Saturday Notes

by Cliopatria

U. S. News & World Report's annual ranking of graduate programs for 2009 is now online. Graduate programs in history were last ranked in 2005 and the weekly simply repeats that result. Only 90 of over 150 programs are actually scored and all the usual caveats apply.

Rick Shenkman's"Reporter's Notebook," HNN, 28 March, reports on key sessions of the first day at the OAH convention.

Robert Nadeau,"The Economist Has No Clothes," Scientific American, April, argues that the 19th-century creators of neoclassical economics began with unscientific assumptions that are still undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

William Dalrymple,"A New Deal in Pakistan," NYRB, 3 April, reflects on the election in Pakistan and the future of the country.

Ross Douthat, Daniel Larison, and James Antle discuss the conservatives' case for Obama.

Finally,"The Best of All Games," Boston Review, March/April, reproduces John Rawls to Owen Fiss, 18 April 1981. In it, Rawls recalls a conversation twenty years earlier with the legal scholar, Harry Kalven, in which Kalven outlined the reasons that baseball is"the best of all games." Hat tip to Tea, Lemon, Old Books.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

David M Fahey - 3/30/2008

I mostly agree even though reputations can be out of date. My advice to my own students has been to identify a prospective research director in a strong department. I discourage students from entering a program that denies them substantial financial aid. A career in history (unlike a career in medicine or law) doesn't promise the kind of income that justifies substantial debt.

Ralph E. Luker - 3/30/2008

Yours are among the caveats that I'd say usually apply, David. Even ranking graduate departments in disciplines is problemmatic, I think, because a particular department might be one of the very top departments in Latin American history, for example, while being much lower in rankings as a department overall. That said, I still recommend that anyone determined to do graduate study in history should enter the most prestigious problem she or he can get in because the reputation of his or her graduate program is going to be a major factor in initial job placements.

David M Fahey - 3/30/2008

Rankings need to be ranked. Ranking graduate schools in a discipline is better than ranking graduate schools without regard for discipline, but it is still a bit like ranking the best places to live. High is better than low, but the best choice for a specific person depends on so many variables. In 1959 when I enrolled in graduate school, I had GRE scores good enough for a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. On the other hand, I was a naive kid from a small commuter college. Neither of my parents had graduated from college, and we were broke. Going to a mega-department likely would have meant a quick exit to law school.