Officers in their universities, officers in their colleges, officers in their departments, and when we were all in graduate school, no one ever said anything about that. None of us were trained to be department chairs, to be s, to be, to be dean president s. We thought this would be an interesting panel that you would like because we have a number of distinguished president s who are itians, and most of us is slightly awkward because most of us are greeting each other because we know each other as historians. We have seen drew and earl and ed on panels, giving papers. We have read their books. Here they are as president s former president of the university, president of the university, president at one of the major universities of the United States, and we dont often think about that great to what extent did the role as historians help them in their positions. We also would like to invite a conversation about Higher Education. These are notat easy times for Higher Education. These are difficult times for Higher Education in terms of legends, especially in state institutions, but also in terms of our culture. Bill oreilly introduces a faculty member on one of his panels, he is inclined to say, professor . Thats not a complement. The question is, how do we comprehend the role of history and Higher Education, and i think we have three individuals who can help us. We regret that one of our panel of the, the President University of texas at san antonio, three whole series of bizarre schedule changes by airlines, is not able to be here this afternoon. I very much regret that. We have three excellent panelists, and i want to introduce them in alphabetical order. No interest for anyone outside except that there is no lights up here. I have to hold them up like this so i can see them. Ed received his ba at the university of tennessee and his phd at yale. He is known among ourselves as historians for a number of books, the promise of the new fabulous newor a project called the valley of the shadow, two communities in the american civil war. He was the ninth president of the university of richmond from 2007 to 2015, and he will be the president of american historians in 2018. She is known for her historical the role of the intellectual in the old south, and her most recent book, which attracted enormous attention, both for the substance of scholarship and emotional impact and becausesents, she happens to be the president inharvard university, death the american civil war. To be the first woman president of harvard university. She began her presidency in 2007. Earl lewis received his ba from Concordia College in morehead, minnesota. Hes the author of a wonderful book called in their own interest, as well as a book he coauthored called love on trial in american scandal in black and white, which he has done with joe william trotter, the africanamerican urban experience. He is the sixth president of the andrew w. Mellon foundation, which he began in 2013, and we are honored that he will be the president of the organization of american historians in 208 and 2019. 2018 and 2019. Ed will manage the discussion. I will sit in the audience. Thank you for coming. Ed will now take this over. Thank you very much. [applause] see everybody. Shade audience participation i appreciate audience participation. First i like to torture my colleagues and friends with hard questions, and maybe you will forget what the question was and i will be able to get out of it. Im going to ask a question that i think most people in the room will be thinking. What the heck were you thinking a very nice job as a professor writing these books, teaching, leading in your profession, and to trade all of that for the relentless hassle of being a University President , or of the burdens of giving away all that money . It begins with, what the heck were you thinking i will start with drew. Drew my story is one of a slippery slope, shall i say. Never intended to take on an administrative role, and through , imany years of teaching resisted them as actively as i could. When in 1999 the president of harvard came and said, what i consider being the dean of the newly established radcliffe institute, it struck me as something that maybe i would think about. He was very persuasive over a number of months. What was appealing to me about couldas it seemed as if i pursue a scholarly career and continue with that, but help launch this very important new aspect of harvard that i thought would establish women at harvard in a different way from what had been the previous arrangements, and i thought that was an important thing to do. I went under something of an allusion. Part of what made me do it was, i felt the increasingly i was being asked as i became more senior in the profession to do Administrative Tasks of one or another, which did not count and for which i had no administrative support. I thought, i will make this my day job and we will see how that goes. I will still be able to have my scholarly life. I had less of a scholarly life than i expected when i got to radcliffe. I did find it fascinating to be working in a team with other people, its a much more shared experience to be an and to be able to push agendas in a way that advanced important goals for other peoples scholarship and other peoples careers. I really enjoyed it. Ensnared in the whole challenge of whats happening to american Higher Education. Of completelyes unexpected developments, i ended up taking on a much larger Administrative Task and becoming the president of harvard. That also was a situation that enabled me to engage with issues in Higher Education in a really robust way, and thats been very rewarding. Id say it was great until you left out the part that you became president of harvard. Maybe talk a little bit more about you still had a very good job at radcliffe. Was the presidency and expansion, amplification of that work, or did you see a different sense of mission . Drew it was a different sense of mission, in which i felt decisions i could make, policies i could embrace, questions i could engage, would be ones that would really matter for an institution i felt really mattered. I had been part of the universitys council of deans. Seat been in a front row for a lot of the Big Questions of Higher Education that harvard confronted. I was very interested in them and i felt that i understood a lot about what the university needed and what i might be able to contribute. Ed when the opportunity came your way, you saw that this could be something very exciting you would like to take. Earl . Earl i answered yes to a question in 1990 the changed my life. I had moved from berkeley to michigan because i did not want to do administration. In 1990i was asked to be the director of the american african at the university of michigan only a few months after i moved. I said yes. Within the First Six Months i discovered something about myself. So much about academic life was about deferred gratification. In this role, i could help build an institution and see it move forward, and do it immediately. I said once to a friend, its funny to walk into your office in the morning and realize that by the time you leave in the afternoon, you actually could have gotten something done to change the course for a number of other people. That led from a path from the director to then dean at the university of michigan for years, andars, 9 then provost at emory for another 8 1 2 years. The time came the job came i was on the board of trustees it seemed the right move at that particular moment. But a lot of it goes back to the way john framed the question. I had mentors as i was going through graduate school. We never talked about assuming leadership roles. Russman minard, one of my advisors, had a whole series of administrative jobs and when he and i would find a moment to sit and chat, i would listen to him. I realize that i may not want to do it and i certainly did not think i wanted to do it between 1984 and 1989, but by the time i got to michigan i was able to see that it was consequential. I look in the audience and i see a few people that work with me, during that time at the university of michigan. Do than was able to also to build a program, but a program that allowed a number of the graduate students with whom i work to understand something about institution building, that is easy to complain about the place that you call home. Its much harder to figure out how to change it. There requires attention to structures, the interaction between structure and culture and how individuals place themselves in those structures and cultures to affect change. Ed now you are presidency of a foundation. How would you compare the two . At the time that i was offered and accepted the presidency of the mellon foundation, i was also contemplating the presidency of a university. I remember i called a dear friend of mine, we had grown up hadther and his friend headed hr operations at cocacola. I said, i have a set of options before me. She started laughing. Why are you laughing . Let me get it right, you get too big for money or give it away. To beg for money or give it away. [applause] i said, its not quite that easy. She said, let me say it again. You get to beg for money or give it away. In that moment, recognizing provost, we are going through the recession and coming out on the other side. You have consequences not only for those individuals, but the health of the whole region. I keep thinking, is there another way to begin to be able to affect kinds of opportunities that have already been important to me. About 70 of our dollars go to education, in a way. Its not walking away from Higher Education. It is figuring out a new way to partner and help to shape some of the opportunity structures for american Higher Education. Answer the where i question i asked myself. Its a fascinating story. Not so much, really. I was a professor at the university of virginia for 20 years and wind of the various ranks. I was chair of the faculty senate. They asked me if i would like to be dean at the college and graduate school of arts and sciences, which is about 70 of uva. His looks that are it was a place i cared about a lot. Lets all work together, lets make good things happen. I did that with every expectation of doing it and then quitting and getting back into fulltime history business. What i i was finishing set out to do, raising money for a big building, other things, and i was supposed to go to oxford the next year, the university of richmond called and said, we would like for you to be president. Place that is fundamentally an undergraduate seems counter intuitive. I thought, to have the sense of efficacy to shape an entire institution, the university of richmond is fortunate in having a large endowment, but had not yet shown it could really be a diverse, inclusive place in all dimensions. I thought, for somebody who spent most of his waking hours in a 19th century American South worrying about slavery and civil war and segregation and injustice, to be able to go to the former capital of the confederacy and have this institution poised to do great things and see what you can do with it, said only the pieces came together. I love the university of then decided wonder was this constellation of opportunities to do this. Drew kindly accepted the tationuction the invi to introduce me at my inauguration. I did that for 8 years, and it was intense and fun and great. But my goal from the very beginning was to come back out the other side when i had enough energy to write books and talk and teach. It sort of onee foot touching the break brake. Us have in common is curiosity to actually see how an. Nstitution runs it is so interesting when you see it. All the things people would come up to me and say, how are you doing . Im fine. No really, you are the dean. You cant be doing well. Its fun. No, its not. They talked about it like i had a terminal illness. Everybody makes a joke about going over to the dark side. From the position of a faculty member to get up every day and solve problems that somebody else causes does look like the idea of hell. When you get into it, you realize solving a problem that somebody else causes is a contribution to the institution and its fun. Im done not because i didnt like it, just because there is still stuff i really want to do. I believe in the program. John just said that we would reflect a little bit on how it could be that being trained as a historian equipped us in any way whatsoever to have these jobs, because you could think that studying dead people for a living might not be the best training for managing living people. It could also be the case that we dont really have to think very much about budgets and so forth. Was it just that we had time on our hands because history was so easy that we had time to go into administration, or was there something about historical training that make people think we could do these jobs . Drew yes or no . Not sure whether my history training persuaded others, the Search Committee etc. , that i could do the job. It certainly has in my view been a huge help to me in doing the job. I think about it in this way. Being a historian, particularly being a historian of the civil war and looking at this short period of time when a change took place gives you on how people resist change, how do you persuade people to change. A lot of leadership is about change, trying to make institutions better, about trying to find goals, identified goals that can bring people together and forward together. For me, thinking about the women i wrote about in mothers of invention, resisted change in the civil war context, chose to embrace certain pieces of it, reject others, what motivated them, what was behind their kindion, i found that that of reflection about change has been enormously helpful to me. When asee a problem, problem comes to me, i always begin by thinking, what is the history of this problem . Where did it come from, how did it evolve, and how can i get a handle on the intricacies of it and address it better . I approach my work like a historian, and i think my consciousness of historical opportunity and contingency has been essential to what ive done as a president. Earl i would agree with drew in all respects. I started as a social historian. Glimpse and evidence would not suggest an unnecessary pattern. The ability to actually sit and look for patterns, not always linear. My good friend joe wagner, the was quotedf emory, in the chronicle of Higher Education, reflecting on a conversation we used to have. I used to tease jim, saying, you are thinking like an engineer. He would say, historian, right . There are patterns, not always linear. Institutions, you can identify problems. There are not always solutions the first time around. The ability to pause and reflect on the fact that in different and particularly in history, it was not obvious you would get from a to b. Had to engage individuals in a series of conversations and counter conversations to move whatever the issue was. That piece of having both the perspective of the historian and training of a historian i found useful more often than not. The other part is also the attention to the interdisciplinary approach to the world. As a historian, my first job was in africanamerican studies. I remember going to teach in berkeley in 1984 and being taught by a group of graduate students in the new ethnic studies program. They were forcing me to read things i had not read before. Realized its not just the historians, but the historians ability to interact with a range of other literatures that opens up a whole other set of questions. Inside of institutions, it is that ability to hear ones colleagues and figure out what they are trying to say, and understand how their perspective connects to yours, not only leads to new discoveries, but positions institutions and possibilities. That pays of the disciplinary training of a historian and the position of saying, this is how i think about the world, this is the way i was taught to think about the world, but im learning from you in a new way also there are different ways of changing the lens of analysis a bit. It is both a historical aspect, the willingness to embrace others. Ed history being not particularly jargon or model bound, you have to kind of open to every discipline. Often felt when i was president and dean that you are sort of watching history in three dimensions. There are immediate consequences. All thepected happening time. All three of us who cannot be abouts, all of work is justice and conflict. Any consequence, a connection with the fact of what we chose to study, in some ways we would seek out that opportunity from the institutional roles in which we live . Earl im not sure i would draw a causal relationship here. There may be some association between the kind of questions at least the institutions ive been a part of have also found themselves separate from the major polls of activity, really animating society. You write about africanamerican and 20thnd 19th century, its impossible to ignore the question of inclusion, its impossible to think about how one defines the shaping and reshaping of democratic possibilities in the nation. Those kinds of questions come to the contemporary institution. You think of the university as some will say the escalator to opportunity and mobility in life, but its also a place day, we know that to the American Public high schools are more segregated today than they were when i was coming through in the 1950s and 1960s. Wheren interesting way the university then becomes a place where a broader crosssection of students First Encounter themselves. My questions about not only who we are, but how intentional are thisrograms we crafted, discourse of interaction and engagement those kinds of questions we have been dealing with forever. Alwaysns of power animated almost everything ive ever written, questions of power clash. Sing races my favorite story is when i was provost, and there was a labor dispute issue and i had a group of students who are determined that i was going to side with them. I had been a labor historian, and had written about american unions. They started quoting me my own work. I remember sitting here thinking, this is a surreal moment. Raise, lets see if i can the ante and see how serious they are about this. I said, you have quoted me. I will clear my schedule for the next month and we will have a for thefor two hours next month where you can actually understand the work you are now referencing and put it into a broader context. They didnt bite. I realized my ability to call their bluff forced a change in the conversation. But we ended up doing was we actually created a twoyear study of class relationships. That encounter did not die there, but it changed the direction of the conversation. I said, if youre going to be serious, it takes time to do serious scholarship. What we need to be about as a learning institution is not the blurb that can be tweeted, but indepth analysis. We spent two years. I have one of my deans looking at me saying earl, you cant study class. I said, yes we can. He goes, no you cant. Its going to lead to class warfare. Uh, no. Thats not what this is all about. We ended up moving the conversation that started with a group of students through the council of the deans back into were to help shape and reshaping secure policy and practice. Those are the kinds of ways in which i realized both what we do, how we do it has impact on the institutions we try to lead. Drew i think of a quotation from nanny rice burroughs that i have often used in speeches, which is, education is democracys life insurance. We do asink about what leaders of institutions of Higher Education, especially at a time when the issues of access and opportunity are so front and center for Higher Education, it seems to me very much a piece with the kinds of concerns we have addressed in our own work, and thats very similar to what you were saying. We are southern historians, not just historians. When you are a southern historian, you are so aware of how the neglect of education in the south, the blocking of access to education, of course for slaves entirely by law, but the slow evolution of a Public School system in the south, all of those things have been so much a part of the inequities we have all studied, and perhaps that reinforced in my mind this sense of the power of education and what it might be able to accomplish. Ishas made me feel that this consistent with the concerns i have written about in my work. Skills is critical thinking. We have been to some of these meetings and you think, history was good, that i wish i knew this or that or the other thing. I tooke were days more stacked courses than most of my colleagues going through graduate school. There were still times when i was dealing with budgets and trying to do analysis, and there were other kinds of training that i thought would have been useful. Most of us on these roads if you dont, you hire the person who does have those skills. That becomes important. For me, the best part about the job, particularly in a university setting, is the ability to constantly learn. Whats exciting im not a biologist, but i can still remember sitting with a colleague who was a medicinal chemist who was talking to me about cell death and how you tune out the signals and walked me through a tutorial. When i was in reading, i could understand it better. I thought, you may have had one of the better jobs. I can learn something about a subject matter that it takes others several years to gain that kind of training. Is that ability to be comfortable and knowing that youre not an expert, but you are surrounded by experts, and you can call on them at any time. When i was provost in particular my assistant would hear me in my room. Why are you laughing . I said, what i discovered a long time ago go back to when you were in Elementary School and middle school or Junior High School and remember the smartest kids in class . Get that visual picture of the smartest kids in class. University a administrator on your surrounded by and you are surrounded by 1000 of them. On any given day, at least 1 3 will still tell you that they are the smartest kid in class. In at can relax understanding, you can still do your job reasonably well. You work in a fairly simple institution, so you may not have the need drew you and i became president s in 2007, right . We are feeling our way and the whole world falls apart, with the recession in 2008. When i learned very fast a lot more than i had known before about finance and budgets and how to manage cutting budgets and all of those things. Nice haduld have been i known more and did not have to learn so much in that pressured moment. Ed you and i spoke for some reason during that time, and i asked if you had any advice for me. She did or did i think this is advice all of us can benefit from. She said, ed, dont spend money you dont have. Whats surprising is i can take the point about begging for money but it does not feel like that when you do it. Time you aree talking to somebody, they know why you are talking to them. Its basically telling a story. Its the same skill historians have. How do these pieces fit together . I did not even know what the annual fund was when i became dean. Every year you have to raise this money . I probably went into academic life not having to think about money. Its ironic that for 14 years its what i thought about. Its all more interesting than you might think. I would say that turning on your email and getting hundreds of messages every day and all the time, none of which you can ignore, its physically exhausting. How do you honor that responsibility that we are making sound nice here . How do you keep up with that and then go to a reception, and eat hors doeuvres five nights a week . Its physically taxing. A want to ask you one more question before we see what folks in the audience might want to talk about, about Higher Education more broadly, about the humanities more specifically, and history even more specifically than that. You are both in positions to see a huge part of the american Higher Education landscape. We keep reading and editorial every day in one form or another about how we are failing, the system is failing, how american Higher Education is so deeply flawed. Close,e seen it up youve seen it from the inside, youve seen all these emails and the problems they signal. Youve seen 1000 of the smartest kids in the room. How do you believe that american Higher Education is in trouble . Or do you think they are sources of strength we have not tapped . Or have people missed specified the situation misspecified the situation . Earl i will start. In talking about American Education both inside and outside the United States, we usually phrase it beauty and the beast. Years, alast 15 to 20 lot of people still talk about the beauty of the american Higher Education system. It is still withstanding the increases, it is still more affordable and accessible than others. The beast becomes our own both internal critique, and a lot of folks have been critiquing American Education and live inside the walls. You get a sense of everything from academically adrift to other ways of describing where we are and what students are learning and not learning, and then pundits from the outside will jump on, questions about cost and completion, and other issues. I think there are three major challenges that american higher perhaps withl Face Even Greater force over the next few years. One i think is that we live in an era where more and more people are asking a question about value. Sometimes very simply about return on investment. It really is about the value of Higher Education, particularly the value of a liberal Arts Education as a form of being educated. We find ourselves trying to draw distinctions between skills and the ways in which people are educated. Thats a critical question that will have to be addressed. , withd to be able to say more evidence, qualitative and quantitative, how we think about the value. Is not just about the first job you get out of college. If thats the case, we will have large sawthes of jobs swathes of jobs that will not be filled. Is alsond question about universities and their commitments. To as both the Obama Administration and other administrations have emphasized over the last few years, access. The next question has to be how we really think through completion. One of the most fascinating all ofns for us and for the work about disruption in American Education, i think we have not been disrupted yet. On critical change will be how graduate programs around the country, particularly the humanities, begin to wrestle with how students learn, and the degree to which we make better use of the learning sciences, cognitive sciences, and we do this across the different disciplines. Harvards Graduation Rate sits at one end of the spectrum. If you go all the way down to the Community Colleges in the american landscape and where we are talking some places in Single Digits after six years and other places at best 12 , there is a range of human talent that gets lost along the way. Elite american Higher Education cannot be separated from those institutions that are resource poor and resource stressed. Where thisfigure out relationship is across the host system. The third is the most complicated and perhaps most difficult conversation we will face, that moment of democratization, disclosure in the range of institutions between 1950 and 2010 has led us to a new moment. Theres a question, do we and can we support the whole range of institutions across the whole complex . This is when you name there are different ways in terms of how we assess. Thats a critically important question. Time i have said i have said this in a couple of different settings. College and University President s have come up to me afterwards and said, will we survive . Im a historian. I cant predict the future. There are markers of what one needs to think about as you look you are stillnot successful in being able to educate a group of students. That is the critical question. Means im not as concerned by the changes in humanities and enrollment in a 2 to 3 year cycle, you will see some volatility and high and low , but thats not as concerning as these megaquestions about Higher Education in general. Ed it does strike me that in all the things he read about Higher Education in the United States, the fundamental fact of its remarkable democratize asian democratization we might expect it to be more expensive, you are educating millions more people who are firstgeneration. Millions more women. Millions more people of color. They should be a great accomplishment, but instead its like somehow we lost control of the story, and all the story is, is one form of failure after thater rather than a fact this escalator of mobility we all know it has challenges. The fundamental fact is that we are educating a much broader swath of the American Population than we did before, and its not surprising there are strains that go with that. Earl id like to build on the point ed just made and say that when i travel internationally, im reminded that american Higher Education is absolutely the envy of the world. We are looked at in our domain of Higher Education as doing something that is so admired. Critiquesdd that the its all a narrative of failure inside the United States. I think thats dangerous, because it means we now disinvest in Higher Education, people are suspicious of Higher Education, people say dont send , i willldren to college give them an award not to go to i believe we need to shift this narrative. If i could Say Something about earle did such a great job of listing the challenges. Education is about getting a job, the idea that that is all its about, not about being a citizen or expanding imagination or the Human Dignity that comes with learning and growing is not abouting it asking questions and being a person who can see beyond the immediate next step in a life or societys life is so instrumental eyes. This narrative is so widespread. Many of us in Higher Education forced back against a proposal from the department of education for a Measurement System that would evaluate institutions based on salary of graduates at their first job. That was an appalling notion. Sources that should admit making other kinds of arguments. That story. Ell we will diminish what Higher Education has been and is if we just move it toward this instrumental version of training. The story about high costs and debt, not that its not true but it can dissuade people who might get scholarships and go to college for free. But they are told over and over again how expensive it is. It is hard to explain to people. This language of defeatism becomes a self defined prophecy. People say i dont want to come out with a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Not knowing that they are not going to. Tell isy that we impeding the progress we could be making. How do you feel that our discipline, do you feel that disciplinea vital despite all these pressures for instrumentalists and . And the pressures of the job market . Americanel good about history intellectually . I would speak beyond history. I regard history as a humanities field. I insist it is a social science. It can be both. We need to communicate better with larger publics. I History Matters to people beyond our own colleagues. I think the humanities needs to do that also. Book about deaths and the civil war was made into a film by rick burns. I traveled around with him and did events. Sitting on the battlefield at antietam on the 150th anniversary of the battle and having people interested in history. Really fascinating questions. Maybe they were reenactors i dont know. Questions about the meaning of war and sacrifice. Why do these people fight . So embedded in human experience. Do we bring those kinds of questions closer to those of us who want to devote our lives to meditating about them. Taking the wonderful work done i felt blessed that rick burns did this with my book. Nothing close to that. I wantly made me think to do more of this. I want to figure out how this can happen. I dont need it as a dumbing great popularization. A sharing of information. Had we get people to invest in what we do . We are encouraged in a way people coming in with new proposals and new ideas. Exploring new topics. Partnering across disciplinary bounds. Ways of addressing the public nature of that scholarship. Are there new institutions. It becomes another sort of moment from one place in our history to the other. Were going to situate important historical questions. I also reminded of something else. Nonprofessional historians come andith the challenges sometimes we talk to one another and how we talk to a broader set of publics. Interest in what we have to say. That too was a challenge and opportunity for us. People who are interested in that. Institutions such as university to reach into that interesting questions that are historically oriented. Weve not had a dearth of new ideas to come before us. That is exciting. There is this real sense of an energy there. Is part of something that will ensure the durability of our version of democracy. I have a poignant sense of this. I dont think weve ever been writing better history. With greater ability to reach broader audiences. You come here and you see all of the talents of people who are dedicating their lives to having the fortunate lives that we had. Structurally the deck is stacked against them in some ways. Is very important first think about is how long will these great ideas keep coming. If we dont find ways to nurture even talked about your backgrounds in history affecting your approach to administration. Has your experience as president s or administrators in any way change your perspective on history. A great question. Earl . In part, yes but mostly no. Because back to the point i offered earlier. About thesethinking grand challenges that we can all identify. Most areasapproach dont teach that team approach. Ideas that were multi generational as research teams. That theto make sure work could get done. Having several people working on this project. It can improve the work. The digital work that i have done that were still doing in richmond is so great about it is that it is a team. It is so much bigger than any of us could do by ourselves. It generates more energy than it consumes. I have neversay been much for judging the people of the past because they are dead and cant fight back. I would be even less likely to do it. The responsibility of leading men into battle and death. If you just had the kind of daytoday responses. Having to reprimand somebody or something. Im a lot less judgmental about the people of the past. Why didnt they see that. I suddenly understand. Why was the dean at radcliffe when i was the dean at i was reporting to larry summers, the president of harvard. He wanted to talk about numbers. Is this worth what we had paid for it . Everything was about a world in were numbers and analytics prominent. I was writing this book called the republic of suffering. About the civil war. In therea chapter about counting the dead at the end of the war and the session with coming up with a firm number and what that certainty men tend white was needed. That chapter would not have existed had i not been exposed to this economist approach to addressing the world. It came out of the new experience with numbers. There is a specific example. I went to college in the 60s and i was editor of my college newspaper. I denounced the Administration Every single issue. Graduated, the provost said to me what are you going to do . To theim going university of chicago to study for a phd. He said thats wonderful i bet you will end up in administration. I told all my friends how insulted i was. How could he say that i would turn to the dark side . But he understood me better than i understood myself. In how thet university is run in those kinds i had written my first book on the role of professors at the university of chicago in progressive era reform. I had developed a notion of what an urban university should be. And it should be lots of scholars going out and studying the city Students Learning in the city. I said thats what i want to do. My model of all this was my Early Research on that. Just one more. I want to monopolize. I really wanted to do scholarship again. I have been writing a history of urban universities. One of the things i discovered was that the term urban university has been pejorative in most of american Higher Education. Workingclass low income commuter. That is shaping the way i am writing this book. I probably would use it. My name is dennis ritchie. I question is for dr. Faust. Connecticut legislature has proposed taxing yells endowment endowment. in fact the ways and Means Committee is already thinking about that. They have asked all universities with endowments over 1 billion to respond with lengthy answers to lengthy questions. Many institutions have posted these as they were due back in washington on april 1. Find the oneyou to for your university. We would have to reduce Financial Aid and programs. The endowment has enabled us to usually increase Financial Aid in recent years. And to take actions that were of benefit to the students and the community and the Larger Community of researchers. These are appropriate philanthropic accomplishments and should be given the philanthropic exemption from taxation. My name is clifton berry. Historian but im here with my colleague i want to say i never thought i would come and thece where history possibilities of greatness that you can achieve would move me to tears. I started with matthew. He is not a historian. 25 years, he has been reading your work. Civil war, revolutionary war, politics, geography. He has come to a conclusion that the history of African Americans in the United States is not being properly told. There is an element of is sobution that significant that the United States as we know it would not be the great nation that it is dreaming just a big enough to believe that getting candidatery right will change the way that we feel about ourselves and our people and our nation. To take this history and is to so that the masses can read it and understand it and receive it and gain hope and i have justhonor , he is a year ago working on this for 25 years. You have such power. We are you have written taking what you have written and is not making up any history. The history is there. When i hear president s of great wereutions who can move in a very volatile time where is important that we get the history correct. Im not sure i have so much of a question as i just want let you mew how history is affecting just over the past year as this untold story of these 12 generations of africanamericans from 1607 to 1865 that has so affected this nation they are indispensable. I dont know what to say about it but the power of history. And im not a historian. Ive seen the power of history. I want to thank you. [applause] thing about changing the narratives of what is liberal arts do. What should we do and what can we do as professors and adjuncts one of the ways in which we begin to do that if we dont have the resources that others have. Its a very complex question. Liberal arts are more important than the humanities. Talking about the arts and sciences in way that is formulated. One of the challenges is something other humanities side. Becoming more familiar with two things. Patterns at the aggregate level. Also what is happening at the local level. 2007lized that since patterns have not been the same across institutions o across apartments. Departments. Some have seen significant growth. Pronounce to decreases in enrollment. Their ways which we talk more generally about what is the value of liberal arts. If we allow the narrative to say it is only about that first job. It was a way the question was posed. Certain jobs you wouldnt take. Was all about rational choice. Were are ways in which choose our professions because we actually like the work. Way of studying because it enhances our ability to see the world in a new way. I think of and i imagine your job at auburn and elsewhere. If i would encourage people to to they one thing humanities indicators. It allows you to begin to question the narrative. The way to understand change over time. The point of reference may be the strangest places start. Cut to the oah. He talked when they were undergraduates. And they are here now. Sometimes as we talk about these crises we forget that we already have a far more powerful tool that any film or even any bestseller. The classroom. A chance to have people talk back to us and to be able to explore things they never wouldve thought about before. That is whether markable things about being gain. Did you remember professor soandso. She changed my life in 1965. They remember us. We discount the democratization of the power of the tools that are in our hands right now. One more person can ask a question. Im in the education school. The use of urbanism majorities. It struck me how similar the conversation is to those that are stressed by leaders in k12 education. Someone once said University President s stopped getting worried about k12 once the invented admission offices. Have you see the relationship between this discussion happening in Higher Education and in k12. Opportunitye is any thethat to be joined parallels what they are going on k12. Thinking maybes these expressions of hostility should actually encourage us because they all say that education really matters to people. They really care about it. I do think that there are Common Threads and that is one of them. I think the university debates have a different character in that a lot of it is reflected in the cost of Higher Education that people really worry about it because they struggle to make it possible. They worry about access. With schools they are more situated in communities and families understand them better in any instances. Have more direct influence over them. I see a lot of differences in these two situations. That this common is is important to families and individuals and they are going to express themselves about it it is time for drinks. Thank you so much for my colleagues and to all of you. [applause] author Richard Mcmurray talks about the civil war battles around atlanta in 1864. And he compares the strategies of confederate commanders Joseph E Johnston and his successor john bell hood. He argues that johnstons reluctance earlier in the campaign to engage with William Tecumseh sherman place tied in a difficult position to defend atlanta once he assumed command. This is a 50 minute event