Education

In Academia, US History Jobs Are Increasingly Focusing On Race

(Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Alexa Schwerha Contributor
Font Size:

University job postings are increasingly focusing on race as academic institutions look to center racial issues in their teaching of American history and attempt to bolster diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Over the past decade, job postings in the field of U.S. history have increasingly prioritized race, according to data from Academic Jobs Wiki, a tracker of university job postings, published by Princeton historian Matt Karp. Experts say the trend is partly due to a larger push in academia to bolster DEI initiatives. (RELATED: Multiple Arizona Universities Require Job Applicants To Pledge Support For Diversity, Equity And Inclusion)

“Obviously this isn’t a trend that’s occurring just in history, but across the academy and a lot of that has to do with the academy’s recent focus on eradicating what it perceives as racism,” Chance Layton, director of communications at the National Association of Scholars, told the DCNF.

The data show a marked increase in job positions focused on ethnic identity subjects compared to data from 2011 and 2012, while job positions focused on different periods in American history declined.

Job postings focused on African-American history increased from 10% to 35.1% while job postings focused on Latino history increased from 3.2% to 5.9%. Native-American history job postingss increased from 2.9% to 6.6%, and Asian-American history increased from 0% in 2011 and 2012 to 3.5% between 2020 and 2022.

“If we’re going to talk about America’s sense of national identity, if the only thing we have to understand that is race and racism we’re leaving out huge, vital parts of the American story and that will create an entire generation of people who question the underlying idea of the American dream,” Jonathan Butcher, Goldwater Institute senior fellow, told the DCNF.

Job postings which focus on specific eras in U.S. history, such as the 20th century, the 19th century and early America have similarly declined, while job postings which focused on specific American regions decreased from 6.6% in 2011 and 2012 to 2.9% between 2020 and 2022.

“It distorts the way that we think about U.S. history. We should be able to teach students that slavery was inconsistent with our founding ideals. We should be teaching students that there were those, such as Benjamin Franklin and the quakers, who were abolitionists as early as the turn of the 19th century … some of the colonies that became states were grappling with how to either end slavery completely or end the slave trade well before the Civil War,” Butcher said. “So when you discuss the history of race in the United States and you say that racism is still embedded in the American system today, or racism is still the only way that we can understand the culture around us, you’re distorting an entire sector of American history.”

John Sailer, NAS fellow, pointed to various university job postings which emphasize an expertise on race, including a posting from Ohio State University (OSU) and another from Wake Forest University (WFU).

“This is a point I cannot emphasize enough,” Sailer tweeted. “To get a good job, in an incredibly lousy job market, a young scholar would be shrewd to focus their research on race, gender, or social justice.”

The OSU posting advertises an open position for a tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor of Philosophy which specializes on race.

“We construe this broadly to include issues such as the metaphysics of race; the epistemological significance of race or racism; race in the philosophy of science; accounts of racialized thought, talk, experience, or agency; and theories of racial justice/injustice or other aspects of the moral, social, or political significance of race or racism,” the post read.

“The academy has academic freedom and we’re not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t study, and nobody should,” Layton said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) topics. “However, they cross a line when they force these theories, the very politicized and controversial theories, on professors, students and staff.”

WFU’s post searching for an assistant professor in the classics department sought a candidate whose expertise would “substantially include race, racism, and Greek & Roman studies.”

“We are especially interested in candidates from underrepresented groups, as well as individuals who have experience in working with diverse student populations and who will, through their research and teaching, contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community,” the post read.

“The recent focus on requiring the professor to have some DEI competencies or race-based competencies to teach … classic Roman studies, I’m not really sure where that fits in and I do not think that helps students learn about the classics, if you will,” Layton said.

Karl, OSU and WFU did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel