WHY I STUDIED
In high school I was a poor kid who managed to become comfortable with the rich and snooty kids at a time when they were the only people who could go to college. Getting along with poor kids was no problem. I perceived that the poor kids were as smart and worthy as the rich kids. This led me to decide to become a teacher and help poor kids develop their potential and sense of worth.
As a college junior I remember seeing three professors sitting in the college coffee shop about 3 o’clock in the afternoon leisurely drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It occurred to me that I, too, did not have to leave college. I could simply become a professor.
So, I did.
I knew enough by the time I went to graduate school in 1961 to be concerned with the conflicts in the past and present that led to all types of awful wars and a high level of human suffering and injustice. My parents and my religious upbringing moved my naïve little mind to dislike this. I had been fascinated from my earliest days with strange and different people and beliefs all over the world. I could study them and not feel threatened. My real life experience were limited to people and practices in my own limited surroundings. It was natural for me to be fascinated with a few people I met in undergraduate school from “The Holy Land”.
I chose graduate school in history as it seemed to me to be the best discipline for developing a sense of tolerance. History did not take sides. I held to that view when, much to my surprise, I became acquainted with the blatantly biased attitudes I encountered from many of my fellow graduate students and professors. The University of Maryland was just short of Berkley in the 1960’s as a center of radicalism. I spent most of my six years in graduate school at the Library of Congress. My social life was with a lot of Arabs and people I met at the L of C. As enriching as that was I nearly dropped out of graduate school soon after receiving my M.A., as I saw how wretchedly divided people were, now under the leadership of academics.
From the beginning of graduate school I was drawn to study of the Enlightenment, which attempted to find the common denominators for humans in social institutions. I had found something that supplemented my early teachings about human values and morals. The ideological developments of the17th and 18th centuries became something close to a passion for me. I came to the University of Richmond to teach courses on that period. My realization of the almost total ignorance of the Middle East in the Western world led me to retrain on the Middle East. After all, I had about fifteen years of close association with all kinds of Middle Eastern people when I began that process in 1973. So, I did.
Recently I have become aware of how few people know anything about the 17th and 18th century ideological roots of American institutions in large part because colleges are not offering courses on this area. I cannot do anything about that, but I want to suggest that I teach a course on that subject rather than the one I suggested on the Middle East.
In high school I was a poor kid who managed to become comfortable with the rich and snooty kids at a time when they were the only people who could go to college. Getting along with poor kids was no problem. I perceived that the poor kids were as smart and worthy as the rich kids. This led me to decide to become a teacher and help poor kids develop their potential and sense of worth.
As a college junior I remember seeing three professors sitting in the college coffee shop about 3 o’clock in the afternoon leisurely drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It occurred to me that I, too, did not have to leave college. I could simply become a professor.
So, I did.
I knew enough by the time I went to graduate school in 1961 to be concerned with the conflicts in the past and present that led to all types of awful wars and a high level of human suffering and injustice. My parents and my religious upbringing moved my naïve little mind to dislike this. I had been fascinated from my earliest days with strange and different people and beliefs all over the world. I could study them and not feel threatened. My real life experience were limited to people and practices in my own limited surroundings. It was natural for me to be fascinated with a few people I met in undergraduate school from “The Holy Land”.
I chose graduate school in history as it seemed to me to be the best discipline for developing a sense of tolerance. History did not take sides. I held to that view when, much to my surprise, I became acquainted with the blatantly biased attitudes I encountered from many of my fellow graduate students and professors. The University of Maryland was just short of Berkley in the 1960’s as a center of radicalism. I spent most of my six years in graduate school at the Library of Congress. My social life was with a lot of Arabs and people I met at the L of C. As enriching as that was I nearly dropped out of graduate school soon after receiving my M.A., as I saw how wretchedly divided people were, now under the leadership of academics.
From the beginning of graduate school I was drawn to study of the Enlightenment, which attempted to find the common denominators for humans in social institutions. I had found something that supplemented my early teachings about human values and morals. The ideological developments of the17th and 18th centuries became something close to a passion for me. I came to the University of Richmond to teach courses on that period. My realization of the almost total ignorance of the Middle East in the Western world led me to retrain on the Middle East. After all, I had about fifteen years of close association with all kinds of Middle Eastern people when I began that process in 1973. So, I did.
Recently I have become aware of how few people know anything about the 17th and 18th century ideological roots of American institutions in large part because colleges are not offering courses on this area. I cannot do anything about that, but I want to suggest that I teach a course on that subject rather than the one I suggested on the Middle East.
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