I’ve seen this again and again. It’s a real puzzle. There are, of course, TWO reasons why Iowa and Duke refused to hire him.
1. He’s a conservative.
2. He’s a better historian than they are.
And what could be more embarrassing than to have a conservative in your department who is better than you are, better than any of the 19 or 29 or 39 other liberals in the department?
I was curious how this came out, and found this capsule bio on the website for his Vietnam book:
Dr. Mark Moyar received a B.A. summa cum laude in history from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University. He holds the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism at the U.S. Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. His articles have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the National Review, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, and the New York Sun. Prior to writing Triumph Forsaken, he published Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, which is being republished in late 2007 in a new edition. Dr. Moyar has taught previously at Cambridge University, Ohio State University, and Texas A&M University.
1. He’s a conservative.
2. He’s a better historian than they are.
Dr. Moyar is also quite young, which means he'd be around to make the department's resident Marxists look like fools for several decades...