Today, close to 300 graduate-level higher education and student affairs (HESA) programs exist nationally, and the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) recommends studying the historical context of higher education as part of the curriculum. The strong social justice emphasis within HESA programs offers a valuable hook for introducing the complexities of the past and the craft of the historian. Research on the history of higher education has expanded in the last decade and is beginning to reshape the field, including current explorations of the relationship between institutions of higher education, slavery, and racism. For this study, the authors surveyed HESA programs nationally to understand the current landscape of history of higher education courses and conducted follow-up interviews with twenty-eight faculty. Drawing upon this rich data, this article examines the ways in which history of higher education instructors worked through the lens of social justice to make history relevant for graduate students outside of the discipline of history and to foster an appreciation of history as an iterative process involving analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of past events.