My guest this week is Daniel Bessner, associate professor of history at the University of Washington and a man of the left. But this isn’t a culture war sparring match—in fact, you may be surprised at how often we find ourselves in agreement. According to him history is in decline. Not capital-H “History,” but the professional study of history. With tenured professorships in his field disappearing and low-paying, precarious teaching positions becoming the norm, he wonders whether history as a discipline will be able to survive.
Daniel’s concerns about the decline of history as an academic discipline is nested within a more expansive critique of the university as a whole. The university’s liberalism, Daniel argues, has left it ill-prepared to respond to economic pressures that are gutting the professoriate in many fields. There are larger forces at work that Daniel sees as precipitating potentially more dire crises for the country as well, particularly America’s role as a global economic and military power. Is the US’s support for Ukraine really in our best interest? Or are we walking a path that could lead to disastrous consequences for the country if, say, China invades Taiwan?
This is a rigorous (and fun!) episode, and I have a feeling commenters are going to have a lot to say about it. I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with.
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0:00 The gigification of academia
8:26 Is education just another commodity?
18:14 What do historians do?
26:22 Daniel: The university system is an unregulated cartel
35:08 The liberalism (not the leftism) of the university
38:22 Using (and getting used by) new technology
43:19 An alternate history of global economic development
47:29 The end of the American century
54:27 Daniel’s critique of US support for Ukraine
Recorded February 7, 2023
Links and Readings
Daniel’s NYT op-ed, “The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession”
Daniel’s TGS mini-series, “Glenn Loury’s Intellectual Origins”
Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man
Daniel’s essay on Fukuyama for the Nation, “A Bad Breakup”
Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott’s book, The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’s book, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life
James Sweet’s column, “Is History History?”
Daniel’s Chronicle of Higher Education piece, “The AHA’s Mission Needs to Change”
Eugen Weber’s book, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914
Daniel’s podcast, American Prestige
Daniel’s Harper’s piece, “Empire Burlesque”
Daniel’s New Republic piece, “Does American Fascism Exist?
Daniel Bessner – The End of the American Century