,
where students are in-
creasingly indoctrinated
in the very jazzy but lim-
ited methods of rational
choice? I would say the
ested in public service. The extension
of our knowledge and methods would
itself be a public service.

THE CONNECTION between histo- ry and civic life, between history in the schools and the university, was well understood by the early leaders of our profession. Herbert Baxter Adams, Frederick Jackson Turner, Albert Bushnell Hart, among others, all devoted considerable energy to outlining the school history curriculum, and they all spent time on teacher development. Their aims could be ours: Better teaching of history in the high schools will produce more students in our classrooms, as well as elevating general historical literacy and the level of national political discourse.

There are more possibilities for joint programs and degrees than I can list

We need to prepare
students for a broader
menu of professional work
as historians.

here, but they would include linkages with public affairs, business administration, international relations, social work, and journalism. That would bring historical thinking to the professions and provide students with a means of using that package of knowledge and skills. Whatever the value or lack of it in these specific suggestions, I hope historians will seriously consider resetting the discussion and exploring the value of introducing history and the liberal arts generally into professional training in many domains. That is what we were trying to do in the urban-anal-ysis program at Green Bay long ago.

Although an employment crisis
prompts these reflections, there are
good educational and civic reasons to
think big. Doctoral training in history
as it developed in the 19th century in-
cluded a commitment to civic life and
leadership; in the first half of the 20th
century, history was at the core of civic
professionalism, partly because the
social sciences generally were then his-
toricist. With the loss of
that perspective in the
social sciences, it is all
the more important and
opportune for history to
extend its terrain. I hope
we can recover our for-
gotten legacy as we go
forward. Let us indeed
consider going back to
the future.

Thomas Bender is a professor of history and university professor of the humanities at New York University. This essay is adapted from a talk at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.

Check It Out.

MLA members can request a complimentary copy at www.mla.org. Each copy includes print and online formats.

Assign It.

Your students can start using the Handbook the day youassignit.Th ey can buy access online at www. mlahandbook.org (a print copy will be mailed to them) or purchase a print copy online or at their local bookstore (each print copy comes with an online-access code).