Introduction: The Ongoing History Crisis

You can see it in the empty chairs. History conferences were never standing-room-only affairs, to be sure, but it was once common for 15–20 people to show up at a conference presentation. If a scholar was better-known or had a major book hot off the press it might draw in 35–40 people. Now, sometimes, conference panels draw only the speakers' spouses or graduate school acquaintances or loyal friends. I was once on a panel where nobody but the speakers attended (insert joke here). These days, some of the conferences I used to attend and greatly enjoyed have been canceled entirely. History journal editors also whisper about what they are seeing. Article submissions used to stream in at steady clip. Now the pipeline is but a trickle. Prominent history professors, who once anchored departments and enlivened the public sphere in and around college towns, now retire with little fanfare and nary a replacement. Their "line," if it survives at all, is moved across campus, to computer science or physical therapy. The old-time symposia and lectures and debates, to which seasoned history professors once provided intellectual heft, are now a rarity. It seems like fewer historians are around to lead such civic affairs, or they have less time now due to escalating workloads. If historians do somehow survive the academic tumult there are a lot fewer students to teach. New data show that the number of history majors in American colleges has dropped by more than 50 percent since 2000.¹

Around the Midwest, the news from history departments is grim, even at larger institutions. Iowa State University's history department has been told by the ISU administration that its faculty needs to shrink from 20 to 8. The ISU doctoral program in rural history, a key contributor to Midwestern studies, is also being shuttered. The University of Iowa's full time history faculty has declined from 26 to 16 in about ten years. University of Missouri: 30 down to 21 (over the past decade); University of Kansas: 35 down to 24 (since 2017); The Ohio State University (system): 79 down to 62 (since 2008); University of Minnesota: 46 down to 40 (in ten years); University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: 46 down to 36 (since 2012); University of Illinois Chicago: 32 down to 20 (from 2005–2020). Smaller universities are also seeing the loss of history faculty: Emporia State University: 7 down to 4 (over a decade); University of North Dakota: 10 down to 5 (in five years); Grand Valley State University: 31 down to 27 (in ten years); University of South Dakota: 10 down to 7 (in five years); South Dakota State University: 7 down to 4 (in five years); University of Nebraska-Omaha: 15 down to 11 (in ten years); St. Cloud State University: 10 down to 6 (in 6 years); St. Olaf College: 12 down to 7 (in ten years); Central Michigan University: 22 down to 15 (in seven years); Miami University of Ohio: 29 down to 22 (since 2015); Ohio University: 31 down to 25 (since 2017); University of Cincinnati: 30 down to 21 (in ten years); Kent State University: 15 down to 12 (since 2008); University of Missouri-Kansas City: 17 down to 8 (in 6 years); Minnesota State University, Mankato: 11 down to 9 (since 2010); University of Missouri-St. Louis: 14 down to 8 (since 2016); Truman State University: 15 down to 4 (since 2013); Indiana State University: 16 down to 13 (since 2015); Marquette University: 21 down to 16 (since 2017); University of Toledo: 12 down to 5 (in a decade). The cuts extend beyond faculty. Central Michigan University lost the Michigan Historical Review, a journal it oversaw for decades. Truman State lost Truman State University Press, which closed in 2021. Emporia State lost its Center for Great Plains Studies. The journal Studies in Midwestern History at Grand Valley State fizzled out. Long-running collaborative history conferences such as the Missouri Valley History Conference and the Mid-America Conference on History have also been terminated.

Most of the veteran historians who have been cut...