How To Renew Traditional Historical Study in Graduate Schools
- sofiapbaker
- Aug 18, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Sep 1
I’m sometimes asked why it is so difficult for PhD students of a conservative bent to survive and flourish in history graduate programs these days.
It’s not enough to say that conservative graduate students are red drops in a blue ocean, surrounded by people who hold political views antithetical to theirs. I have taught at Harvard for 35 years and there has never been a time when conservative politics had much appeal to the history faculty. The history department where I teach used to harbor more conservatives than it does today, but even in the 1980s we were a small minority.
I’m not really talking here about political conservatives, card-carrying Republicans. I mean “conservative” in the context of the historical profession today…