Continuing a recent string of faculty departures, the Department of History will lose two more long-time professors over the next year. Professor Emeritus of History Abbott Gleason, who specializes in modern European history, will leave at the end of the semester, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor of History Gordon Wood will retire next spring after 36 years of teaching at Brown.
According to several professors in the department, the abnormally high level of turnover is due mainly to faculty retiring.
"I admit there has been quite a lot of turnover in recent years," said Professor of History Timothy Harris, who has recently served as chair of the department.
James McClain, professor of history and the department's current chair, said he believes the high turnover does not reflect poorly on the quality of Brown's history department but is instead the result of a coincidence: many of Brown's history professors have reached retirement age in the past few years or will reach it in the next few years.
"Of the last 10 people who left, eight were in that category," McClain said. The other two professors who left Brown chose to take positions at other universities. Volker Berghahn, a professor of modern German history, accepted a position at Columbia University. Sumit Guha, who specializes in South Asian history, left for Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. According to McClain, Guha left Brown because his wife received tenure at Rutgers.
As older professors retire or leave, the department is working hard to find replacements to fill holes left in the curriculum while maintaining high standards of teaching, Harris said.
"The department is actively trying to fill all its vacant positions. We've had a number of job searches each year over the past few years," Harris said. He added that the department has recently hired replacements not only for departing faculty members, but also professors to fill new positions.
"So we actually have a much larger faculty now than we did when I first came to Brown (in 1986)," Harris said.
"(The recent turnover rate) is so noticeable because in fact there was very little turnover in the history department for so many years before then," Harris said.
History concentrator Jesse Cohen '07 said the high turnover rate has not affected his own academic career, though he does regret losing the opportunity to take a class with Gleason.
David Beyer '07, also a history concentrator, said he cares less about the department's attempts to hire new faculty than the fact that students will lose the opportunity to take classes with high-profile professors like Wood.
"When you take a class with a new professor, it's a risk because no one can tell you anything about them," Beyer said. He said he considers himself lucky to have had the opportunity to take courses taught by Wood.
"I'm on the cusp - I'm getting the last of the good history department," he said, adding that he views the future of the department as bleak.
"People consult me about whether to concentrate in history, and I'm advising them against it," Beyer said. "How can I recommend it, not knowing who the professors will be?" He said even if the department hires highly qualified new professors, it will take some time before individual courses and the concentration as a whole are once again up to par because "it takes a while for new professors to get in sync with the school."
In the meantime, Beyer said he can only suggest taking as many well-known courses as possible while they are still offered.
"The legendary professors are just disappearing," he said. "It's becoming a defunct department."
