‘Life During Wartime’ will build innovative curriculum around American war history

A new Wisconsin project funded by the U.S. Department of Education will feature an unprecedented partnership among public school teachers, university and technical college faculty, and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum to invigorate the teaching of American history.

Stanley Schultz, left, emeritus professor of history and a nationally known scholar on American history, comments on a new Wisconsin project, "Life During Wartime," during a press briefing at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum on April 29, 2008. The $940,000 project, funded over three years by the U.S. Department of Education, is an unprecedented partnership among public school teachers, university and technical college faculty, and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum to invigorate the teaching of American history. Richard Zeitlin, center, is director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, and Todd Zoellick, right, is deputy U.S. secretary of education.

Photo: Jeff Miller

Called "Life During Wartime," the $940,000 project will be funded over three years to connect eminent historians and veterans with 150 history teachers in the region. The project is intended to build a rich curriculum around the American experience at home and abroad, from the Civil War to the present, and build a political, social and personal connection to the nation's past.

The partnership includes teachers from the Cooperative Education Service Area No. 5 (CESA 5) serving central Wisconsin and the Madison Metropolitan School District; historians from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Madison Area Technical College (MATC); the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, an activity of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; and veteran volunteers.

Jonathan Pollack, an American history professor at MATC, says "Life During Wartime" will have a particular emphasis on World War II and beyond, a segment of American history that is often under-presented in history teaching. The program will go beyond a political timeline, Pollack says, and go into the lives of soldiers deployed and their families at home during war.

He says that the program aims to add to the knowledge base of fifth grade through high school teachers with more detailed, specific material on American history topics. Susan Fulks, director of instructional technology service for CESA 5, adds that high school teachers in small-school districts such as those in the CESA 5 area often teach many social studies courses, which requires them to have a general knowledge of many areas.

"They teach three, four, five different classes, so they come in with a broad understanding, but they're probably not history majors, so this will give them an opportunity to learn some content," she says. She adds that many of them are the only social studies teachers in their school, and that bringing them together in the program as well as with Madison social studies teachers will allow them to build relationships and learn from each other.

Curriculum details are still being worked out before the project begins in July but will likely involve a weeklong summer institute as well as regular weekend programs and talks from renowned history scholars. Teachers will be paid for their time and receive one graduate school credit for the summer institute, says Jeremi Suri, a UW-Madison history professor, and substitute teachers will be provided for any school-year events.

"We're trying to make it flexible and accessible for teachers, and we're really trying to increase the contact and connection between the university, public institutions like the Veterans Museum, and teachers," Suri says. "We really think this program allows us to enhance the Wisconsin Idea because we will be connecting even more deeply with people we should be connecting with around the state."

The involvement of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in this program will be a key aspect of that approach, Suri adds. The program will include a Web component that puts original historical resources online for teachers to incorporate into their lessons, a particular benefit for rural teachers without the centralized resources of a city like Madison. The Web site will remain online past the length of the grant and will be available to all teachers, even those not participating in the program.

Richard Zeitlin, director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, says the museum will provide the program with historical artifacts, manuscripts, photographs and, most importantly, the testimony of Wisconsin veterans from the past and present. The museum has an extensive collection of oral histories from soldiers, and veterans frequently volunteer at the museum to give tours and talk about their experiences.

"I look at involving veterans as a chance to underscore some of the points that are being made in the course of the program," Zeitlin says. "We have people who actually were there, and we can have them available either on tape or in person or both, as well as hands-on learning."

James Kurtz, a Vietnam War veteran who works with the Veterans Museum, says he appreciates the grant's efforts to expand the knowledge of state teachers by offering a balanced look at war and wartime experiences.

"I came back to Madison after my Vietnam service, and it wasn't a very pleasant place to be," he says. "I really feel it's important for the kids coming up and the people who are teaching them to understand both sides of the story."

Beyond understanding the issue of war from all sides, Pollack adds that providing documents, artifacts and soldiers' testimonies will ultimately allow students and teachers to better understand not just the facts of history, but the discipline itself and how history is studied.

"The students who come through history classes using this approach are going to be better equipped for college certainly, but even if they don't go to college or they don't go right away, they have a better understanding of how history actually operates," Pollack says. "History is not a mysterious set of absolutes that's beyond them — history instead becomes accessible and something that people in their daily lives can put to use."

This remarkable partnership had humble beginnings at a 2007 Fourth of July picnic at a park in west Madison.

The holiday brought Pollack together with UW-Madison's Bill Tishler, a media specialist in the Division of Continuing Studies. Each had recently been involved in applying for a federal Teaching American History grant with their respective institutions, but for various reasons, neither group received one that year.

As they continued to talk about the different challenges that each group faced, the two realized that they might have better luck earning the grant working together rather than apart.

"I was talking to him for like an hour. Our wives and our families were kind of circling around us, going 'OK, come on, let's go', and we were like, 'Wait a minute.' It was all this shop talk on the Fourth of July," Pollack says. The result was a grant proposal that built on the strengths of both institutions.

(History 434) American Foreign Relations: The History of U.S. Grand Strategy since 1901

NEW ON-LINE COURSE (June 15 - August 7, 2009)
Title: (History 434) American Foreign Relations: The History of U.S. Grand Strategy since 1901

This innovative eight-week course, taught by Professor Suri, examines how grand strategy shaped America's interaction with states, peoples and cultures throughout the 20th century, offering a fresh perspective on America's foreign policy successes and failures. The course is offered online as a pilot to military, business and other adult students. The course will define “foreign relations” broadly to explore the ways in which interactions with peoples and places identified as “foreign” transformed the nature of American society. The course will touch on issues of national power, territorial acquisition, market penetration, warfare, racial subjugation, class conflict, and gender subordination. We will study how America's foreign relations helped determine what it means to be “American.” Situating the history of the United States in an international context we will learn how American debates about identity and power reflected and influenced events in distant venues.

Jeremi Suri on KQED 88.5 FM San Francisco 1-15-08

Tue, Jan 15, 2008 -- 10:00 AM
"The Life of Henry Kissinger"
Download (MP3) (Windows: right-click and choose "Save Target As." Mac: hold Ctrl, click link, and choose "Save As.")

Listen to a (RealMedia stream) at KQED Radio Archive, http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R801151000

We explore the life of former Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Henry Kissinger, and his impact on U.S. foreign policy. Suri's work focuses on international relations in the 1960s and the Cold War."

Host: Rachael Myrow
Guest: Jeremi Suri, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of "Henry Kissinger and the American Century."

Air: 88.5 FM San Francisco or 89.3 FM Sacramento
KQED: Public Broadcasting for Northern California

High Hopes: What we want this year

Source: Isthmus: The Daily Page (Cover Story) Friday, 01/04/2008
"New year, new hope. What changes do you want to see in 2008? We put that question to a cross-section of Madisonians to see what reflections and resolutions they would offer. Their answers were sometimes funny, sometimes profound. Here's what we learned." - Edited by Marc Eisen
....

Restore real open debate
Jeremi Suri
We have become a society that is too self-assured to examine its own assumptions, too insecure to subject its beliefs to serious scrutiny. This is particularly true on university campuses.

I hope 2008 will mark a return to traditions of civil argumentation. Instead of easy answers to difficult questions, I want real open debate. What kind of university do we want for the next century? What kind of nation do we want? What will we do for the rest of the world?

We need intense discussions of these issues, where people voice radically different views and these views are subjected to critical examination. We should respect one another for making the effort to discuss and disagree. That is the democracy I want to see in 2008.
[Read more high hopes for the new year from other Madisonians at http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=18612 ]

A 'China opening' to Iran?

By Jeremi Suri, The Boston Globe
Tuesday, July 24, 2007

In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon's special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger's voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China - two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years.

Convulsed by internal upheavals and surrounded by regional threats, Chinese leaders viewed relations with Washington as a possible anchor for stability.

Beset by a deepening military quagmire in Vietnam, deteriorating relations with traditional allies, and pervasive protests at home, the White House was desperate for a diplomatic overture that would show some political promise before the upcoming presidential election.

Today, the historical parallels are striking. President Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted and domestic opposition to present policies is growing.

America's long time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations and worldviews at home, as well as a cast of external challengers, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council. Leaders in Washington and Tehran need one another. The White House should pursue a "China opening" with Iran.

Although Kissinger's insights from the Vietnam War have not helped in Iraq, his maneuvers with China do provide a model for navigating relations with Iran:

Open multiple channels of communication.

The most difficult impediment to new relations with old adversaries is history. China and the United States had no institutional or interpersonal basis for initiating a constructive bilateral relationship. Nixon and Kissinger took advantage of nearly every channel for communicating with Beijing. They enlisted diverse figures in Pakistan, Poland, Romania, West Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the Vatican to pass messages to the Chinese leadership. Getting discussions started required consistent, determined efforts in the White House.

Talk while fighting.

Opening a dialogue with an adversary does not preclude continued conflict. Kissinger and Nixon never believed that by engaging the Chinese leadership they had to forsake their strategic responsibilities in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or South Vietnam. In fact, the United States reaffirmed its commitment to each of these governments as Kissinger traveled to Beijing in July 1971. The point of negotiations with the Chinese was to make these commitments more secure by insuring greater mutual understanding and respect.

Emphasize personal relationships.

Nixon and Kissinger understood that demonizing their adversaries diminished Washington's leverage. Despite their monstrous deeds, the Chinese leaders were smart and pragmatic. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai recognized the same qualities in their American counterparts. The leaders of the two states worked to build respect despite their differences. Personal bonds allowed for a probing of possible compromises.

Avoid "total" solutions.

U.S. and Chinese leaders avoided discussion of overarching strategic solutions. They remained deadlocked on Taiwan, Vietnam and the Korean peninsula. Instead, they emphasized small steps - youth exchanges, the transfer of prisoners, avenues for trade. These symbolic agreements created a foundation for negotiations about security in later years.

Normalize the diplomatic process.

In the end, the opening to China illustrated the importance of process. Despite conflict, relations between Washington and Beijing improved because both sides felt a stake in maintaining dialogue. They committed to ongoing efforts at mutual agreement.

The present Iranian regime is as dangerous and violent as Communist China at its worst. To call for an opening to this regime does not deny this fact. Isolation and recrimination, however, do not make for effective policy. The history of improved relations between Washington and Beijing since 1971 provides reason to believe that discussions are possible between the United States and Iran.

At the least, an opening to Iran is worth a try. If it fails, the Bush administration will gain credibility for seeking to break out of the recurring cycle of violence in the Middle East. If it succeeds, it will mark a rare moment of foreign policy achievement for the Bush administration.

Jeremi Suri, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is author of "Henry Kissinger and the American Century." This article first appeared in The Boston Globe. [Tuesday, July 24, 2007 < http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/24/opinion/edsuri.php >]