Category Uncategorized
Dutch Americans in Alienated America
In the 2016 presidential election, Dutch-Americans and the Mormons were outliers. Both voted heavily Republican, but were also strongly against Trump in the primaries. Why is this the case? Timothy Carney, in a new book, Alienated Argument: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse (Harper Collins, 2019) argues that Dutch-American places like Oostburg (WI), Orange […]
Hampshire County WV – Historic Population Data in Charts
(edit: a wise reader pointed out that Mineral County broke off from Hampshire County in the 1860s, thereby throwing off all of my data analysis here. For an update, see my next blog post) County-level census data is available through IMPUS and the National Historical Geographic Information System. I’ve decided to use […]
A Tale of University Bureaucracy, in 89 (or so) emails.
January 10, 2018: M applies for a seminar that I am running. January 15, 2018: I write M to congratulate her on being accepted to the seminar. January 17, 2018: M confirms that she will attend the seminar. January 18, 2018: I inform all of the seminar attendees about the reimbursement procedure. March 9, 2018: […]
The Vanishing Academic Conservative Historian (Part 2: the bet is accepted)
Alright, folks, I’ve received quite a few reactions to my post from July 4th. It seems that all you have to do is mention politics in academia and everyone gets into a tizzy. If only Dutch history were so popular. At any rate, someone has taken me up on the bet, that within the next […]
The Vanishing Conservative Academic Historian
Let’s say you are a young conservative undergraduate, and you would like to go to grad school in history. Where would you look for a friendly advisor? If you are considering an Ivy League school, you might want to think again. According to research by Langbert, Quain, and Klein, available data indicates a ratio of […]
Graduate Students and Elite Historian Networks
It is my intuition that the best-placed young historians today come from a small set of elite universities. But, as Lavar Burton would say, don’t take my word for it. Take a look at the 2015 article by Clauset, Arbesman, and Larremore, “Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks” which shows that the […]
The Coolness of Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre McCloskey, professor emerita of everything, once wrote a book chapter titled “The Coolness of Alexander Gerschenkron” about her mentor in the economics department at Harvard. I’m beginning to think someone ought to write a full-length piece about the “Coolness of Deirde McCloskey.” I once wrote an article criticizing a small bit of McCloskey’s work, […]
Zeno’s Tax Paradox
I wrote a short article for FEE.org, the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.
Book Event – Netherlands East Indies
I’m hosting a book event this Thursday for Fred Borch, a historian who has written a new book on war crimes of the Japanese in the Netherlands East Indies (when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony). I’ll be serving as the interviewer/ moderator for the discussion. More information about the event is here:
Introducing the Hampshire County History Podcast
I’m starting a podcast about local Hampshire County, West Virginia, history, partly to educate myself about my new home region, but also with the goal of increasing historical consciousness for community building. I believe that awareness of history is central for overcoming problems of social alienation and disregard for the local environment. Join me in […]
Michael J Douma 