Wed 19 Aug 2009
Whither and Die
Posted by David under David Kaiser at 6:28 am
We have had several interesting discussions about the views of former Williams visiting professor David Kaiser. Consider his 2000 article (pdf): “My War with the AHA.”
Essentially, a trend has developed over the last three decades not merely in favor of writing the history of hitherto neglected groups, including the poor, minorities, and women, but actively against writing the history of governments and their role in society or abroad. Exactly why this has happened is a complex question. Professional humanists are, alas, always eager for new approaches, since they help provide new generations of graduate students with dissertation topics. The new areas of study matched the political interests of a new generation of historians who sympathized instinctively with the disadvantaged, as, indeed, I always have myself. More recently, as shall see, the new emphasis has become connected to a new methodology which explicitly militates against studying white males, who, for better or for worse, have dominated modern western governments. And lastly, traditional but liberal historians like myself took a sympathetic view of the new history as a means of rounding out the profession, not realizing that it was instead likely to transform it entirely from the discipline to which we had decided to devote our lives.
…
Far from supporting the kind of history which I and others like me do–the kind of history which, since Thucydides, has helped western men and women to understand themselves and the political systems within which they have to live–the AHA actively opposes it and is progressively working to eliminate it. Council members will undoubtedly deny that that is their goal, and some of them will undoubtedly do so sincerely, but my story, I think–and many others besides–show very clearly that that is the effect of their policies. The organization is not worth saving, and with many of America’s finest historians joining the new, rival Historical Society–as I plan to do myself–it cannot be changed from within, the course that would have been my preference. I am sure the kind of history that the AHA now encourages is destined to wither and die, largely because it has nothing to contribute to society at large, and it seems quite possible that the AHA itself will wither and die along with it. If it does, so be it. History is, after all, a cycle of birth and death, and it is replete with stories of institutions which, like this one, have gone off the track and outlived their usefulness. I surrender, confident that time will vindicate my decision, and my fidelity to history of a different kind.
Comments:
1) Read the whole article for full context. I would be interested to read what Derek’s take is on Kaiser’s specific examples.
2) My central proposal/pipe-dream is that the next two historians that Williams hires be, first, an expert in US diplomatic history and, second, an expert in military history. The College has not had the former (except as visitors) since KC Johnson left more than a decade ago. Professor James Wood will be retiring soon. I do not expect that the College will do this because the people who run Williams do not think it is important to have such historians on the faculty. Anyone want to take the other side of that bet?
3) Kaiser wrote these words a decade ago. How is the “Historical Society” doing now?
UPDATE: Thanks to Professor McAllister for pointing out that Williams hired a US diplomatic historian, Jessica Chapman, 18 months ago. I am very glad to be wrong about that!
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40 Responses to “Whither and Die”
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James McAllister says:
I beg Derek and David to not take the bait since these issues were thoroughly debated last week.
The other point is that David already lost this bet because the department hired Jessica Chapman 18 months ago. She is an excellent historian, has a published article in the journal Diplomatic History, and teaches a two part survey course on the history of American foreign relations among other things. She is tenure track. I have no idea how you missed that last week (and no it was not my job to point it out)
All the Best,
JM
jeffz says:
Wow. So much for that theory. Here is her bio:
http://www.williams.edu/history/bios/JChapman.php
David says:
1) Thanks to James for the information and Jeff for the link. I have updated the post accordingly.
2) I disagree with James about whether or not these issues were thoroughly debated last week. One problem with that previous discussion is that it lacked enough specific examples. But, now, with this paper, we have a dozen. Kaiser is claiming that the many examples he cites are bad history and/or bad for history as a field.
3) James: I have not lost the bet yet. (I hope that I will lose the bet!) Williams has not hired a military historian to replace the soon-to-retire James Wood. Want to bet about that?
James McAllister says:
One thing I would like to say is that we should not get hung up on terminology like “diplomatic historian” or “military historian.” Some scholars cover this material in their own way and do not wish to be put in a narrow category by others. In addition, I am a political scientist who has been offering courses at Williams for over a decade that many would call “diplomatic history.” Marc Lynch and Paul MacDonald have been teaching courses on International Security and military issues for over a decade. Just because they are not in the history department does not mean that the subject matter is not being covered.
Finally, and most importantly, for those students interested in the study of American foreign relations you could not be in a better place than Williams. The number of courses you can take in this area, from both regular faculty and very distinguished vistors (both senior and junior)is higher than just about anywhere in the country (you could check for yourself but do something fun instead).
The bottom line here is that the concerns about these topics of inquiry fading away at Williams could not be more wrong—they have been thriving at Williams for the last five years and will be in the future as well.
David says:
Really? Goodness knows we are always looking for reasons why a student interested in X should choose Williams over Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, Middlebury et al. One can certainly make a clear case for students interested in, say, math and art history. (I think that, in both cases, Williams has more majors, more wildly enthusiastic majors, and more course offerings than these other schools.)
But is this really the case for “US foreign policy,” assuming that this is the best short description of “this area” from your comment? What metrics are you using? (Again, I don’t doubt this claim, I just want to understand the details.)
Sam says:
See page 70 of this pdf document
August 19th, 2009 at 9:45 amDavid says:
Thanks to Professor Crane for that excellent pointer! (But I think that the relevant page is 68.)
Anyway, for those too lazy to click through, there is a table on page 68 which shows the answers to this question: “What are the five best colleges or universities in [Country X] for undergraduate students to study IR?”
In the table for the US, Williams is ranked (tied) for 13 and almost all the schools above it are major research universities. (The only schools listed that *might* count as an LAC is Tufts, which no doubt benefits from the Fletcher School, and Georgetown, which also has significant graduate programs in international relations.)
But isn’t this evidence fairly useless in deciding whether or not a student would be better off studying American foreign relations at Williams versus Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona and so on? (Obviously, I am thankful to Sam for bringing this to our attention, I just wonder if it is on point.)
1) The reason that Williams is ranked so “high” is that 2% of the 1,719 US international relations faculty in the survey voted for it. That is around 34 folks. Now, I am glad that 34 people think so highly of Williams, but I suspect that a reasonably similar number of people probably said the same thing about Amherst et al. The table is truncated at 2%! So, all the other schools could be just below us and we would never know. Is there really a meaningful difference between having 34 IR faculty mention you in such a survey and 24? I doubt it.
2) I bet that a majority of those 34 attended Williams. Now, there is nothing wrong with school loyalty, but such claims hardly get to the heart of the matter. This could just be an artifact of the greater likelihood of Williams graduates to become IR faculty.
3) Even to the extent that a) other schools are just below Williams in the ranking and b) most of the Yes votes were from alumni, we still have the issue of what sort of reasons people would have for voting for Williams. That is a separate comment but I doubt that many/most non-alumni votes had a reasonable justification for their votes. In order to say that Williams is better than school X on this dimension, you would need, for a start, to know the range of courses offered and the average teacher quality. How many non-alums of Williams could make that judgment?
4) We have blogged about this survey in the past, but I can’t find the post.
Again, I am eager to believe that student X is better off at Williams for the study of American foreign policy than she would be at Amherst, but this survey result does not seem to do it.
rory says:
i smell a “kaneblog” comment coming…
(and sam pointed to that page, as it’s the 70th page of the pdf, page 68 of the report)
Sam says:
No, rory, it’s just not worth it…especially after the horrible treatment he has doled out to sophmom… as I have said many time before: impervious….
Loweeel says:
@James McAllister — I took Arab-Israeli relations with Professor Lynch, and enjoyed it (and him) immensely.
That being said, we really didn’t into any of the military aspects of the conflict. In contrast to Prof. Wood’s classes (Warfare in European History, WWII Tutorial), the Arab-Israeli wars were presented as basically a “black box” — e.g., “here’s the situation before the war (in detail), [very brief description of the result of the war and difficulty], how/why/when it ended, here’s the situation after the war”.
It would be a shame if interested students were unable to get into the “micro” of warfare. Particularly when the overwhelming majority of high school history classes also follow the “black box” model of wars (with the exception of the names and details of a few major battles).
James McAllister says:
David,
First, let me start by acknowledging my own basic stupidity for responding to this at all. We all know the game here and the only smart thing to do is to abstain. David is not “eager to believe that student X is better off at Williams for the study of American foreign policy than she would be at Amherst”-the opposite is true. What he wants to believe is that student x is much worse off and there is no way to prove otherwise. But since I have come this far:
1) The TRIPS survey is the gold standard of surveys of the study of international relations in the United States. There are no other comparable surveys. We have no business being in that survey at all–we don’t directly teach graduate students, we turn out comparatively few IR students each year compared to virtually every other place on the list. Nevertheless, we are tied with MIT and Cornell on that list and just below Tufts, University of Michigan, and Duke. There are no other liberal arts colleges on that list—and let’s look at the schools not on the list; no other NESCAC schools, NYU, UPENN, Brown, Wisconsin-Madison, Pomona, Oberlin, UT-Austin, UCLA, and so on. Are we supposed to beat out Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, Columbia, Berkeley, Michigan, Tufts, and Duke–all places that turn out far more undergraduates and graduate students and who also have far greater numbers of faculty who vote in these surveys?
2) Of course, in the land of David Kane there are many factors that could account for the fact that we appeared on the TRIPS survey. First, all of our votes come from Williams alums who are biased. The fact that such a high number went on to study IR at a grad level, if that is the case at all, would seem to say something highly positive about IR at Williams (wow we are almost 2% of the profession!)but not for David Kane. From there it is just a short step to suggesting that all Williams alums obviously vote for our program (“school loyalty”) but that the alums of other undergraduate and graduate programs do not vote for schools they have been associated with. As for those who are not alums, David has that covered as well; “I doubt that many/most non-alumni votes had a reasonable justification for their votes.” Out of all the places these non-informed scholars could have chosen, somehow they managed to vote out of the blue for Williams College!
3) The TRIPS survey does not directly measure “whether or not a student would be better off studying American foreign relations at Williams versus Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, and so on.” Unfortunately, the IR profession does not precisely specify their questions to suit Ephblog. Of course, by these sorts of standards how could any evidence resolve the question of whether any particular student is better off anywhere? College or University X may have only one faculty member who specializes in this area, but perhaps they are a simply fabulous teacher who does exactly what a students wants to learn about. College or University Y may have five faculty members with impressive CV’s but who are also lousy teachers who spend all their time with graduates? None of this can be discerned by outsiders.
4) Let’s end this debate with a direct comparison and a challenge. The direct comparison is between the study of US foreign relations at Amherst and Swarthmore–our two direct competitors. Let’s imagine an incoming student next year with an interest in American foreign policy had to choose between the schools simply by reference to course offerings. Based on my own glance at the catalogues, a student at Amherst can take one course next year in history “Case Studies in American Diplomacy” and one psci course “American politics/American foreign policy.” A student at Swarthmore can choose between four courses in history on topics such as the Cold War, US foreign policy since 1945, Race and Foreign Affairs, and US History: Race to Globalism. Sounds ok until you check and see that none of those four courses is offered next year-so no courses in history in AFP next year. There is one psci course “American foreign policy.”
So, Amherst is at 2 and Swarthmore is at 1. Well, at Williams one could take 8 courses in History next year by a modest count; Jessica Chapman’s survey both semesters, courses by Paul Chamberlin on the US and the Middle East and the US and Revolutionary Movements, a course on US-Japan relations, a course on US-Latin American relations, a course on the Spanish-American war, and a course on America and the Vietnam War (McAllister and Randall Woods). I know Randall is a “visitor” but he is also a past president of SHAFR–the leading organization of AFP scholars in the country (as was Marc Stoler and Michael Hunt–previous visitors brought here by the Stanley Kaplan program in AFP–that’s right we have an entire program that students can concentrate in). In psci, we have another 3 or four courses in AFP. Final tally: Williams 11, Amherst 2, Swarthmore 1. Of course, somehow none of this will count as evidence.
4. Finally, the challenge for david is to just admit he is wrong here.
All the Best,
JM
David says:
That is just not true. I say above as I have said many, many times in the past.
Student X is better off at Williams for the study of math than she would be at Amherst.
Student Y is better off at Williams for the study of art history than she would be at Swarthmore.
I have been those claims in bold so that they are easy for you to read. What more do I have to say? How can I convince you that, when Williams is truly superior in some subject, no one is more eager than I am to shout that from the rooftops? One of the most read posts at EphBlog is my paean to the superiority of a Williams undergraduate education to Harvard.
But, at the same time, I am a realist. Student X is not better off at Williams relative to Amherst/Swarthmore for every single subject. I am happy to have a discussion about whether or not that is the case for American foreign policy. I hope it is. Really!
As to the evidence, I see nothing overly compelling with regard to TRIP on your points 1-3. (Let me know if you want the full response.) But your point 4) is quite compelling!
Perfect. To the extent that these are fair comparisons, then they would provide plenty of evidence that, in fact, student X with an interest in US foreign policy is better off at Williams. Indeed, it is precisely these sorts of course counts (along with some knowledge, at least in MATH, of professor reputations) that makes me confident in my claims above.
But would a Swarthmore faculty member really agree that they offer just one course in US foreign policy next year? I also suspect that they might insist on averaging offered courses over 4 years. Further investigation is called for.
ben says:
As an add-on to Professor McAllister’s comment, I’d also like to point out that the Stanley Kaplan Program offers students the chance to get together for informal debate and discussion on contemporary dilemmas in American foreign policy. Nearly every Sunday this past academic year, about 20-30 of us gathered in the basement of Griffin to wrestle with issues like U.S. withdrawal from Iraq; Iranian nuclear ambitions; the global financial crisis; the future of democracy-promotion; climate change and energy policy; Afghanistan-Pakistan; American competitiveness in the global economy; and much, much more. We arranged guest lectures by Professors McAllister, Hunt, Paul, Mahon, and Bernhardsson. We participated in small-group discussions with Dr. Stephen Biddle and Nir Rosen. We even organized an entire weekend to examine the Iraq refugee crisis. As if that weren’t enough, several of us attended the H-Diplo conference in the spring.
Any critic who thinks that students interested in American diplomatic history and public policy suffer at Williams needs to swing by Griffin sometime this fall. While I can assure that you’ll be impressed, you won’t see me there. That’s because, like several of my other friends involved in the group, I’m delving into government and public policy now that I’ve graduated. My career interests–along with those of another friend who’s going for an MPP at M.I.T., and another who’s going to become a journalist in the Middle East, and another who’s looking at think tanks and Capitol Hill–were indelibly shaped by my academic experiences in the History and Political Science departments at Williams and my extracurricular involvement in Kaplan. So, as far as I’m concerned, the proof is in the pudding.
David says:
To simplify this discussion for future participants, I will provide links to the 11 Williams classes that Professor McAllister lists above:
1) HIST 262 Fall 2009 The United States and the World, 1776 to 1914
2) HIST 263 Spring 2010 The United States and the World, 1914 to the Present
3) HIST 360 Spring 2010 The Spanish-American Wars (D)
4) HIST 311 Fall 2009 The United States and the Middle East
5) HIST 473 Spring 2010 The United Stated, Revolution, and the Postcolonial World
6) HIST 321 Fall 2009 History of U.S.-Japan Relations (D)
7) HIST 370 Fall 2009 America and the Vietnam War
8) HIST 345 Spring 2010 “In Our Own Backyard?” U.S. and Latin American Relations
9) PSCI 120 Spring 2010 America and the World After September 11
10) PSCI 420 Fall 2009 Senior Seminar in International Relations and Comparative Politics: The War in Iraq
11) PSCI 382 Spring 2010 The Art of Political and Historical Inquiry: American Foreign Relations
I have yet to look at the Swarthmore course catalog. Although I have nothing but the highest regard for James, a longtime friend of EphBlog, I would be shocked if they only offered one course that was as related to US foreign policy as these 11. Am I naive?
UPDATE: List fixed thanks to info from Professor McAllister. Thanks!
Sam says:
James, quit now! Save yourself, man! Stop before you’re pulled down into the murky, inescapable (and, yes, impervious) depths of Kaneblog….
JeffZ says:
Sam, I disagree … there are tons of posts on numerous topics by various authors, so even if you choose to ignore the more inflammatory posts, there are great opportunities for participation for any so inclined! And the good news is, the more you comment on the less inflammatory stuff, the more attention it will receive. More people than you know appreciate when you, Prof. Brown, Prof. McAllister (or other profs) share their insights.
As for the question raised in this post, I will say that I am confident that DK does not secretly hope that Williams is inferior in this regard to Amherst or Swarthmore — I think the opposite is true, in fact, and he just wants lots of evidence and/or is just being his usual difficult self. But everything else Prof McAllister said is compelling — I’m sold. Moreover, I am surprised no one mentioned the elephant in the room, the fact that Williams, alone among its peer, has the Political Economy major, not to mention the Leadership Studies concentration.
James McAllister says:
Sam is correct of course, but might as well finish this up.
I doubt that David is naive, but perhaps his next post will begin with “I am shocked.” After a further perusal of the Swarthmore history catalogue it turns out that they have no one on their faculty who could or would claim to teach any of them. As far as I can tell, the Swarthmore history department offers not a single course in the history of american foreign relations. This does not mean, of course, that they are not a great department but all we are debating here are offerings in American foreign policy.
Timothy Burke says:
I’m going to come at this from another angle on my blog, but I think basically James is right as far as the comparison to Swarthmore with some small amendments. My colleague Marjorie Murphy does teach some U.S. diplomatic history in addition to U.S. social history and labor history; primarily her offerings in this area are the aforementioned History 49 Race and Foreign Affairs, and also History 134 which is an Honors seminar in U.S. diplomatic history. So not “no one”, but only one half of one of our nine tenure-track positions is formally dedicated to U.S. diplomatic history. There’s a few more courses in Poli Sci on U.S. foreign policy than mentioned above, but this particular subject area is one that I think Williams is more heavily invested than we are.
Parent '12 says:
Prof Burke’s “How to Read a Curriculum” is good, but not as amusing as his “Should you go to graduate school” … at least amusing if one moved from life as a grad student through ABD to PhD.
Ronit says:
How to Read a Curriculum
Should I go to graduate school?
rory says:
ephblog has failed me! why didn’t i see that post on grad school 4 years ago instead of today as i continue to watch my 4th episode of TNT’s not-that-good-show leverage instead of revising my paper that’s already late?!?!
DAMN YOU EPHBLOG!!!
sophmom says:
@rory:
And deprive the academic community of a great professor? No way.
Besides, I look forward to seeing you arguing with DK under a moniker that links with your (future) department. Notice how everyone perks up around here when a prof drops in?
Mike says:
David: You’ve left this thread off with “Further investigation is called for.”
A Williams professor has provided pretty compelling evidence that the IR field at Williams is excellent. A Swarthmore professor on his blog has said McAllister’s assessment of relative strengths seems basically right.
Every student from the last 15 years that has posted on this thread speaks to the strength of the Williams program (having not commented until now, I will formally add my name to the list as somebody incredibly grateful for the inspiring work James, Michael MacDonald, Marc Lynch, James Wood and Bob Jackall did in courses I took related to international relations, military history and US anti-terror policy).
Why can’t you just say you’re wrong? Sheesh…
Parent '12 says:
Rory @ 21- LOL
You might also like Prof Burke on “From ABD to the Job Market.”
Besides, if you’re only 3-4 years into Grad School & expect to be in the job market in 1-2 years, you have a lot to be proud of.
http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/permanent-features-advice-on-academia/abd/
(And, Ronit, thanks for putting in the links above.)
David says:
Mike,
Given the evidence that McAllister and Burke have now provided (and which we did not have before we started this conversation), I am now happy to report in bold:
Satisfied? I stand by my analysis that the TRIP survey tells us little if anything of interest. Note that there is a bit of a shell game, for those paying attention, whereas the TRIP survey asks:
There is a difference, obviously, between the specific sub-field of American foreign policy and the broader topic of international relations (IR). You really think that Burke, or any other Swarthmore professor, would be so quick to concede on that point.
I also think that your reading of Burke is somewhat selective and that we have yet to hear from Amherst. Further investigation and discussion is still called for.
David says:
Mike,
As I think about it, your comment #23 is an example of the sort of purple-stars-in-their-eyes hero worship that seems to occasionally afflict many alums, myself included. I have no doubt that you had an amazing time at Williams. That is not in dispute. The issue is, what sort of time would you have had if you had gone to Amherst? You think that the professors there are idiots? You are certain, without having spent a moment looking at their course catalog or talking to students who studied foreign policy there that your experience at Williams was better? Please, try to maintain a bit of objectivity.
And, even though we have made some progress, we still have differences like:
Either Professor Murphy is qualified to teach a class on diplomatic history or she isn’t. Who is right?
And, now that I look at your comment, I see how confused you are.
This is just not true! Burke is ready to grant something about the (very?) small subpart if international relations that is devoted to just the US, but he is not granting a claim about all of international relations.
You really need to read more carefully.
hwc says:
I don’t think you guys are characterizing Prof Burke’s agreement correctly. He was agreeing that Williams history department offers more courses on American Diplomacy. That is not the same as an overall assessment of international relations or Foreign Policy.
These rankings were published in the March/April 2007 Issue of Foreign Policy Magazine based on surveys of foreign policy professionals. It’s shocking for any LAC to be on this list because it is so heavily weighted toward the graduate programs included in the same survey:
Top 20 International Relations Undergraduate Programs
1. Harvard University 48%
2. Princeton University 46%
3. Stanford University 30%
4. Georgetown University 28%
5. Columbia University 28%
6. Yale University 23%
7. University of Chicago 21%
8. University of California-Berkeley 12%
9. Dartmouth College 11%
10. George Washington University 10%
11. American University 10%
12. University of Michigan 9%
13. Tufts University 8%
14. Swarthmore College 8%
14. University of California-San Diego 8%
16. Cornell University 6%
17. Brown University 6%
18. Williams College 5%
19. Duke University 5%
19. Johns Hopkins University 5%
hwc says:
I don’t really care enough to study the course offerings, but it could be argued that the large number of history courses focusing on American Diplomacy represents a parochial view of the world through a US filter. It reminds me of the way political science was taught back in the 70s. I had one professor assign two books on WWII in a Japanese politics course — one by an US historian and one by a Japanese admiral. It was a jarring concept — back then — to consider that there were different narratives. Now, that kind of approach is commonplace. For example, Professor Burke teaches a course called “Image of Africa” which traces the history of Western characterizations of Africa. That course is probably every bit as valuable to a future State Department expert as a course titled: American Diplomacy and Africa.
rory says:
mike, meet strawman, strawman, this is mike.
Timothy Burke says:
Yeah, to be clear, I’m merely saying that if the question is, “Who has more faculty and more courses in the Department of History directly devoted to U.S. diplomatic history”, it’s Williams. (Williams also has a bigger department as a whole, more than double our size.) IR as a whole encompasses more than just U.S. diplomatic history.
The question of where a student would be better off, what’s a better course of study and all that is a messier one and not terribly profitable in my view for all sorts of reasons–the whole premise of a LAC is that we think there are a lot of paths to a critical knowledge about a specific area of study.
wslack says:
Ben’s completely right about Stanley Kaplan, which is easily my second or third favorite student group at Williams (and meets at the same time as #1, ironically). I really enjoyed it the few times I missed my other meeting.
EDIT: Quoted for truth:
hwc says:
Professor Burke was part of a faculty panel at the accepted students visit (“Ride the Tide”) the year my daughter was accepted to Swarthmore. She came home and said that he had spoken on the topic “Good reasons NOT to attend Swarthmore…” encompassing similar themes to those in his blog entry today. As with his blog today, that is a very effective way to get at the reasons to attend a small liberal arts college.
BTW, I think people use department rankings as a crutch because they simply don’t know how to go about comparing colleges any other way. I think it’s worth a cursory look at departments. For example, if you think you might like engineering, then you want to choose a school that actually offers engineering. On the other hand, if you are not sure, then you want to choose a school that offers something besides engineering, too!
JeffZ says:
I think for probably 80 percent, at LEAST, of people who attend Williams or its peers, the key message from this thread is:
“the whole premise of a LAC is that we think there are a lot of paths to a critical knowledge about a specific area of study.” [quote from Burke]
I’d even put the issue more broadly than that. If you are (a) really, really, really single-mindedly focused on a very narrow substantive area as a high school senior, and (b) don’t change that focus within your first year of college (probably multiple times), you are a rare bird indeed. And if you are that rare preternaturally-focused bird, the idea of a liberal arts college likely isn’t all that appealing — you are probably better off going to a school that has the best graduate program in that area, with numerous leading scholars in the field, and spending much of your frosh and soph years ingratiating yourself with that group so you can convince one of them to serve as a rabbi as you prep for grad school.
The most important thing you learn at Williams and Swarthmore is nothing remotely substantive. It is how to acquire, process, synthesize, and effectively share knowledge. In this day and age, it is relatively easy, if you have the intellectual tool kit and the will, to become an expert in a very narrow field: the internet has made access to a huge array of knowledge on almost anything just that easy to come by. I don’t think focusing on a narrow sub-field of a single area of study, and making that focus dispositive, or close to dispositive, in your college search is advisable for the VAST majority of applicants to a place like Williams. Odds are, when you are exposed to a wider variety of brilliant thinkers focused on broader spectrum of intellectual arenas available to you in high school, your own interests will shift radically from what you previously found so compelling.
In sum, I’d say there are not only a lot of paths to critical knowledge about a specific area of study, but there also a lot of paths to determining what specific area of study is critical to know about. Almost none of those paths conclude prior to matriculation at college.
James McAllister says:
I regret that Professor Burke had to lose some time on this issue, but I appreciate his weighing in on this and urge him to never return for the sake of his sanity. As I am sure he knows, I was not calling into question anyone’s ability to teach US diplomatic history. One can never tell from a quick perusal of faculty interests who teaches what course. Professor Murphy’s little bio does not suggest that this is her primary area of work, but that of course does not suggest anything—one can be a great teacher in an area that they do not conduct the main body of their research.
I should point out–why I don’t know–that the TRIP survey has absolutely nothing to do with history departments at all–those survey results only apply to psci departments. HWC is right that it is shocking for any LAC to be on that list, but I would note he has an outdated list–we were ranked 13 on the most recent one and the only LAC (excluding Dartmouth, which is much bigger and a truly great department). You know if we were not on the list David would be saying that we were nowhere in the national rankings, not that we just missed and we surely had 25 or thirty votes.
So, what did we get by all this discussion? “Given the evidence that McAllister and Burke have now provided (and which we did not have before we started this conversation), I am now happy to report in bold:
Student Y is better off at Williams for the study of American Foreign Policy than she would be at Swarthmore.”
Wow, that is what it is all about; getting david to give his blessing? The evidence was all there for anyone who cared long before yesterday. Jessica Chapman was hired 18 months ago and her course have long been listed in course catalogues. The number of courses we offer has long been public knowledge. The fact that we have had 3 ex-presidents of SHAFR teach here over the last four years has been pointed out before. Our major conferences over the last few years have been all over the Williams website.
All the best,
JM
Professor of History Marjorie Murphy is an expert on teachers unions and the author of Blackboard Unions, The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980 (Cornell University Press, 1990), which traces the history of the unionization of public school teachers. More generally, Prof. Murphy can comment on the past and future of American public education, American labor history, public sector unionism, and women’s history
Ken Thomas '93 says:
David Kane says:
Huh? Burke maintains an excellent blog at which he writes tens of thousands of words on just these sorts of topics, interacting with Swarthmore students and alumni (and interested outsiders) in the comments. Burke recognizes, I think, that public discussion of the policies and priorities of an elite college is important. With time, Williams professors will come to recognize that as well.
rory says:
“this issue” being the key part of the sentence, david, “this issue”.
JG says:
Wow, zero to condescending in 100 words or less.
Ronit says:
I think Burke’s description of this thread is worth quoting because it captures both the best and worst aspects of EphBlog:
More here
midprof says:
David said “I do not expect that the College will do this because the people who run Williams do not think it is important to have such historians on the faculty. Anyone want to take the other side of that bet?”
I will take the other side of that bet, though not quite in the way you mean. I will take the side that because person 1 -with demonstrated strengths A,B, and C, and hidden strengths D and E – is hired, does not mean that “the people who run Williams” (this deserves a discussion of its own) do not deem strength F to be an important one. Good God, there’s slightly more subtlety to faculty hiring than that.
This reminds me of the sort of discussion where, following a denial of tenure, students claim that the institution does not value the (demonstrably excellent) teaching provided by the professor. Their proof is the denial of tenure. But it may be just the opposite — that the institution’s concern about teaching is what got hu past hu’s initial review and to the tenure process — but wasn’t enough to overcome the very real deficits in, say, peer-reviewed publication, to ensure tenure.