People, please reference your statements in these kind of discussions. We at /r/askhistorians are not so much interested in your personal philosophical inclinations, but in your position as a historians, that is, with theory with strong foundations. 'Just my experience' is not a strong foundation. Historiography is pretty well documented; please make use of this documentation.

In my university my professors almost exclusively favored a free will view.

I think that's quite strange, as most psychologists, biologists, chemists and physicists have very little use for the idea of free will. Of course that in itself is no proof of anything. Nevertheless, few historians will profess themselves to be an expert on the subject of free will versus determinism, and yet they in my experience overwhelmingly deny determinism.

The thing is though, when confronted with their position's fundamentals, it turns out that they aren't really interested in free will as a metaphysical concept, but rather as a sort of epistemic limitation. A certain amount of actions is ascribed to "free will". If I pointed out that this free will would be caused by physical events, even though we couldn't know those events, my professors' eyes would glaze over. Who cares about causes we can't know?

I think partially this is a sort of backlash against Marxist historical determinism that was popular when they were young. In some versions of this view the universe is not only deterministic, it is also actually predictable by humans. I think it's clear enough based on the results of chaos theory and other meta-scientific results of the twentieth century that predicting the future is an educated guess at best.

But the concept of free will philosophically in my mind is self-contradictory. If you do something and there is no cause behind it, it is not will, it is just a chance event. If you do have a reason to do something, your action isn't free, it is based on the reason.

Do you mean this in a philosophical sense, or an analytical sense?

These are rather false dichotomies, because in reality, most good historians will attempt to take into account both aspects. 'Free will' based history is going to be roughly analogous to the 'Great Man' theory of historical narratives that has been prevalent in historical discourse for millennia. On the other hand, modern 'scientific' based histories tend to focus more on the 'deterministic' aspects (i.e. the society/geography) that creates the changes. A good modern example of this is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Neither type of approach is entirely satisfactory alone.

Let's take an example from history. The Roman Empire started with Augustus. Did he merely take advantage of existing anarchy in the Roman political system, or did he rise to power because he was simply so skilled? In this particular case, the outcome that occurred could not have if both of those things were not true. Would someone else eventually have done what he did? Well, more than one man tried before him and failed, and more than one man tried after him, and failed. What happened certainly was not inevitable, nor was it solely thanks to his acumen as a leader. A hundred years earlier and Augustus would have failed, and a hundred years later he probably would have as well. Not forgetting the fact that he owed all his chances at power to the simple quirk of his familial ties. Yet, at that time, and at that place, he did do what he needed to do to raise himself up to first man of the Romans. That can't be dismissed.