Chair Endowed by Stephen Ambrose May Finally Be Filled

It looks like the University of Wisconsin at Madison may finally fill the Ambrose-Hesseltine Chair in U.S. Military History, which was endowed by the late Stephen E. Ambrose over a decade ago and named for Ambrose and his mentor, former UW-Madison professor William Hesseltine, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal reports.

The university is accepting applications for the professorship through the end of this month and hopes to have a chair installed next August. According to the Journal Sentinal, the university has not attempted to fill the post since 2006, after the National Review ran an article chastizing the school for allowing the chair to sit vacant for so long and accusing the department of not wanting a military historian. (At the time, UW-Madison officials defended the delay, saying they did want to fill the post but hadn’t done a search simply because they didn’t have enough money to pay for a professor’s salary.) That search failed, and the department opted to put off a new search until now in the hope of attracting a bigger candidate pool, David McDonald, the chairman of the history department, told the newspaper. So far, the department has received about 20 applications, he said.