State of Play: A Response to Linn and Showalter

The complaining went public about a dozen years ago. An essay by John Lynn of the University of Illinois in the Journal of Military History lacerated the department culture in which American academic historians did their work. Lynn’s indictment read this way: military history, a subject never held in high esteem in the academic world, was more than ever under siege, beset by new, more stylish, yet less productive approaches to the study of history. Military history might be able to survive these newest intellectual fashions, but only if we learned from our adversaries, who occasionally had something innovative to say. Of course, he addressed his essay to his fellow military historians. The chance that any of his adversaries might read anything in the Journal of Military History was, well, remote.

Lynn’s essay may not have started the talking, but it did capture sentiments that were in the air at the time. At our professional meetings, stories were passed around of military history positions abolished or demoted, left empty, or filled by scholars with more modish interests. We heard of tenures denied or delayed, stalled promotions, and declining influence in departmental councils. And in all the stories the reason was the same: military historians traffic in a most unsavory subject. Who might spend a career in such a dismal, even grisly, field? A fantasist, playing at war? A closet militarist? A truly progressive academic history department, dedicated to the advancement of humane knowledge, is clearly no place for such people (never mind that the antipathy seems a bit irrational, something like despising oncologists because of their interest in cancer).

It is difficult to know how seriously to take such criticism, but then I’ve never known how to take the complaining either. It is certainly true that great universities—Duke and Michigan, for example—once known for their military history programs have allowed them to erode. After a long and reportedly contentious search, the University of Wisconsin finally made an appointment to its military history chair, but one wonders how the new occupant will be received by his colleagues. Most faculties list only one military historian. I recently received a letter from an old mentor who predicted that when he retired, his department would probably not replace him with another of his kind. He teaches seven different courses in military history. The courses all fill immediately at registration, but, he wrote, “there is a distinct anti-military odor in the department.” And besides, what history department would actually want to attract more students?

And so we march on, troubled by the kind of news my old friend sent, but without much evidence of systematic mistreatment behind the sad anecdotes. Does one hear the same sort of complaint from colleagues in political, or diplomatic, or intellectual history? Yes. As both Brian Linn and Dennis Showalter have written, academic historians seem more and more parochial, more inward looking than ever, indulging themselves in questions so minute that they have a hard time answering the basic question, “So what?” But can we say that these historians behave any more badly toward military historians than their other colleagues? I do wonder.

Before going on, I ought to declare my colors. I have spent a career in a kind of neverland between the academic and professional military worlds, at staff and war colleges, service academies, and even a brief period on general staffs—certainly a different sort of environment from the one Lynn describes. The department where I spent most of my professional life was entirely made up of military historians, although I did my apprenticeship long ago in a traditional academic setting. Most of my professional acquaintances still make their way in that environment, and so I’m keenly aware of their tribulations. My own department was as civil as any I know, but more than once I saw behavior even in this setting that in a bar would have led to someone getting punched in the nose. Common intellectual interests do not guarantee friendly colleagues. Within any department, traditional or not, the reasons for churlish behavior and long-standing...