Publication Date

September 1, 1992

Perspectives Section

Letters to the Editor

The Sins of the Fathers …

I read with interest both E.L. Rountree’s complaint of discriminatory job advertising and the Professional Division’s response in the May/June issue. With all due respect, I would suggest that the Professional Division missed the point of Rountree’s argument.

Rountree cited a job listing which appeared in Perspectives and which, after the customary statement of adherence to standards of equal opportunity, added a sentence strongly implying that white males would not be considered seriously for the job. I don’t know what college or university placed the ad, but if that is not discrimination, I am not sure what is.

The response of the Professional Division was that since women and minorities are still underrepresented in the professional ranks of historians, “there remains a strong case for affirmative action and little support for charges of reverse discrimination.” I would not dispute the first part of the statement. But the second is another matter. Does the Professional Division seriously think that until racial and gender equality (both admirable goals) are reached, it will not be discriminatory for history departments to reject white males because they are white males? Granted, the profession has discriminated in the past. But is this best rectified by senior historians (some of them beneficiaries of that very discrimination) simply shutting a large group of younger scholars out? Must the sins of the fathers thus be visited on the sons?

The Professional Division practices a subtle form of deception when basing its arguments on the gender and race breakdown of Ph.D.’s awarded between 1946 and 1988, and then labeling this “essentially the universe of employable historians.” As we all know, there are far fewer Ph.D.’s awarded annually today than there were fifteen to twenty years ago. Thus, those who received their training in the 1960s and 1970s, when the profession was more dominated by white males, are overrepresented in such a sample. I could be wrong, but I suspect that most hires made today are at the junior level, meaning Ph.D.’s awarded within the last decade much better represent the universe of employable historians than those awarded between 1946 and 1988.

Rather than reading pious pronouncements about past injustices, many of us would be more interested to know the gender and race breakdown of recent Ph.D.’s compared to the gender and race breakdown of recent junior-level faculty hires. It is only with such information that one could support or refute claims that the profession currently practices any form of discrimination. Does the Professional Division record such data? If not, is it interested in doing so?

It is possible that the study of current data would show that no discrimination in hiring—either traditional or reverse—is now practiced. Many people on all sides of this debate would be interested in knowing the answers. Some form of affirmative action is doubtless still warranted, but what are its limits?

Michael Graham, Doctoral Candidate
University of Virginia

While I do not necessarily endorse the complaint against affirmative action policies that E.L. Rountree made in the May/June issue of Perspectives, the response of the Professional Division strikes me as evasive and irrelevant to the points he raised. May I make two points in illustration?

First, the Professional Division insists that the statement that “Preference will be given to applicants who can serve well an increasingly diverse University community” is “not discriminatory per se” because it does not “restrict the pool of applicants” on the basis of race, sex, etc. Now, I happen to agree that the statement is not strictly discriminatory, but only because no ethnic, racial, sexual, etc., categories are explicitly mentioned, although the coding is unambiguous. But “preference” implies the weighting of the final choice. And when the opening is for one job only, that might as well mean the exclusion of unpreferred groups. The makeup of the applicant pool is irrelevant to the actual meaning of the sentence.

Second, the statistics cited about the percentages of women and minorities in the historical profession are highly misleading, for the entire profession is not on the job market in a given year. Although Rountree did not ask for a statistical argument, the Professional Division proffered one, so let’s get the right information out. And that is, what was the statistical breakdown of the body of job-seeking historians in a given year of affirmative action hiring; last year, for instance? What percentage of each ethnic and sexual category found jobs? My hunch is that a sincere effort by most universities to repair the glaring inequities of the past four decades—as cited by the Professional Division—through current hiring would result in a severe relative handicap to white male historians currently looking for work, especially if the percentage of women and minority applicants has not sharply risen to meet the increased demand. Are such statistics available? Perhaps not. But if one could show that, say, a recent male Ph.D. has half as good a chance as a recent female Ph.D. at getting any job at all, then perhaps Rountree’s point—that affirmative action policies will generate hatred—has merit. Then again, one might be able to show that most colleges and universities are paying lip-service to affirmative action through their “discriminatory” advertisement. A single sentence in the blurb can ward off legal action.

I think it is vital for us to face this kind of issue head-on. If serious discrimination against young white males is an unavoidable price of undoing the traditional dominance of old white males in the historical profession, let us say so and move on. Nothing so fits the stereotype of “political correctness” as the unwillingness or inability of liberals—and I include myself among such—to engage in open discussion about the value judgments and the social costs of their vision of a just society.

Richard D. Horn
Middle-aged White Male and Doctoral Candidate
Princeton University

In response to the requests from Mr. Graham and Mr. Horn, the Professional Division provides the following data regarding gender and hiring—comparable figures regarding race and ethnicity are not available. The most recent published report from the National Research Council indicates that there is little gender difference in the hiring of new history doctorates. In 1990, 52.7 percent of male recipients reported definite employment plans compared to 55.2 percent of female recipients, but in 1989 NRC reported that the percentage of male history doctorates hired was greater than that of females (57.6 percent compared to 53.6 percent). Indeed, a survey of NRC reports for the past decade indicates no pattern in regard to gender differences and no evidence of bias in favor of women—the percentage of female history doctorates hired exceeded that of males in only four years out of ten, and the greatest gender gap was in 1981, when the percentage of men hired exceeded that of women by 12.6 percent.

It is also useful to consider this data within the larger context of all doctorates granted. While the percentages cited above may appear alarmingly low, keep in mind that for each year since 1984 the percentage of new history doctorates with definite employment plans has exceeded the percentage for all doctorates employed. Over the ten-year period reviewed, the percentage of new male history doctorates with jobs exceeded that of the larger cohort in seven years, while the percentage of new female history doctorate recipients with jobs exceeded that of the larger cohort in only four years. In sum, recent recipients of history doctorates on average appear to be faring better than their counterparts in other disciplines, and male recipients are faring even better.

In its response to Mr. Rountree’s letter in the May/June issue of this newsletter, the Division did not mean to deny the possibility of reverse discrimination in hiring but rather to emphasize that such charges must be based on concrete evidence, not on how one reads a position announcement. In the absence of specific complaints or evidence, the Division’s only barometer is data on hiring in the discipline, which does not support the contention that multicultural goals have distorted the employment process. The AHA and the Professional Division remain opposed to discriminatory hiring in any form and encourage those with concrete evidence and specific charges to come forward.

Another Look at CIV

Dear Editor:

Daniel Gordon’s defense of Stanford University’s replacement of the Western Culture Program (WCP) with a program called Cultures, Ideas, and Values (CIV) rests on the Burkean argument that only those with direct experience of an institution are qualified to criticize it. But since CIV itself arose out of criticism of WCP, then we need more attention to the latter (in which I participated) and to the process by which it was replaced than Gordon has given it.

First and most generally, Gordon’s admirable appeal to sympathetic understanding in the curricular debate is inconsistent with the disposition of those who brought CIV into existence. Their view of the traditional authors read in WCP, far from being sympathetically understanding, utilized the full array of modern suspicion or “critical theory” to denigrate those authors, reducing them to caricatured representatives of their sex, race, or ethnicity.

Second, although Gordon compares CIV favorably with the “Contemporary Civilization” sequence at his alma mater, Columbia University, for comprehensiveness, CIV is not nearly so comprehensive as WCP had been. Whereas the latter had attempted to provide the student with a rounded conception of Greek and Roman culture as well as medieval European culture, the presentism and politicization of the new program have created a situation in which it is no longer necessary for tracks fulfilling the CIV requirement to pay more than lip service to periods before 1400.

Finally, Gordon’s definition of the proper “context” for the CIV-WCP debate is selective at best. He makes no mention of two new courses required of all Stanford students that were decided upon while he was there and have just been put into effect: a “gender studies” course, and one in “American ethnic and racial minorities.” What these new mandates suggest is that CIV should be viewed as part of a larger attempt at Stanford to replace normal academic standards with a partisan socio-political agenda.

Henry C. Clark, Associate Professor
Canisius College

Panel Composition and Program Committee Guidelines

As co-presidents of the Coordinating Committee for Women in the Historical Profession and the Conference Group on Women’s History, both AHA affiliate organizations, we feel compelled to respond to Thomas Haskell’s “Proposal to Change the Program Committee Guidelines” (Perspectives, April 1992). We are concerned first with Haskell’s distortion of the statistical data on women’s place in the historical profession. Specifically, we are stunned by the lack of historical context for the figures he cites on the proportional representation of women on the 1991 governing Council of the AHA. Relying on single (and often singular) examples is the centerpiece of Haskell’s critique of the current Program Committee guidelines related to the gender integration of panels, an odd approach for a historian. Since Blanche Wiesen Cook has already responded to the misleading data offered by Haskell, we will focus our comments on the qualitative rather than quantitative impetus for actively encouraging the participation of women and men on AHA panels.

Having organized scholarly panels and served on program committees for conferences which encouraged gender integration, we have found that guidelines such as those employed by the AHA present an intellectual challenge to all involved. In history, as in so many other professions, women dominate in certain subfields and men in others. Thus, gender integration often pushes us out of our most comfortable categories and networks and demands that we make connections across specializations. The heightened diversity of perspective that results from this outreach often invigorates panel presentations, attracts more diverse audiences, and enriches our conclusions about a topic or time period. Moreover, the process of putting panels together offers a greater intellectual challenge and makes us more aware of colleagues of the opposite sex whose work helps to illuminate our own. This process can be a particularly valuable one for young Ph.D.s, who will carry on their careers among an increasingly diverse population of scholars and thus can only benefit from engaging issues of gender integration at the earliest moment.

The demand to attend to diversity has been made by many scholars for many years. But as historians know perhaps better than most, fundamental change in habits is a slow and uneven process. Such changes did not occur voluntarily over the first century of the AHA’s existence. There is little reason to think that women, people of color, gays and lesbians, the differently abled, graduate students over traditional age, working-class students, or other groups whose presence in the profession in substantial numbers is relatively new will suddenly find ready acceptance in and easy access to positions of influence and authority without active encouragement. For most of these groups integration into AHA sessions is even harder to assure than is the integration of women, since many of these groups are still seriously underrepresented in the profession and since many members of these groups cannot be identified by anything so easy as a name.

It is our belief that active encouragement of gender integration on AHA panels has had beneficial effects for panel proposers, program participants, and scholarly audiences. We also hope that it has encouraged historians’ sensitivity to other forms of exclusion and thus indirectly will encourage greater diversity on all fronts within the association and the profession. At a moment when the barriers to women’s full participation in the historical profession are beginning to crumble, we applaud the decision of the Research Division to reiterate its support for gender integration and for general diversity on AHA panels.

Nancy A. Hewitt, Associate Professor
University of South Florida

M. Elizabeth Perry, Adjunct Professor
Occidental College

Blanche Wiesen Cook’s “reply” to Professor Haskell’s proposal (re: Guideline 6d) could not better have illustrated his caveat that “Professional associations are porous organizations, easily influenced by any dedicated interest group.” How else explain so disingenuous a letter from one who holds the office of Vice President for Research in the Association!

Cook self-servingly dismisses the gravamen of Professor Haskell’s letter with the gratuitous observation that he should be satisfied with the “vast apologies” he received for “the letter.” In other words, the Program Committee admits to having shot Professor Haskell’s acquaintance; he’s dead, but it was all just a big mistake.

Next, Cook insists that Professor Haskell’s argument is flawed because “it is based on the erroneous assumption that data regarding the larger universe of historians is the appropriate context for discussing matters that pertain only to members of the Association.” It is, apparently, sexist for Professor Haskell to offer a statistical profile about women drawn from the larger universe of female historians, but wholly appropriate for Cook to remind her readers that: “In terms of numbers, white men now represent only eight percent of the world population” (!)

Since the AHA’s Vice President for Research is confident in the electoral wisdom of the AHA’s membership (” … we have elections and are a democratic body … “) then why not put the matter of 6d up for a vote of the membership? Surely this would be preferable to having 6d shoved down the collective throats of the membership by administrative fiat by the Research Division.

George A. Levesque, Professor
University Center at Albany (SUNY)

As a former program chair, I would like to offer some comments on Thomas L. Haskell’s “A Proposal to Change the Program Committee Guidelines” (Perspectives, April 1992). I have no disagreement with most of what he recommends: the committee should choose panelists “mainly for the intellectual cogency and relevance of their expected contributions” (so far as these can be predicted), and the committee should also “give priority to panels that display a spirit of cosmopolitanism, both in the kinds of questions asked and in the range of perspectives brought to bear on them.” My guess is that the committees think that they are already doing what he recommends. It is not really clear, in fact, how his recommendations would change current practice (unless we take him as calling for a reduction in the number of women on the program) except that committees could not be “coercive” in pursuit of cosmopolitanism and, perhaps, they would be limited to choosing among complete panels rather than “micromanaging” the composition of individual panels.

Haskell evidently assumes that in trying to avoid gender segregation program committees have ignored considerations of intellectual cogency. I very much doubt that any program committee has intentionally weakened a panel in pursuit of integration. Certainly in 1987 we never felt that such was the choice presented to us: we insisted on a great many changes in the composition of panels, sometimes adding presenters (taking them from otherwise rejected panels or from single-paper proposals), sometimes subtracting them, and frequently changing commentators. Our feeling was that the panels were strengthened; and often (though I admit, not always) those who proposed the panels agreed with us. I think it would be unfortunate if, in a backlash against “coercive measures,” committees lost this authority. It should be remembered that avoiding gender segregation is only one of several goals that committees are supposed to pursue. Ethnic and racial diversity are important considerations. Other guidelines prohibit two appearances by a scholar in the same program or in consecutive years and encourage participation by graduate students, young scholars, retired scholars, scholars with varied professional careers, and non-U.S. scholars. If we care about “cosmopolitanism” or diversity, then I believe it is the program committee, rather than the proposers of individual panels, that must take chief responsibility. It was my strong impression in 1987 that, had the committee been restricted to choosing among complete panel proposals, we would have headed back immediately to the kind of convention that was common twenty or twenty-five years ago. Audiences would have been integrated in various ways, but the normal panel would have looked somewhat like the normal U.S. Senate committee.

Haskell asserts several times that the purpose of avoiding gender segregation must be to increase the number of female participants. In fact, in 1987 we removed women and added men to some all-female proposals (this was unnecessary with proposals from the CCWHP and the AHA Committee on Women—both included men) and sometimes moved women from one accepted proposal to another—in neither case increasing the number of women on the program. The point of integration was integration; the chief subsidiary benefit was the kind of cosmopolitanism that Haskell recommends. I don’t believe that such an outcome would have occurred “voluntarily.”

I have heard that the most recent committees have received a much higher percentage of integrated proposals than we did in 1987. I hope that is true; maybe after a period when program committees worked hard to carry out necessary guidelines, we can now expect the voluntary approach to be more effective. I hope that committee work will never become the legalistic proceeding that Haskell, with his talk of interrogations and presumptions of guilt, seems to imagine. But I still think it is important for the AHA to support the committees’ authority to shape the program. I am glad, therefore, that the Research Division and Council declined to change the guidelines.

Lewis Perry, Professor
Vanderbilt University