WHO CARES ABOUT HISTORY?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the decline of the history major and the broader indifference to history in general at a time when it feels so important to have an historical perspective during these strange and dangerous times.

On January 12, 2019, The New York Times ran an article, entitled “Students in Rural America Ask, ‘What Is a University Without a History Major?’.” Some young people want to study history, but rural universities are making that nearly impossible. The article cited as an example the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point,  where the administration wants to drop history from its curriculum, not just as a cost-saving move, but to reshape the university “…for the future.” Instead, they want “career-focused programs.”

And then there’s Peter Herman’s excellent opinion piece in the Times of San Diego denouncing a recent “executive order” by the Chancellor’s Office at the California State University system that arbitrarily (and without proper faculty input) decreased the general education requirement system-wide in a way that specifically curtails the “world history program” and the history of “American Institutions.” From now on, a student will be able to graduate from the California State University system without ever taking a history course. And it’s not like this is a small matter. The California State University system prides itself on being the largest comprehensive higher education system in America, with 23 unique campuses, over 437,000 students, and a diverse student population.

But the problem is larger. A recent Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation poll found that approximately two-thirds of Ameicans probably would not pass the exam for American citizenship!  A test that requires only a score of 60 to pass. I wonder how many of our "nativists" would fail? And some of these same people want to bar immigrants who they believe will contaminate America and its culture?

In the push for more career-oriented programs of study, liberal arts colleges like my own Barnard College have been creating and expanding STEM programs. Those programs are valuable, and necessary in our world. Students want them. But the displacement and disparagement of history, even among the humanities, alarms me. The Chronicle of Higher Education asked (Nov. 26, 2018), ”Why are Students Ditching the History Major,” and cited a study that shows history has declined more than any other humanities major. Fewer students are interested in majoring in history. Some university administrations find history departments expendable as colleges have turned corporate. History departments themselves sometimes devalue the study of earlier periods.  The history department at the University of Illinois, where I taught for years before coming to Barnard, decided not to replace their well-known historian of seventeenth-century England when she retired. Many English departments have “modernized,” feeling the need to no longer require majors to take courses in earlier periods. It is not just a matter of declining majors, changing demographics and the reshaping of departments. A recent article in the New Yorker (February 4, 2019) quite correctly called it “The Decline of Historical Thinking,” noting that the decline in history majors is evident in all ethnic and racial groups. Only the Ivy League institutions have remained immune to this decline. 

I must confess something. When I was young, history seemed just a matter of memorizing events and dates. How boring. Of course there was more to history than that, though I didn’t think so at the time. But I also avoided history for other reasons.  Having grown up with a father who was obsessed with the topic and thought the end times were upon us, I really didn’t want to think about it.  Instead, I chose Literature, especially of the past, which seemed a safe distance. I never took a history course as an undergraduate or in graduate school. It wasn’t required, and I didn’t seek it out.

It took some years for me to realize that historical thinking wasn’t a matter of memorizing dates.  I came to realize that historical thinking meant understanding the past, seeing a relationship between our present times and what has come before. And so I have become a literary critic who is also an historian. Gradually I’ve been stretching myself, wanting to glimpse the bigger picture and my students seem to like that.  So in the larger world, as in our personal lives, the past is never fully behind us. It’s not just that tragedies can repeat themselves, especially if we are not vigilant, but that the past leaves its imprint on later generations, much as our genetic ancestors remain in our DNA, our childhood traumas leave their mark.

In my opinion, we need historical thinking more than ever. Just to cite one example: Did President Trump know the history of the slogan “America First” when he started using it in his election campaign?  If not, he was ignorant of the fascist roots of the phrase in the U.S. during the 1930s among Hitler sympathizers, such as Charles Lindberg.  Would Trump have used it if he had known its history? If he knew it and would have repeatedly used it anyway, that would be a terrifying thing. But if a person is willfully ignorant of the phrase’s history, or if he refuses to accept that knowledge (or sees it as “alternative facts”), then isn’t that just as troubling? As if knowing your own country’s recent history doesn’t matter, let alone world history.  

I’m left wondering if there isn’t a close relationship between dismissing the importance of history and historical thinking, along with a cavalier attitude towards “truth,” as if we can make it up as we go, believeing there are no consequences to such ignorance.

 But we know there are.