Historically Thinking

Today's conversation is one of our forays away from historical thinking, and to instead explaining and thinking about higher education. As I've said before, think of this as a series entitled "Higher Ed: A Guide for the Perplexed." I'm always astonished how little very well-educated people, long out of the academy, misconceive how a college or university works. This ignorance can lead to bad choices when their kids are looking for a school. It also leads to all sorts of misconceptions evaluating the news that emanates from the campus. If people want to understand ideas, than they have to understand the place that those ideas come from, and the culture that creates those ideas.

My guest Joseph Davis has thought a lot about that culture. Our conversation is one of the most important that I think I've had on the podcast. It's about how many undergraduates are obsessed with personal achievement, and where that obsession takes them. As you'll hear, Davis believes that anxiety is the natural result of a world in which everything is possible.

Joseph E. Davis is Research Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and moderator of the Picturing the Human colloquy at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Most recently he edited  (with Ana Marta González), most  To Fix or to Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine. Below you'll find some of the essays around which our conversation was built. Since he's a colleague, I can also testify that he's a good man very worth listening to.

If you know someone with a child in college, or with a child in high school is working hard to get into college, please send them a link to this podcast.

For Further Investigation

Joseph E. Davis, "ADD for All"

 

For Further Investigation

* Edward Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 The Epic Battle That Ended the First World War

* Geoffrey Wawro, Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I

* Robert Gerwarth, Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End

* History Hit TV–great historical content, masses of it devoted right now to the centennial

 

For Further Investigation Edward Lengel, To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 The Epic Battle That Ended the First World War Geoffrey Wawro, Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I Robert Gerwarth, Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End History Hit TV–great historical content, masses of it devoted […]

Robert Banks Jenkinson was a shy, awkward, intellectual sort of man. Perhaps he imagined, while a student at Christchurch, Oxford, of an alternate reality in which he was a classics don. But his father, the first Earl of Liverpool, loved him and had a plan for his life: Robert was going to be Prime Minister.

Amazingly enough, father planned best. Socially-inept Robert would go on to be a key member of the cabinets that fought the empire of Napoleon. Then, following the assassination of  Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812, the by-then Lord Liverpool became the King's Prime Minster and First Lord of the Treasury. Guiding Britain through the last three years of war was not as difficult as leading it into the peace that followed twenty years of conflict, and a new Europe which for the first time since 1688 was not dominated by the seemingly eternal conflict between France and England. Liverpool was one of the most successful prime ministers in British history, and yet is now almost forgotten.

Will Hay and I will be discussing the career of Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool. We'll also discuss why political history is important and should still be written.

Essays by William Anthony Hay on Lord Liverpool

* "Lord Liverpool, Eurosceptic"

* "Why We Need Liverpool"

Reviews of William Anthony Hay, Lord Liverpool: A Political Life

* The Wall Street Journal

* The New Statesman

* The New Criterion

Robert Banks Jenkinson was a shy, awkward, intellectual sort of man. Perhaps he imagined, while a student at Christchurch, Oxford, of an alternate reality in which he was a classics don. But his father, the first Earl of Liverpool, loved him and had a plan for his life: Robert was going to be Prime […]

Civilizations's greatest monster–the terrible specter that haunts comfortable and prosperous societies–has always been the barbarian. That's the creature that arrives and destroys all that comfort and prosperity, that leaves ruins behind; that forces people to question whether all that comfort and prosperity was worth it, and whether they should have been barbarians themselves.

Today I discuss the concept of the barbarian in Greek and Roman societies with Erik Jensen, author of (helpfully enough) Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World. To define barbarians as "those not like us" is to also define "what we are." So Erik and I spend a lot of time talking about what it meant to be Greek, and what it meant to be Roman. We also discuss how the impoverished and backward Greeks could view the dazzlingly rich and talented Persians as barbarians; what the Romans ever did for us; why barbarians are just so damn attractive; and why the worst barbarians are always seen as those born within civilization.

For Further Investigation

Political ambitions create a barbarian: Ariel Helfer, Socrates and Alcibiades, Plato's Drama of Political Ambition

The Original Grumpy (and shrewd) Old Man: Tacitus, Annals and Histories

Friends, Romans or Countryman?

What came afterward: Richard Fletcher on The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity

Poetic meditation on our need for the barbarian: C.P. Cavafy, "Waiting for the Barbarians"

Is "Non-state actor" just another term for barbarian?

Civilizations’s greatest monster–the terrible specter that haunts comfortable and prosperous societies–has always been the barbarian. That’s the creature that arrives and destroys all that comfort and prosperity, that leaves ruins behind; that forces people to question whether all that comfort and prosperity was worth it, and whether they should have been barbarians themselves. Today I […]

Two Recent Books on Constantine:

* Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor

* David Potter, Constantine the Emperor

History in an Hour explains The German Revolution (caveat emptor: remember that the quality of your education is typically equivalent to the time and effort given to it by the student)

Episode 35: Ronald Rittgers on the Protestant Reformation

Of course there's a blog about the Lincoln Highway: The Lincoln Highway Guide

Two Recent Books on Constantine: Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor David Potter, Constantine the Emperor History in an Hour explains The German Revolution (caveat emptor: remember that the quality of your education is typically equivalent to the time and effort given to it by the student) Episode 35: Ronald Rittgers on the Protestant Reformation Of […]

Today my guest is Timothy J. Lombardo, a native Philadelphian who when it came time to craft a doctoral dissertation decided to write what he knew about. And Tim knows Philadelphia, as his book Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and the Rise of Populist Politics makes abundantly clear. It’s not a biography of Frank Rizzo–cop, […]