I'm not sure why you feel the need to ask this question with such hostility. For one thing, this sub does not allow down votes (edit: on topics, they do allow them on comments). Secondly, I believe it is the absolute prerogative of any professional group to define the terms of its own membership. I don't think people would get so up-in-arms about engineers or biologists policing the boundaries of their field. Is there a reason you think historians are not entitled to do so?

The title of historian is an earned one. My own definition is not super conservative, nor is it super liberal. I also think it can vary depending on venue and audience. However, an historian must at the very least do two things:

1. An historian must contribute new knowledge to a historical field. In other words, they must produce original research on one or more historical topics.

2. They must disseminate research provided by themselves and others to an audience. That audience might be other professional historians, it might be students, and it might be the general public. But it's our essential function.

Corollary: In order to effectively carry out both of these functions, a certain degree of professional training is required. Some people would, I suspect, say that only a terminal degree (ie, a Ph.D.) qualifies one to carry out both of these functions. I would say that a research-based M.A. in history, public history, art history, museum studies, cultural or area studies, or another related field can also suffice. This corollary is why people are leery of Dan Carlin (holds a B.A., but no advanced degree) and Jared Diamond (holds a Ph.D. in human anatomy, has been employed as a medical professor, biology professor, and geographer, but not as an historian). These guys show an interest in history, but they have not been trained in historical methods, something that shows in both of their work.

That's also why I would not define the vast majority of high school history teachers as historians. It's a laudable and important career, but most of them are just not producing original research, even though many have M.A.s and some have Ph.D.s. Due to the demands of secondary education, working in that field usually requires giving up the opportunity to pursue a sustained research program, precluding one from being an active historian.

Of course, my colleagues here on the sub might disagree with my assessment, and I would welcome further discussion.

Besides what /u/pipkin42 said, I like to think historians as using the scientific method, as far as possible, but onto history. Our evidence include written records, archaeology, and testing. From this interpretations and theories are formed, different possibilities looked at, and old ones rejected.

In addition, a historian must engage in source criticism, similar to the way a psychologist need to be careful with self-reported data or interviews.

Your Dan Carlins, Jared Diamonds, and high school history teachers are very important at spreading interests and hopefully disseminating theories and research. But they are not doing the research (or, in case of Diamond, proper research) themselves.

Finally, in case you haven't noticed, we can't downvote threads.

It's a complex question to answer, one that doesn't have wide consensus, nor will there ever be. That said, in recent years, particularly now in the "digital era", there's been a growing dialog about the philosophy of history ("What is the purpose of studying history?"), historiography ("How do we study history?"), museology ("What is the purpose and mission of institutions for these disciplines?"), pedagogy ("How do we learn and teach?"), and other disciplines.

I'm more aligned towards the study of museology specifically but my studies there have informed at least some opinion on the topic, where I'd say this-

I think that the key defining trait of a historian is a desire to seek out primary sources and report, with some sense of objectivity, what actually occurred using as little conjecture as possible. Inasmuch, I'd argue that the chief questions of the historian are what, when, and where; questions like "why" and "how" are relevant but tend towards conjecture. If a contemporaneous source writes in a journal why he did something, a historian reporting on that is a question of "What" ("What was said?") and not actually seeking to answer the question of "Why".

"Why" and "how" trend towards anthropology and sociology. They can overlap into history but are also disciplines worth defining in their own rights. Many historians will incorporate anthropological sources and methods into their work, and naturally, anthropologists will consult the work of historians, or even undertake historical research themselves.

I don't know Carlin's work that well, so I won't comment, but as for Diamond, I'd argue that he's an anthropologist who uses history to inform his work, but he's not precisely a historian. I'd argue that (most) high school history teachers aren't historians either- they're teachers, history is a topic that they are knowledgeable about, but they're not necessarily researchers. History teachers study the work of historians; historians study history.

All this said, I'm not really interested in gatekeeping the title of "historian" and I don't think that being a historian is a superior position to being an anthropologist or teacher. All these positions serve different roles, for different purposes. A teacher may inspire someone to become a historian; that historian may influence an anthropologist; the anthropologist may inspire more people to become historians; those historians may inspire more people to become history teachers; and on and on and on.

To emphasize the non-superiority (that is to say, equality) of disciplines, I would end on the note that the very question you ask isn't really something that can be answered by historians (who would report on the history of the idea, role, definition of "historian") and instead is a philosophical question.

Hi, you may find some previous responses interesting

• What does a Historian actually do?

• What does a historian do?

• What do historians actually do?

• What Makes a "Good" Historian?

For me anyone can claim to be a historian. There's nothing too special about it. However, there is a world of difference between amateur historians, historians with a journalism background, and a historian who actually went to graduate school and earned a PhD in history. Those are scholars or I suppose academic historians. Usually college professors though not always.