Inside Higher Ed has a story today about the plans for a college to be located in New Hampshire that will specialize only in history.

The man behind this is Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, an institution that has fought the American Bar Association over its needlessly expensive and restrictive accreditation standards. (MSL has had to “settle” for accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, but not having ABA accreditation means absolutely nothing with regard to the competence of instruction in the law.)

The story doesn’t tell us much about the proposed curriculum. Most of the history profession has fallen under Marxian views — hostile to capitalism, entranced by the supposed goodness of government (in the hands of political progressives, at least) — but Velvel is enough of a free thinker that he might want to include some non-statist historians and courses that don’t exclusively sing the praises of the welfare state.

More academic competition can’t hurt. I hope Velvel’s project succeeds.