A Preference for Foreigners?

PhDinHistory observes that the proportion of history professors at American universities who are U.S. citizens has been dropping:

In 1987, according to the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, 98.4 of history faculty were citizens. Sixteen years later, this figure had fallen to 88.9 percent.

What’s particularly curious, though, is that the drop came at a time when the number of history faculty members grew by almost 50 percent — up to about 30,000 in 2003 from about 20,000 in 1987, the anonymous blogger writes.

PhDinHistory also notes that those most affected by this trend are minority history professors, particularly those of African-American descent:

In 2003, 92.1 percent of white history faculty were U.S. citizens who were born in this country. By contrast, only 59.7 percent of Asian history faculty, 69.1 percent of Black/African American history faculty, and 73.5 percent of Hispanic/Latino history faculty were U.S. citizens who were born in this country.

The percentage of Black/African American history faculty who were citizens that were born in this country has fallen nearly 20 percent, from 88.1 percent in 1992 to 69.1 percent in 2003. Moreover, as the job market for Black/African American history faculty contracted between 1998 and 2003 (the total number of Black/African American history faculty fell by about a third), history departments apparently demonstrated a preference for hiring foreign-born and non-citizen Black history faculty. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, this shift occurred even though African Americans earned more history PhDs between 1998 and 2003 (when the average was about 43 history PhDs per year) than they did between 1992 and 1998 (when the average was about 30 history PhDs per year).

He wonders why, when more minorities are earning history Ph.D.‘s than ever before, history departments seem to prefer foreign-born historians over American-born minority historians.