Making the news

I have to say that I am sort of proud to have an article included in a book slammed on Fox News.

The essays in Teaching American History (all originally published in the Journal of American History) showcase different ways that scholars and teachers approach the teaching of college level history courses. As editors Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser note in their introduction to the book, the essays are designed to help those who teach U.S. history think about ways to help students understand how history is envisioned and constructed by scholars--in other words just what does it mean to think historically. "To practice--and to study--history means grappling with the balance of choice, chance and inevitability in any casual sequence. It means reveling in the myriad of possibilities for explanation."

My own essay in the collection discusses how students in a lower division U.S. history course created a public exhibit about the history of what became Fort Ord, the former incarnation of much of the CSUMB campus. It focuses on how we created the project, including challenges of interpreting what students discovered in their research. This is just what historians have to do and what I wanted students to understand. History has never been (as the Fox News folks suggest) "just the facts"; rather it has always been about making sense of what you find and contextualizing that research in time, place, situation and context.

Meanwhile, if you are interested, here is the Fox News segment. Enjoy! :)

Speechless...Silencing the Christians - Part 5 of 7

Given our conversations in class about religion, the first amendment, and free speech so far, I wonder how we should make sense of these claims. Reminds me a little of early evangelicals suggesting they were being persecuted by main line Protestants, arguing for the need for protection under the Constitution. Still, something about these contemporary arguments about Christians as a "persecuted" group subject to "hate crimes" just does not wash. What do you all think?

Education and Economic Recovery

As members of Congress continue to debate the stimulus package, education spending has been offered as a way to support cash-strapped schools and preserve jobs. As a college professor, I have been watching how higher education fares in the plan. Some are arguing that this plan should only be used to help create jobs now. So to some, funding college student aid or assisting public colleges and universities with infrastructure improvements (buildings, upgrades for technology and the like) is not as high a priority as, say, other kinds of job creation projects. As the argument goes, any such spending would be wasteful if there is no immediate impact on getting the economy moving. So arts programs, for example, don't look so good under this analysis.

On the one hand, give the severity of unemployment, foreclosures, and the like, and that people are really hurting, there is a lot to be said for keeping this plan focused. Yet, I cannot help but think that we need not be short-sighted about this. A recent article in the New York Times about the kinds of ways that Japan invested in during their "lost decade" of recession included greater investment in education. While some construction projects were really akin to the "bridge to nowhere" pork spending that became so visible during the U.S. Presidential campaign, those investing in Japan's future economy were better investments. As the Times article suggests, there may be lessons for us here in the U.S. (recognizing the different social and economic system of Japan as compared to the U.S.):

"Economists said the finding suggested that while infrastructure spending may yield strong results for developing nations, creating jobs in higher-paying knowledge-based services like health care and education can bring larger benefits to advanced economies like Japan, with its aging population. “In hindsight, Japan should have built public works that address the problems it faces today, like aging, energy and food sources,” said Takehiko Hobo, a professor emeritus of public finance at Shimane University in Matsue, the main city of Shimane. “This obsession with building roads is a holdover from an earlier era.”

I wonder, then, in the readiness to get people back to work quickly, which we need to do, may come at the expense of investing in the future. Education, it seems to me and a lot of other people, is one of those kinds of investments which pays off, yet takes time to realize over a lifetime. Even if one takes a very practical point of view, getting a BA or an advanced degree has historically reduced people's risk of unemployment. A look at January 2009's unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests as much. While those with less than a high school diploma have a 12% unemployment rate, those with a BA or higher have a 3.8% unemployment rate. Even with disagreements as to whether such data tells the full picture, might that stark difference tell us something?

Bailouts and executive pay

“We all need to take responsibility."

That's what President Obama noted yesterday in terms of limits to be placed on executive pay as part of the ongoing financial crisis and any more "rescue" money for bankers on Wall Street. As the New York Times reports today, the earlier efforts under the Bush administration did include some provisions on limits to executive compensation, but were "intentionally left them lax."

This issue raises a deeper question for me as to whether it is time to really reconsider, as a moral and ethical proposition, that corporate executives like the bankers Obama was talking about, should be paid so significantly more than ordinary workers (say a bank teller). The AFL-CIO has an interesting page on their website where they list some examples of executive compensation for numerous corporations. Just browsing through the list, it is astonishing that any one person should be paid so much. Should the CEO of AT&T, where I have my telephone service and Internet account at home, be paid 21 million dollars a year? How does that compare to the technicians and officer workers who run the day to day operations of the company?

When so many executives trot on down to Washington and testify before Congress about their need for more public resources, they would not really suffer personally if they said no. Sure, these folks might lose their jobs, but as the recent controversies over bonuses on Wall Street in 2008 suggests, some higher up folks are still getting paid a lot when the company does not make a profit. And, this is on top of large salaries and stock options.

So, I guess I am wondering if all this bluster about limiting executive pay will lead to some deeper thinking about how fundamental inequality leads to disproportionate access to public resources. Will bankers benefit more than ordinary workers? As a historian, I am hopeful we will think critically about how any public money is spent to meet these economic challenges. When we look back to the New Deal, which followed in the wake of the great depression of the 1930's, these resources were not always spread around equally. Local politics, class, race, and gender influenced who got federal money. Even though times and circumstances are different, we have reason to remain vigilant.

Historian Lizbeth Cohen, the author of one of my favorite books about the impact of the New Deal at the local level, has recently called for such historical sensitivity as we face this current crisis. As she argues,

"Nonetheless, it will be important to learn from the past and ensure that the jobs created by today’s economic stimulus package are available to all Americans. Despite elite fears at the time, desperate Americans were not seeking a revolution in the 1930s. What they wanted was a more moral capitalism that gave them a fair shake. I think Americans in 2009 want very much the same thing."

Perhaps there is a lot more to think about than limiting executive pay...