Following up on the earlier posts by Pete Boettke and Greg Ransom: A sociology-of-economics explanation for the decline of HET would be more convincing if it seemed necessary. I don't think it is. It's not as if the status of History has been increasing relative to other academic disciplines in recent decades; "sinking like a stone" would be closer to the truth. The lack of interest by undergraduates in History as a major or minor, and the ever-increasing difficulty graduate-trained historians have in securing an academic post, suggests that something much bigger than squabbles within economics is going on here. Jack Bladel