Letters

The Evolution of the History Department

To the Editors:

I read with much interest William G. Palmer's article in the June 2009 issue on the evolution of history departments in the United States. It does contain one factual error, which I would like to correct. Professor Palmer asserts that the first female senior history professor appointed by the Harvard history department was Angeliki Laiou, who joined it in 1983. In fact, this distinction belonged to the English medievalist Helen Cam, who was appointed Zemurray Radcliffe Professor in History thirty-five years earlier and served until her retirement in 1954. I believe she was the first female professor in Harvard's history.

Richard Pipes
Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of History Emeritus
Harvard University

To the Editors:

William G. Palmer may not realize that not everyone considers the evolution of the history department "from gentleman's club to professional body" a sign of progress. Higher education is and has always been about social advancement. In that context, the type of historian who did not engage in scholarly research but instead taught undergraduate courses, provided agreeable company at lunch, and was steadfastly loyal to his college or university was closer to what the consumers of this product—the students and parents—actually wanted than the "professional" who got published with at least two favorable reviews. The "dollar-a-year men," so despised by Palmer, were living examples of love for the subject. Students could respond to that on a human level.

But then academic authorities, too full of themselves, demanded professionalism and higher quality, which, of course, meant hiring more Jews, women, and blacks. Behind the cloak of "merit," the era of brass-knuckled politics had arrived. And now we have history curricula focused excessively on slavery, mistreated women, and the Holocaust. I would hesitate to call "professional" this demographically selfish approach to history.

Students now go to college because they think they must go there to find a job, not because they have any illusions of becoming a gentleman or a lady. The original reason for going to college has disappeared—and some day society will catch up with that fact. Enjoy the boom times while they last.

William McGaughey
Minneapolis, Minnesota

To the Editors:

I would like to thank Richard Pipes and William Mc Gaughey for their comments. I am pleased to accept Pipes's correction that the first woman to hold a senior appointment in the Harvard history department was the medievalist Helen Maud Cam, not, as I had it, the Byzantinist Angeliki Laiou. In my own defense I can say that Cam received a university chair specifically designed for women. Thus, had it been up to the department to use one of its own positions to hire her, it would not have happened. In the case of Laiou, her appointment was made by the department and, I thought, more revealing about its hiring practices. But on this point Pipes is indisputably correct; Helen Cam was the first woman to hold a senior appointment in the Harvard history department.

McGaughey offers a by now familiar complaint, that history departments have sacrificed dedication to teaching to the almighty deity of research. The evolution that I described in history departments between 1940 and 1980 is therefore not evolutionary. Things were better in the bygone days when faculty members cared about students and teaching, instead of selfishly pursuing their own research.

McCaughey's criticism is weakened by several incorrect assumptions. I don't think there is any reason to think that faculty members from earlier generations did not publish a great deal because they were such dedicated teachers. And there is considerable evidence that persons who excel at research are often very good teachers. In the book on which my article was based, I discuss teaching in the Harvard history department of the 1930s. It is clear that several of the department's best teachers, Frederick Merk, Charles McIlwain, and William Scott Ferguson, were among its most distinguished scholars. Two other teachers who were extremely popular with Harvard history students in...