I love these kinds of lists. Here are some famous people who were history majors in college. Notice that none of them became professional historians.
George W. Bush, Former President of the United States
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Former President of the United States
Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice
Martha Stewart, Television personality
Katharine Hepburn, Actress
Bill Bradley, Former U.S. Senator and NBA Player
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, NBA Hall of Famer
Ralph Winter, Movie producer of X-Men and Fantastic Four
Wolf Blitzer, CNN Anchor
Steve Carrell, Michael Scott from “The Office.”
Bill O’Reilly, Fox News pundit
Richard Nixon, Former U.S. President
Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM
Theodore Roosevelt, Former U.S. President
Will Forte, actor, comedian and writer on “Saturday Night Live.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Former U.S. President
Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of the House
Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Olympic athlete
Julia Child, famous chef
George McGovern, 1972 presidential candidate
Grant Hill, NBA player
Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill and Hilary and hedge-fund manager
Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court justice
Pat Robertson, televangelist
Joe Biden, Vice-President of the United States
Charlie Rose, journalist
Larry David, co-producer of Seinfeld
Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of England
Chris Meloni, plays Elliott Stabler on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
Dean Cain, actor who played Superman on “Lois and Clark”
Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator
Sacha Baron Cohen, comedian and star of “Borat”
Stockard Channing, Played “Rizzo” in Grease
Chris Berman, ESPN Sports Broadcaster
Charles Kurault, CBS newsman
Jimmy Buffett, singer
Conan O’Brien, Host of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien”
Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, Presidential Candidate 1952
W.E.B. DuBois, Co-founder of the NAACP
Christa McAuliffe, Teacher who died in the Challenger
Carly S. Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Barack Obama should of majored in history, then maybe he would realize that he is repeating it, and doing it even worse than past failures have. Take Buchanan, Van Buren & Carter and multiply the fail factor by 10 and you still wouldn't equal what Obama has done in a year.
Add Ralph Winter, the film producer, to the list. He's pretty outspoken about the advantage of majoring in history (or English) rather than going to film school.
Hi Russ: Do you know of any place where Winters talks about the advantage of being a history major?
Wow, Fea Fan, nice job of responding to this post. You should have prefaced your response with “This has nothing to do with Fea's point, but I'd like to take this opportunity to gratuitously bash our current President” by mentioning “majoring in history.”
Dear Fea Fan and Anonymous: Let's settle down a bit and try not to use this forum for bickering and partisanship. Sorry to be so paternalistic, but this kind of stuff really gets us nowhere.
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Dr. Fea, apologies for eliciting a “paternalistic” comment from you, when I was only trying to point out to your “fan” that he or she had made an irrelevant comment. Yes, I “bickered” with this practice–a poor one, would you not agree?–but I do not believe that my own comment reflected any partisanship.
Since your “fan” has responded in a manner that suggests he or she does not accept credible evidence, it appears fruitless to pursue any meaningful discussion on the matter. Alas, I can only conclude that the rigors and benefits of a history major–the original subject of your post–are no safeguard against the will to believe discredited claims.