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A New Initiative

Cross-posted from Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

If the Society for Military History leadership won’t adopt a strategic plan to build the field, we may as well do it ourselves. For details, click the logo.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 10:42 AM and filed under The Craft of History.
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Comments (12) to “A New Initiative”

  1. Dave Powell wrote:

    Mark,

    Anything a non-academic can do?

    Dave Powell

    Posted on 06-Oct-06 at 5:14 pm | Permalink

  2. Mark G. wrote:

    Actually, you just did it. In the (very) short run, a public show of support for this initiative is welcome. I hope that everyone who thinks this is a good idea will say so, either here, on Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, or Cliopatria.

    I’ve spoken with two university development officers this week, and although this vision extends well beyond Ohio State, they have been generous with ideas and suggestions. Within a few days I expect to start placing specific ideas on the MHF web site, and I will include ways that non-academics as well as academics can help.

    Posted on 06-Oct-06 at 7:16 pm | Permalink

  3. Eric Wittenberg wrote:

    Mark,

    Count me in, too.

    Eric

    Posted on 06-Oct-06 at 10:33 pm | Permalink

  4. Shawn Woodford wrote:

    Mark,

    This is a very interesting idea with lots of possibilities. I do have one question: endowing chairs in military history is a great way of keeping established academics employed, but how does that help younger ones get hired in the first place?

    Cheers,

    Shawn

    Posted on 08-Oct-06 at 8:58 am | Permalink

  5. Ken Noe wrote:

    Mark:

    One of my grad students has already asked me to claim one of the endowed chairs for Auburn. After May 2007, we will have lost both of our true military historians, and I’m not holding my breath about getting a new one.

    Ken

    Posted on 08-Oct-06 at 5:44 pm | Permalink

  6. Mark G. wrote:

    Shawn – Endowed chairs are typically associated with senior scholars, but an endowment can be used to support anything: fellowships, travel grants, and funding for entry-level tenure-track positions, which is what I favor when it comes to faculty lines. We need more military historians at the junior level, and we could endow two such positions for what it would cost to endow a single senior position.

    Ken – You might ask the grad student to contact Auburn’s development office, because we would certainly have to cooperate with any college or university to create an endowed chair/professorship. And given the loyalty of alumni to their alma mater, I think a good tactic would be for MHF, once it has identified a department that would be receptive to a military history, to work with its parent college or university’s office of development identify potential donors among the alumni.

    Posted on 08-Oct-06 at 10:30 pm | Permalink

  7. Stephen Graham wrote:

    Mark:

    I just gave your contact info to the Department Administrator for UW History. They have some funds dedicated to military history and are trying to fill a position, to the best of my knowledge. Hopefully something worthwhile will come from this.

    Posted on 10-Oct-06 at 5:59 pm | Permalink

  8. Mark G. wrote:

    Thanks. I’ve been in touch with several people from the UW history dept. and UW’s development office and know they’re doing their best to fill the position you speak of, if I understand you correctly: the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair.

    Posted on 11-Oct-06 at 3:20 pm | Permalink

  9. Brooks D. Simpson wrote:

    There’s more than one UW. :) I bet Stephen’s talking about the one a bit west of Wisconsin.

    Posted on 12-Oct-06 at 3:38 pm | Permalink

  10. Stephen Graham wrote:

    Washington, Wisconsin, what’s the difference? I could have said U-Dub and confused everyone.

    But, yes, I did mean Washington.

    Posted on 13-Oct-06 at 1:04 am | Permalink

  11. Mark G. wrote:

    Sorry about that. It’s like OSU — I always forget it can mean Oklahoma State University, among other possibilities, as well as Ohio State University.

    Posted on 13-Oct-06 at 2:55 pm | Permalink

  12. Stephen Graham wrote:

    And you’d think I’d be more sensitive to the distinction, after growing up in Ohio and Michigan and doing undergrad in Minnesota. But you get used to the local usage very quickly, especially as everyone around you understands what you mean.

    Posted on 14-Oct-06 at 1:10 am | Permalink