Discontent in the Historical Profession Jerry Z. Muller I n April, 1998, a group of historians held a press conference in Washington, D.C. to announce the formation of "a new and genuinely 'diverse' organi- zation" to reshape the profession. Dubbed "The His- torical Society," it was intended as an alternative forum to the two existing umbrella organizations of histori- ans in the United States, the Organization of Ameri- can Historians (OAH)---comprised of those who study the history of the United States--and the American Historical Association (AHA)--which includes American historians of all parts of the world, includ- ing the United States. Why did discontent within the AHA and OAH lead to a search for more promising alternatives? Some of the reasons lay in the seeming rejection of the norms of scholarly objectivity, universality and pluralism within those organizations. This trend has its roots in the late 1960s, but only transformed the official insti- tutions of the profession some decades later as histo- rians steeped in an activist conception of professional activity came to dominate historical organizations and departments. Ideologization and Fragmentation Since at least the late nineteenth century, historians have been aware that present-day interests and com- mitments will inevitably influence the process of choosing historical questions for inquiry, and have warned of the pitfalls which this entails: one thinks of the influential formulations of Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber, and in the English-speaking world, of R. G. Collingwood and Herbert Butterfield. The founders and practitioners of history as a modern discipline were cognizant of the barriers to an objective reconstruc- tion of the past arising from interest, from the assump- tions which historians bring to the study of history and the ideas and beliefs to which they are commit- ted. It was just that awareness that has led historians to stress the need for self-discipline, to prevent inter- est (without which there would be no motivation to write history) from becoming bias, and transforming the writing of history into propaganda. The increased ideologization of history is a result of a changed conception of the relationship between ideo- logical commitment and scholarly work. It was not the entry of persons with strong political commitments into the academy which was new. David Bromwich, a pro- fessor of English at Yale and an astute observer of the American academic scene, notes that activist scholars who came of age from the 1920s through the 1950s took seriously Max Weber's advice that "the primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recog- nize 'inconvenient' facts--I mean facts that are incon- venient for their party opinions." The turning point away from such an understanding was the Vietnam War, as "scholars in the humanities and social sciences first began to hear, broadly diffused, the charge that all choices are political choices, that every intellectual in- terest serves some social end." As a result, "disinterest- edness," once regarded as a virtue, was now treated as a mirage. "Scholars who believed that scholarship it- self is an all-important vehicle for social reform be- came, starting in the mid-1970s, the most visible body of opinion within universities, in certain subjects...and [in] the many subfields that were carved out with this understanding of scholarship intimately in view--gen- der, racial, ethnic, cultural, and postcolonial studies in most of their varieties." What distinguishes a university from a theological seminary or a political training center, and what dis- tinguishes academic social science from propaganda, is above all the fact that academic institutions seek recognition from members of a variety of authorita- tive communities. In so doing, institutions of social science in a liberal polity develop an ethos that re- fuses to accord a priori favored status to the ultimate claims of any particular authoritative community. When contexts are created within academic life in which all or most participants come from within a single authoritative community (be it religious, po-