Yale has denied tenure to Mary Habeck, a promising military historian who also happened to be the only military historian on Yale's faculty. Habeck is an enormously popular teacher, known for her ability to fill large lecture halls to capacity. She is also said to be one of the most promising young scholars in her field. So far, nothing's out of place: Yale, like Harvard, is rather well known for not tenuring from within, no matter how excellent the candidate. Say what you will about the wisdom of such practice, as long as it's uniformly applied, it's fair.

The unusual thing about Habeck's case, though, is her specialty. Military history has been on the outs for some time; history departments are increasingly interested in scholars who study social and cultural patterns that have not typically been considered part of the more traditional "master narratives" centered around major political and military events, and they tend to make less and less room for those who study such unfashionable subjects as war and weaponry. The Yale Daily News strongly suggests that the decision not to tenure Habeck may be part of a larger decision on the part of Yale's history department to phase out military history as a professional specialization and, by extension, as a subject in which courses are offered:

Habeck's departure will leave the department without a military and weapons specialist, said Marcus Jones GRD '00, a long-time Habeck teaching assistant.

This will not be the first time in recent years that a Yale military historian has left for another position. In the spring of 2000, political science professor Allan Stam, who taught a popular lecture course called "Society and War," left Yale for a promised tenured position at Dartmouth University after teaching at the University for four years.

"I think every indication has been that Yale is trying to move out of the business of military history altogether, no matter how big an appeal it has for undergraduates," Jones said. "I think it's a mistake myself. This institution used to have a major face in military history. We don't really have one outside of Mary Habeck."

[...]

Habeck's undergraduate courses on military strategy, weaponry and war have been wildly popular. Her lectures have nearly filled the Law School Auditorium and SSS 114, two of the University's largest lecture halls, some of her students said.

Jeremy Ershow '06, a history major who took Habeck's "U.S. Military, War and Society" last year and is one of Habeck's sophomore advisees, called Habeck "the most compelling lecturer that I've had at Yale."

"I've heard a lot of history lecture classes, and what does it say when you allow your best lecturer to walk?" Ershow said. "There's a tremendous interest and a tremendous appetite on this campus for the courses that she teaches -- there's clearly a great demand for Mary Habeck and her courses."

[...]

History Director of Undergraduate Studies Frank Snowden said the department has not decided whether it will hire a military historian to replace Habeck in the junior ranks.

Thanks to Fred Ray for the link.

Is this really necessarily bad? Schools are always looking to hire people in "hot" fields and get rid of people whose research is unfashionable. Won't competitive departments that care about their reputation always try to do this?

"Yale denies tenure to promising young historian"

equals

"Dog bites man".

It's a mistake to read this as being about military history (though I'm sure that doesn't help). Yale denies tenure to virtually every smart, interesting person who comes through their doorway as a junior professor. It's a tradition.

"Is this really necessarily bad? Schools are always looking to hire people in "hot" fields and get rid of people whose research is unfashionable." Yeah, this happens in universities and it happens in corporations. It's simply the herd instinct at work...it's easier to follow the fashions than to strike out on your own. But that's not how intellectual progress is made. It's made by people who are willing to stand up against the fashion.

In business, excessive fashion-following leads to bubbles...everyone decides that (for example) selling cat food over the Internet is cool, and making air conditioners is for dull and boring people. But this soon leads to an oversupply of Internet-delivered cat food and a shortage of air conditioners, and the A/C people are counting their money while the Internet cat food people are filing for Chapter 11 (or worse). There doesn't seem to be any similar corrective mechanism in academia, except maybe at the generational-shift level.

>that's not how intellectual progress is made

Are you certain? After all, its always been done this way. Sure sometimes people made important progress working on unfashionable stuff. And quite often people made progress working on fashionable fields.

What does progress mean in the context of the humanities anyway?

Clearly, you can make progress *around the edges of things* while working on fashionable topics that have already been heavily investigated (say, Newtonian physics in 1915), and I don't mean to disrespect the contributions of people that do this. And when the fashionable area is relatively new...as in my Internet cat food example...you might be able to do some genuinely new things (improved user interfaces for cat food ordering, maybe.) But given that in a trendy area there are probably lots of people trying to do the same thing, the payoff on your intellectual effort--both for you and for society at large--would probably be better in something currently receiving less attention.

The question of what constitutes progress in the humanities is a deep one, while I will be able to address better after at least one glass of Merlot...Would love to hear from Erin and others on this, also.

If she's filling two of the university's largest lecture halls, how unfashionable can her specialty be?

Laura, possibly it is those famous market mechanisms that the academy is so responsive to. Only academia can get away with offering the equivalent of "new coke" and not loose their market share.

The demand by Yale students for Habeck's lectures is exceeded by the demand for entry into that university in the first place. Yale can "afford" to tenure (or deny tenure) to any individual they please.

More importantly, the tenure market (if it can even be called a market) in which the Habeck decision was made is wholly unrelated to student (particularly undergraduate) demand.

Bottom line: anyone denied tenure by Yale is guaranteed (virtually) tenure elsewhere. Such is life.

My son, who wants to study Military History (he's still in high school) attended one of her lectures while visiting family in New Haven (his gramps is an emeritus in Anthropology.) He reported that she's a riveting lecturer and free of PCness and cant. I suspect that if she was more "arms are for hugging", she'd have a career at Yale.

Exactly Andrew, supply (tenure) is unrelated to demand.

It's alright: Institutions other than Harvard or Yale study war, which is why the latter still exist: www.robertbove.net/Lepanto.htm. A review of a great poem about a great naval engagement.

The initial commentary and postings here are missing the point. Tenure at Yale, for better or worse, has nothing to do with teaching, and very little to do with subject matter. It's all about research and publication. Authoring two scholarly books is about the minimum for tenure, and no guarantee. Whether or not professors fill lecture halls is irrelevant.

Prof. Habeck lectured to a packed auditorium of alumni on 5 June 04 with people sitting on the stage, the aisleways and packed through the doorways to hear "Why They Did It: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror." Her lecture was so well received that several senior persons wondered if her presentation had been heard at the highest levels of government, specfically the National Security Council. Her historical research into this topic seemed extremely thorough, and her points and conclusions well conceived and expressed. She is a valuable asset to Yale and, with the proper exposure, to our Nation. Yale would be the poorer without her work and brilliant exposition.

I heard Dr. Habeck address the Heritage Foundation today on CSPAN regarding various beliefs and aspects of ISLAM. Has she published in this area? She spoke with clarity and was most informative.

To whom it may concern,

At this momment 8/12/04 I'm watching Mary Habeck on TV (Heritage Foundation) on the Jihadist Ideology.

I fel that she is a very informative speaker and if she leaves Yale University, it's their great loss.

I also feel that she is a tremendous credit to the educational world.

Same here as Mr. Masterson stated. Her presentation was so interesting I had to Google her hence this e-mail.

Her presentation on C-span today was thought provoking. She said she was currently working on a book on the same subject. She's on chapter seven out of eight total. A smart publisher will grab it up quick.

Unfortunately, I only caught the last few minutes of Mary's C-Span presentation. She impressed me greatly! Out of curiosity I tried to locate her writings and found this website. The above comments seemed mostly so PC and arrogant that it caused me to do more investigating. Based on about 30 minutes of searching I have come to the conclusion that Mary is not being tenured because she and Ronald Radosh have commited the unpardonable sin of shedding light on another of many elite leftist "error" (read propaganda) regarding Soviet intentions in Spain. Once again it would seem that the apologists for communism and other social ism's control American universities.

Mary Hobeck's C-span presentation to Hertitage Foundation was the best explanation why the terrorist attacked us. Will the government or some media outlet get Professor Hobeck on their payroll to advise the American public to what is the intentions of the terrorist and how they operate. She is to good to just be filling two class rooms at Yale.

A streaming video (Real Media) of Professor Habeck's entire lecture at the Heritage Foundation on 8/12/2004 can be found at the CSPAN website.

I heard Mary on C-Span recently and I have no doubt tenure will await her elsewhere. But what she has experienced a big blow, perhaps the biggest, to any scholar after years of research teaching, publishing. Mary has the rare gift of being proficient at all three. Why Yale 's History Department has treated her this way will not be disclosed. My guess is that they do not want a tenured position in military history. If no position for that discipline opens up in the Chronicle next year, that is the probably the case. If any discipline wants to shed itself of one of its subdisciplines, the tenure process is the least painful way for the institution to weed out scholars whose focus differs from the goals of the department. Having taught at a school that used retrenchment of tenured faculty to do this and cost cutting at the same time, I would prefer this unappetizing alternative to what we experienced. But this leaves us pondering the wisdom of Yale offering a tenure track position in the first place if it did not intend to fill it! I know chairs of departments and strategies change periodically, but it is a shame that an excellent scholar like Mary Habeck is caught in the middle. It is Yale's loss and it's student's loss. As an old New Havener, I seen this happen before. But remember....my foundation for this is only a guess!

I just watched Professor Habeck on C-Span (8/15/04). She will do ok I hope our intelligence community puts her on the payroll, it would be the smartest thing they have done in years. Screw Yale, buy her upcoming book.