Commentary: Activism and niches are killing the teaching of history at universities
The statistics are in for history as a profession, and they are dire. The number of tenure-track positions open for history professors fell to an all-time low in 2021, according to an American Historical Association report. The AHA blamed the COVID-19 pandemic. But while that explains the dip after 2020 and 2021, it doesn’t explain the broader and longer trend of history departments at most institutions shrinking. Nor does it explain why increasingly fewer students are taking history classes.
In 2021, the AHA noted that
