I guess a few people read my column last week.
After five letters to the editor, numerous emails, conversations in history classes and countless comments online, I applaud faculty and students for critically engaging with the question about whether the Ohio University department of history’s faculty and curriculum are diverse.
I want to recognize the many valid criticisms raised about my column, but also expand on the ensuing discussion of why we need to drastically alter how we approach the discipline of history.
First, we have to consider what we mean when we use the title “department of history.” Though I completely agree that history faculty members maintain a “global perspective,” that does not necessarily make it an egalitarian representation of history.
History should be about teaching and studying all of human history, without an emphasis on one particular region.
I recognize there are advantages to having a department specialize in specific areas of history, but when almost every department in the United States specializes in European and American history, that becomes harder to justify.
Additionally, interdisciplinary area studies programs such as African Studies and Latin American Studies are great, but that still does not address the problem that we study “history” primarily as it applies to Europe and America, and treat the history of other regions as complementary to that.
I do commend the department for making recent faculty hires who specialize in Africa, China, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. However, that is with the caveat that I’m curious how many were essentially replacement hires for faculty in those fields who recently left the university. For example, I know the department was without an African historian during the 2012-13 academic year, and as a result there were zero classes taught with a specific focus on Africa that year.
To me, that seems like an argument to have, at a bare minimum, two faculty members from each of the major regions of globe. Otherwise, the department is just engaging in academic tokenism to claim diversity.
In regard to the George Washington Forum, critics are right to clarify that the department of history is not directly affiliated. However, 10 of the 29 history faculty are still members, a proportion I imagine would be harder to replicate in say, the hypothetical “Mahatma Gandhi Forum on Postcolonial Justice.” Just a thought.
The point about lack of student initiative is also a valid one, and I hope more students do venture outside of their Euro-American comfort zone. However, the responsibility does not fall entirely on students.
At the K-12 level, history is frequently taught from an American or European perspective. In his letter, Samuel Miner points out that even Harvard and Princeton only have a couple of African historians, and it’s not a stretch to assume that most history departments in the U.S. are similarly dominated by faculty in European and American fields. (By my count, only six of the 29 faculty on the OU history department’s website specialize in something other than U.S. or European history.)
Creating a more inclusive history curriculum in K-12 social studies education and offering more college courses outside of Euro-American regions would be a start to changing that student preference.
It’s a positive sign to hear that the department is making progress with the courses it will be offering in the fall of 2014, and I am cautiously optimistic that it will continue to diversify its faculty and course offerings in the future.
Matt Farmer is senior studying political science and education. Do we need to change the way we teach and study history? Email him at mf291029@ohiou.edu.
