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Who's Hiring in History?

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By Jennifer Jacobson

Few history departments went unscathed when it came to hiring in this year's sluggish economy. The history department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville was an exception: It hired two senior professors for the first time in 15 years.

"I was able to convince the administration that we are already strong in U.S. history from 1789 to 1860, and that two senior hires would make this an even more important and successful field in our program," says Todd A. Diacon, who heads the department.

Judging from the lack of senior hires in history this year, it looks like many department heads could have benefited from his powers of persuasion.

As of mid-March, the American Historical Association had received 848 job advertisements for its monthly newsletter, a decline of about 10 percent from the 940 notices published in Perspectives by the same time last year, says Robert B. Townsend, the association's director for research and publications.

Jobs listings for instructors and assistant professors fell only 2.5 percent -- to 710 from 728. However, jobs for senior scholars at the associate- and full-professor ranks dropped about 46 percent, to 52 listings from 96. Nonacademic job postings, he says, fell to 86 openings from 116.

When it comes to entry-level jobs, "I was expecting a much more dramatic drop," Mr. Townsend says. "The fact that it did not drop more significantly is actually a hopeful sign."

Not so the steep drop in jobs advertised at the senior levels. In the past five years, he says, the market for these scholars has been hot, with large departments cherry-picking associate professors from smaller departments and hiring them at the full-professor rank. "Budget cuts are making departments less able to hire senior faculty at a premium so they're simply going after junior faculty" because they are cheaper.

Mr. Diacon's department was lucky enough to buck this trend. His 24-member department will grow to 26 this fall, thanks to the addition of an associate professor and a full professor in the field of U.S. history from 1789 to 1860.

But like many history departments this year, "particularly at public universities," his also had to cancel a faculty search. Although his university initially approved a search for a full professor in medieval history, the position was canceled after budget cuts hit in April. Mr. Diacon hopes to move the search to next year, and says his department will also request searches for two assistant professors, one in U.S. history from 1880 to 1930, and one in Russian history.

The history department at Western Kentucky University was also among the fortunate few. The 20-member department hired an assistant professor in American social history and another in early modern Europe to replace two faculty members who took advantage of an optional campus retirement plan to teach part-time for five years before stepping down. Roughly 115 people applied for the social-history job, while about 60 applied for the Europe one, says Richard D. Weigel, the chairman. "There are always more applicants for American history," he says. "I think that's fairly consistent."

A third entry-level opening, for a Latin Americanist, came open this year after a faculty member died, but the search got started too late and will be moved to the coming academic year. Mr. Weigel says his department will also seek permission to hire a second assistant professor in 2003-4, but he's not sure of the field.

Despite the tight times, his department has been able to replace its retiring faculty members, in part because the university has a requirement in Western civilization. That makes it easier to justify the hiring of new people, he says, "because as you're increasing enrollment you've got to make sure you have classes for those students each year. You can do that partly with part-timers, but you need to replace people as they retire."

That's something that the history department at Arizona State University at Tempe has not been able to do lately. "Three people retired last year, and we were not allowed to replace any of the three," says Noel J. Stowe, the department's chairman.

Still, the 41-member department has two new assistant professors starting in the fall. One was hired in Chicano history back in 2001-2 but the other was hired this year with dual expertise in U.S. urban history and information literacy. (The university's liberal-arts college created eight new positions in information literacy, and history got one of them.)

Will the department be hiring in the coming academic year? "We have no idea," Mr. Stowe says. "We still don't have the budget for next year. Normally at ASU at this time of year we're developing the requests."

He does, however, have some idea about future retirements. "We expect up to 70 percent of the department to retire in the next eight years," he says. It's "a huge generational turnover. We had projected this about two years ago so we've looked very carefully about how we're dealing with replacements and what fields we want to emphasize." The department, he says, has needs in U.S. Western history, U.S environmental history, U.S. women's history, 20th-century European history, and Japanese history.

Meanwhile, some history departments at well-heeled institutions have not had to postpone filling any of their tenure-track lines. At New York University, the 40-member department hired two assistant professors in medieval European history, an assistant professor in global history, and a full professor in Atlantic World history, says Robin D.G. Kelley, who has just stepped down as department chairman to join Columbia University. Mr. Kelley also says that the NYU department made a "target of opportunity" hire in recruiting Pulitzer-Prize winner David Levering Lewis away from Rutgers University at New Brunswick.

Of the department's hiring spree, Mr. Kelley says, "the university might be hurting, but in terms of our intellectual needs we're allowed to fill them pretty well."

Some history departments at other private institutions were not given every position they requested. Sarah C. Maza, chairwoman of the history department at Northwestern University, says she is still negotiating three senior offers in U.S. history, early modern European history, and Jewish history. A fourth search that the department conducted for an assistant professor of African history, which would have been a joint appointment with the religion department, was canceled by the administration for financial reasons, Ms. Maza says.

For next year, the department has asked to search for two junior professors and a senior professor in U.S. history, and an assistant professor of West African history, she says.

Her department has quite a few faculty members who are 65 or older, but Ms. Maza does not expect many of them to retire any time soon, because professors whose pension funds are partly invested in the stock market "are reluctant to retire as long as the economy doesn't pick up," she says.

Michael J. Allen feels fortunate to have landed his first tenure-track job. The Northwestern graduate student, who plans to defend his dissertation in July, applied to 25 institutions and got a single offer. But all you need is one: He will be an assistant professor at North Carolina State University in the fall.

THE HIRING REPORT

How have the tough financial times in academe affected faculty hiring? In a series of articles, we look at the job market in English, in physics, and in history.