Editorial

Abstract

Historical thinking, a necessary tool for us to make sense of an increasinglycomplex world, is on a path of decline across the world. In a recent NewYorker article entitled “The Decline of Historical Thinking” (February 4,2019), Eric Alterman, an English Professor at CUNY and a public intellectual,bemoaned the nosedive that enrollment in history departments hastaken in universities across the United States. For the past decade, historyhas been declining more rapidly than any other major and across allethnic and racial groups, even as more and more students attend college.The steep decline in history graduates (about a third!) becomes especiallyvisible after 2011, presumably in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisiswhen students and parents at the lower rungs of society began to worryabout the financial return of investment in a college education. History isthe top loser, but it is not the only one; in fact, nearly the same rate of declineis evident in other humanities fields including area studies, languages,philosophy, and, to a slightly lesser extent, social sciences (political science,anthropology, sociology, IR, education). The winners, not surprisingly, areSTEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), particularly computerscience and health related majors.1 This trend is not a great surprise initself. What is unexpected, however, is that the decline is not uniform. Inelite universities in the United States, the humanities majors are thriving;history remains among the top declared majors at Yale, for instance. Theeducated elite, in other words, are becoming systematically differentiatedfrom the vast majority of people (“the demos”) in a powerful democracy,one that still sets intellectual and political trends in the world, and one ...