@ WWS – I myself am a liberal and pacifist, but I still see the value of military history. I think you nailed it on the head in your second paragraph, that academic elitism is the culprit. The history channel could be the poster boy for what modern historians hate.

Here are some recent essays that address your request:

Robert M. Citino, “Military Histories Old and New: A Reintroduction,” American Historical Review 112:4 (October 2007), 1070-1090.

And in the Journal of American History 93:4 (March 2007),

American Military History: A Round Table

Mind and Matter—Cultural Analysis in American Military History: A Look at the State of the Field
Wayne E. Lee 1116

Military History, Democracy, and the Role of the Academy
Tami Davis Biddle 1143

Mind and Matter: The Practice of Military History with Reference to Britain and Southeast Asia
Brian P. Farrell 1146

In Search of the American Way of War: The Need for a Wider National and International Context
Marc Milner 1151

American Military History: The Need for Comparative Analysis
Brian Holden Reid 1154

Teetering on the Brink of Respectability
Ronald H. Spector 1158

A Final Word
Wayne E. Lee 1161

One might do better as an author, or even better to use the knowledge gained to actually make policy, rather than study the history of how others made policy.

Thank you for this thoughtful post. I’ve done my share of eye-rolling at my WWII-crazy students, but I’ve also suspected that military history *must* be more than the History Channel version that my students show up with. Your post helps clarify things a great deal. But I wonder if you could suggest one or two review articles on the aims & methodologies of the new military history? It would be a great help to those of us who want to encourage our students with interests in these areas, but don’t know where to begin.

(Appropriately enough, my word captcha is “to foxholes”!)

BTW, Mark, thanks for the links, but if any undergraduate reading this sees them–I’d like to say this–there’s a lot of truth to those articles about why folks *shouldn’t* go to grad school, and I’ve heard my share of stories of regret and the like–BUT academia really is a calling. When I told the late Henry Turner, Jr. at Yale I wanted to go to grad school, he used exactly that term, and likened it to the ministry, and then gave the example of Wyoming, saying that if the profession called me to Wyoming, I should be at peace with that. In the end, I really may end up moving on to other things, but I think a sharp new PhD from a good school with a good dissertation will still eventually get a job at a “decent” university. That doesn’t mean that misfortune or injustice doesn’t occur, but every profession has its share of negatives–and there are a lot of positives to being an academic historian. I can be as harsh as anyone else in mocking the vanities and pettiness of academic life, and doing a State Dept. tour in Iraq really let me see the other side of the hill so-to-speak, but there is still a nobility and grandeur to the calling, which is why it’ll always be around in some way, shape, or form.

This is not to deny that other factors influenced my decision, including concerns about academic job growth, funding, etc. that applicants in all fields of history have to consider. But there was one factor in my decision calculus that really nagged at me. I believe that undergraduates who in an ideal world would choose to study military history in graduate school (the “life of the mind” at its pinnacle) choose not to for a reason that differentiates them from the other sub-fields of history – the abundant presence of viable alternatives that are still intellectually stimulating (if not as much as being a full-time scholar of history).

One option is the alternative post-graduate degree that is more “realistic” – strategic studies, area studies, etc. Those who pursue degrees in these areas can pursue quasi-intellectual careers in think tanks, institutes, etc. that focus on military and national strategic issues. This is not the scholarly study of history as in the academy, but elements of that intellectual pursuit still exist (combined with the sometimes nauseating push for relevance, viability, etc. that academics disdain). Another path is the one I eventually took – entering government service as an analyst. It offered the prospect of being able to use history, along with all the other economic benefits and job security. It also didn’t preclude future graduate study in academic military history, though my undergraduate mentor told me that it was unlikely I would return (simple reason – life happens).

Was I happy with the decision? Yes – I enjoyed being an analyst. Was it my dream job? No – I still believe being a professor would be my ideal (though maybe I’m kidding myself). And I certainly do not undertake the level of scholarly acitivity that I wish I could, and would have in an acadmeic career.

Choosing to pursue a career in academia is a risky bet at best. For those who study cultural or social history, of whatever variety, I say that is an easier bet to make. Provided they have the means (a big “if”), there is not much to lose in terms of professional standing. You either make it and live your dream or you do not. But for those with other intellectual alternatives, the decision calculus is not so easy. To put it bluntly – a 20% of being a tenured professor is not as attractive as a 60% chance of being a senior analyst. Pile on financial uncertainty and other outside stresses, and the calculus shifts even more.

[Obviously a successful military history PhD who does not enter academia can still enter these careers listed above, but their "return on investment" in a purely numbers form would not be that great]

I know that some would say that “if you want it enough, you will pursue your dream” – but reality is often quite different, especially when one has multiple good options to choose from. I think the presence of these good options for those who are interested in the study of military history is something one needs to consider when talking about the status of military history in the academy.

I really do think it’s a mistake to think that the marginal status of military history in American universities comes mostly from academic historians’ generally left-liberal politics. I think it’s at times a contributing factor, but is most certainly *not* the most important one (by far). Things may be different among historians who came of age professionally in the early 70s, but at least among US Civil War historians much of that radicalism is by now a spent force, and it’s really negligible among those scholars now entering their prime. And I say this as someone whose *never* voted for a Democrat, and whose politics I’m sure most of my progressive colleague would find *appalling*.

I do think left-liberal groupthink has distended scholarly treatments of American history to some degree, but this is a separate issue from military history’s place in the university. I think the most negative things that can be said about academic historians’ distaste for military history is that it comes from some degree of scholarly elitism (the view any type of history that has a mass market must be disreputable) mixed with simple ignorance. But in academic historians’ defense, a lot of what separates academic from popular history is a more rigorous sense of historical causation, including examinations of “deep” underlying causes rooted in social structure and culture. None of this is inherently incompatible with military history, but military history in its “classic” or “operational” sense either puts a great deal of stock in contingency (i.e. blind luck) or the agency of individuals (“battles and leaders” history to use a term from my field). I think the former is in some profound sense in conflict with historians’ predilections to *explain* things (which can be both our virtue and vice), while the latter poses genuine problems on the merits, and also causes discomfiture amongst historians who do not generally wish to highlight the importance of individual elites–and what can be more elitist than the commander of an army, who sits at the top of a hierarchy characterized in large part by discipline and subordination. But anti-elitism is hardly a left-wing phenomenon in American society and life.

Anyhow, in summary, while most academic historians are vaguely pacifist leftists, I don’t think this is really one of the main *causes* of military history’s marginal place in the academy. I think those outside the academy a lot of times don’t realize that academic “politics” frequently center on things that aren’t really *political* in the usual sense of the term–i.e. voting Republican or Democratic, supporting or opposing the surge in Afghanistan, etc.–they instead center on intra-professional questions of personality and patronage (reflecting the profession’s guild-like structure), perceptions of whether or not an idea or interpretation is *new* (our own obeisance to the intellectual dominance of the sciences, even in non-scientific disciplines), and the ideas on their merits. I’d actually be *more* optimistic about military history’s future in the university if the issue was simply one of straightforward ideological bias–because I actually think the issues are more deeply embedded in the structure of American academe, I see them as probably unsolvable–although, in the end, I think that between a few strong academic institutions (like Mark Grimsley’s Ohio State) and alternative funding streams from the American national security state, academic military history will retain enough critical mass to survive and replicate itself. However, I doubt it will ever thrive in the academy in my professional lifetime.

If you browse the posts filed under the category “The Future of Academic Military History,” you’ll find quite a few that address this subject.