Kirstein's Teaching Philosophy
and Raison D'être in being a
professor. {updated 2009}
I believe teaching is a moral act. I do not construe the purpose of
teaching as merely transmitting information with the purpose of
ratifying the current order. Students need to appreciate not only the
strengths but also the failures of the past in order to better
comprehend the challenges that lie ahead. I would like students to be
change agents, to be committed to a better world and I have no doubt
that this objective of my teaching is moral and just. Racism, sexism,
militarism, homophobia, unregulated capital formation and
aggressive nationalism are
examples of persistent historical phenomena that must be assessed and
used to build a course of study that is progressive, caring and just.
On pedagogy per se: Different views and competing visions should be
introduced when appropriate. Not every theme or action, however,
requires "balance" in the classroom. Professors should not hesitate to
voice and express opinions but should be careful to insure that student
voices are heard and validated. Professors
should not indoctrinate or proselytise
their students. Conversely, self-censorship
by professors should be
minimal and academic freedom should be well-established on a campus to
allow and even encourage challenging pedagogy even if controversial.
The search for
the truth should have few restrictions in an academic setting..
For education to
be meaningful, it should move beyond
preparation for a "job." Yes that is important and students have a
right to
expect their education will provide them with the requisite skills to
pursue and develop their occupational pursuits. Yet there are other
higher purposes to education that I have and will continue to
expostulate. I
want my students to recognise and encounter in their studies the racism
in America, the violence that it has perpetrated, the persecution of
homosexuals that remains an issue of concern, the lack of gender equity
and the arrogant notion of American exceptionalism. Students who can
think outside the realm of narrow nationalism will be equpped to
encounter globalisation and international issues. Other societies have
weaknesses too and those should be examined as well.
Professors should be immune from external or internal pressure to
conform.
There have been numerous occasions where I have been urged to to
revise my teaching pedagogy and to adopt a less-progressive ethical
vision. I have been named as one of David Horowitz, The Professors:
The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America which I find curious
as a military veteran, the son of an Army Captain and opponent of
violence. Professors must have academic freedom or their students
cannot learn as effectively. A
professor who is proccupied with being fired, suspended, denied tenure,
or LOSING tenure will engage in self-censorship. Students will be
denied their right to be educated by professors who are not hesitant to
teach honestly and openly their discipline without fear of retribution.
I have and will dedicate my energies to ensure that academic freedom is
indeed respected and
protected on both my campus and to the extent possible, elsewhere.
Curriculum
Vitae
Education
Ph.D., Saint
Louis University,
(History)
M.A., Saint
Louis University,
(Political Science)
A.B., Boston
University,
(Government)
Washington
University
in St. Louis
–attended
Mary Institute
and Saint Louis
Country Day School
(High School)
Honors
and Grants
Named one of the 101 most dangerous
professors in David Horowitz, The
Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous
Academics in America
(Washington, DC:
Regnery
Publishing,
2006.
Who’s
Who in America,
2001,
2002
Saint Xavier University
Excellence in Scholarship
Award, 2001
Saint Xavier University--Excellence
in Teaching
Award, 1997.
Lilly
Foundation Teaching Incentive Grants, 1990 and 1991.
Arms Control
Association Grant, 1986.
Exxon Educational Foundation
Grant, 1985.
Anglo Over Bracero: A History of the Mexican
Worker in the United
States
from
Roosevelt to Nixon nominated for
Truman Library David D. Lloyd Prize, 1978
Harry S. Truman
Library Institute Grant.
Phi
Alpha Theta (History), Pi
Sigma Alpha (Political Science).
Employment
St. Xavier University,
Professor of History, Present-.
St. Xavier University
Honors Program:
2003-2004.
Chair, Department of History and Political
Science, St. Xavier University.
Mother
McAuley Liberal Arts High School c.
Advancement Placement SXU
course in social science.
St. Louis Community College at Meramec,
Lecturer.
Saint Louis University, Lecturer.
Saint Louis University, Lecturer in Honors
Program.
Courses Offered in
Last Three Years:
African-American
History
American
Foreign Relations
American
Protest Music
Capitalism,
Socialism and Social
Justice
Hiroshima and
the Nuclear Age
Senior
Seminar: Academic Freedom,
Wartime Dissent, and Constitutional Law
US
History Survey 103 up to 1877
US
History Survey 104 since 1877
Vietnam
and America
Publications
Monograph:
Anglo Over Bracero: A History of the Mexican
Worker in the United
States
From
Roosevelt
to Nixon, San Francisco: R and E Research Associates,. Reviewed
in California Historical Quarterly, and Journal of the
West.
Book Chapter:
“Challenges
to Academic Freedom
Since 9/11,” Matthew Morgan, ed., The New
Legal Landscape, Volume 5, The Day
that Changed Everything? Looking at the Impact of 9-11 at the End of
the Decade
(Palgrave-McMillan Press), 2009, 57-74.
Works in an Anthology or Encyclopedia:
Entries on
“Academic Freedom” and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Roger Chapman, ed.,
Encyclopaedia
of the Culture Wars, M.E. Sharpe Press, 2010.
Essays on “American Imperialism and the Paranoid
Style of American
Politics.” and “Current Crisis of Capitalism and the Leninist
Critique,” to
accompany international art exhibit “Necessary Discourse on Hysteria,”
Koroska
Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia, November-December 2008.
“Armageddon on Display:
Chicago
and Nuclear War,” in Alison M. Scott
and
Christopher D.
Geist, editors, The Atomic Age Opens: American
Culture Confronts
the Atomic Bomb, Bowling Green, Ohio:
The Bowling Green
Center for Popular
Culture
Studies, 1997 [microfilm].
“The Bloody
Battleground of Vietnam:
Two Views of Ike and JFK.” 1994 Annual of
Hermeneutics &
Social Concern, ed.
Justus George Lawler. New
York:
Continuum
Publishing
Group. 304-13.
“Internationalism and World Peace: An Alternative to
Nuclear
Weapons." Yearbook
of Social Scientific Studies. ed.
Shingo Shibata. Tokyo.
173-76. [in Japanese]
“Elizabeth
Buffum Chace,” 151-52; “William Henry Channing,” 158-59; “James
Mott,” 671-72;
“John Greenleaf Whittier,” 1015-16, Biographical
Dictionary of
Modern Peace Leaders, Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood,
Press.
“Hiroshima and
Spinning the Atom: America,
Britain,
and Canada
Proclaim
the Nuclear Age, 6
August 1945,” The Historian
(Winter, 2009), 805-27.
“Teaching
the Iraq
War,” Academe, September-October,
2006, 118.
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2006/SO/Col/soff.htm
“The
New McCarthyism and Academic
Freedom,” Situation Analysis, Spring 2004, 21-35. [published at
UK
University of Nottingham]
History
News Network, “Iraq:
The Logic of Withdrawal.” April 3, 2006. Reviewed by Juan Cole on his blog
Informed Consent, April
3, 2006.
“Why Iraq,
Like Vietnam,
Is Immoral and Unnecessary,” History News Network, March 7, 2005.
“Should Respectable Historians Attend and Participate at
Conferences
Hosted by David Irving?” HNN, September 20, 2004.
“How
I Define Patriotism,”
History News Network (HNN), George Mason
University,
October 2003
“Terrorism
from the Sky: The Destruction of Nagasaki,” New Ground, July-August,
2003, 12-15.
“American Swagger in
a
Dangerous Nuclear World,” History
News Network,
George
Mason University,
January 2003.
“False
Dissenters: Manhattan
Project Scientists and the Use of the Atomic Bomb,”
American Diplomacy (March 2001). American
Diplomacy sponsored by the Triangle Institute for Security
Studies—a
consortium at Duke
University, University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State.
http://www.unc.edu/depts.
/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_03-06/Kirstein_manhattan
/kirstein_manhattan.html
“Nuclear
Museums and the Power of
Display,” Continuum, 1 :91-109.
“The Atomic
Museum,” Art in America 77
(June 1998): 44-57.
“The
Atomic Age and Revolution:
The Spirit of October,” Proceedings of
16th
International Congress of Historical Sciences, Stuttgart, Germany,, 464.
“The Crisis
of Technology: Nagasaki
and the Nuclear Age," Studies of
Peace
Culture, 8 (1995): 189-201. [in Japanese, translated by
Nobuko
Kamata.]
“Agribusiness, Labor, and the ‘Wetbacks’: Truman's
Commission on
Migratory
Labor,” The Historian 40: 650-67.
“American
Railroads and the Bracero Program, 1943-1946," Journal of
Mexican
American History V : 57-90.
Op-eds
and Letters:
Statesman Journal (Salem, Oregon),
op-ed “Eisenhower's
warning ignored at our peril” August 23, 2007.
Academe: ILL AAUP Newsletter, “Shared Governance and Academic Freedom.”
Fall,
2005.
New York Times “The Shame of Abu
Ghraib: Voices of Revulsion”
May 4, 2004.
Arab News, “Sham Election,” July 24, 2004.
Arab
News, “Smoke Screen,”
April 9, 2004.
Saudi Arabia.
Gulf
News, United
Arab Emirates, “Greater Threat,” December, 2003.
Chicago
Tribune, op-ed “Quagmire in Iraq
reminiscent of Vietnam,”
November, 2003.
Arab
News, Saudi
Arabia, “Withdraw US Troops,” November 4, 2003
Gulf
News,
“Dishonourable,” April
23, 2003, Dubai,
United Arab Emirates
Chicago
Sun-Times, “Celebrating
death,” April 27,
2003
Arab News, “Glorification of Death,” April 22, 2003.
Arab
News, “Compulsion to
Kill.” October 3,
2002
.
Arab
News, “Hegemonic
War,” September 10,
2002.
Gulf
News, “Protest,” August
7, 2002
Gulf
News “Denuclearize,” June 13, 2002.
Gulf
News “Fellowship,” May 4, 2002
Gulf
News, “Three Steps.” April 14, 2002. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
“Atrocities
Report,” Chicago Tribune, Letter Sunday Tribune, September 24, 2000.
Chicago Sun-Times, Op-ed, "The Tragedy of Nagasaki," August 4, 1995.
Chicago Tribune, Op-ed, "The Spreading Nuclear
Peril,"
Chicago Tribune, Op-ed, “Toward a
Farewell to Arms,”
<>Chicago Tribune, Op-ed, “Will Fat Man be the Last?”
Photography:
93,95,97,98,102,106. [Eight Images]
“The Atomic
Museum,” Art in America 77:
45,47,49,51,53,55.[12
images]
Book Reviews:
American Historical Review, Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and
American Cold War Culture, October
1996, 1311.
Continuum, National Catholic Reporter, Continuum
<>
Professional Papers
“The
“War on Terror” as Threat to
America:
Academic Freedom and Suppressing Dissent.” Inter-University
Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, Palmer House, Chicago, October 27, 2007.
"David
Horowitz in Your Classroom: Assessing Right-wing Rage and
Proposals to Transform Pedagogy." University of St
Francis
Symposium on the Scholarship of Pedagogy, Joliet,
Il., October 7, 2006.
“Courts to Campus: Silencing Free Speech
During Wartime,” Historians Against the War Conference, University of Texas
at Austin,
February 18. 2006.
“Real Teaching: Iraq Teach-ins
Facilitate Excellence in Teaching,” Symposium on the Scholarship of
Pedagogy, University
of St. Francis, October 8, 2005.
“Pedagogy
During War: Academic Freedom v. The Thunder of the Right,” Conference
“Teaching
in the Arts and Sciences: Theory and Practice in the Undergraduate
Class,”
Associated Colleges of the Chicago
Area, University
of St. Francis, Joliet, October 2, 2004.
“The Atomic
Bomb and the Asian-Pacific War: Manhattan
Project ‘Dissent’
Reconsidered,” Conference on World War II: After 60 Years,
Siena
College,
Loudonville,
NY,
2000.
“Unleashing
the Atom: The 'Rain
of Ruin' and the Holocaust Below,” Conference on World War II: A Dual
Perspective, Siena
College, Loudonville, NY,
1998.
“Holocaust
from the Sky: Nagasaki,
the Last Atomic
City,” Popular Culture
Association, Las Vegas, 1996.
“Armageddon on Display: Chicago and Nuclear War,” Conference
on
"The Atomic
Age Opens: American Culture Confronts the
Atomic Bomb," Bowling
Green State
University, Ohio,
1995.
Panel
Discussant
“U.S.-Iran
Conflicts:
Confrontation or Negotiation?”
sponsored by the Center for Global
Studies--Purdue University Calumet, September 25, 2008.
“Putting
the Iraq
War on Trial: The Lt. Watada Case.” With Carolyn Ho, mother of Army 1st
Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused Iraq
deployment, January
31, 2007.
Amnesty
International Sponsored Event: "Forum on Iraq: The State of the
Occupation" Homewood-Flossmoor
High School, Illinois,
April 19, 2006.
“Bush’s
Decision to Go to War.”
July 2003. Sponsored online by FrontPageMag. com. Panelists: Stanley Aronowitz,
Distinguished
Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York and Green
Party
candidate for New York Governor, 2000. Victor
Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at Stanford University
Hoover
Institution.
Lectures and Debates
Forthcoming: "Remembering Howard Zinn: Giving Voice
to the Voiceless,” Chicago College of
Complexes Community Group, Lincoln Restaurant, 4008 N. Lincoln Ave,
Chicago,
July 10, 2010.
Lewis University
“The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom and Shared Governance During
Time of
War,” at in Romeoville,
Ill. Oct. 22, 2009.
New York University,
“Freedoms at Risk Conference,” February 23, 2008.
DePaul University,
“Academic Freedom Symposium,” February 1, 2008.
The Progressive Forum,” on “Toward a New Past: The
Meaning of the Iraq War,”
Matteson, Illinois December 19, 2007.
“Iraq War” at Lincoln
Park High School, ranked best
public high school in Illinois
by Newsweek. Debated Kent Griffiths, Republican
committeeperson for the
32nd Ward, Chicago,
March 27, 2007.
Debated
author, editor David
Horowitz: “Iraq War:
In the Classroom and Beyond,” Chicago,
March 29, 2006,
Open
University of the Left, "The American Empire: A Threat to Free
Speech," Acme Arts Complex, 1741 N. Western, Thursday, November 17, 2005.
"Resisting
Conformity: The
Threat to Academic Freedom," East-West University,
Chicago, Ill.,
May 18, 2005.
“Iraq:
Mr Bush’s
Vietnam.”
Ohio
Wesleyan University,
February 18,
2005.
“Shared
Governance and Academic
Freedom: Resisting Marginalization and the Persecution of the Left,” McKendree University, Lebanon, Ill. April 5, 2005.
“Suspended
on Veterans Day:
Resisting American Imperialism.” American Democracy Project Speaker
Series, Illinois
State University,
November 11,
2004.
“War,
Academic
Freedom and Suspending Acts of Conscience,” American University,
Leadership
Programme in School of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., March 26, 2004.
Korean
War Veterans Roundtable of Wilmette,
"War, Intellectual Conformity &
Academic Freedom", March 2004.
“Academic
Freedom
and Antiwar Protest: Berthold, De Genova, Kirstein,” Peace and Justice
Symposium, Valparaiso
University, Indiana,
November, 2003.
Universal Muslim High School,
“Antiwar
Protest is the Highest Form of Patriotism.” Bridgeview, Il.
April 2, 2003.
“Hiroshima
and Nuclear Terrorism: The Past as Prologue” Open University of the
Left,
“American Empire” series. Lakeview
Academy, Chicago, March 27, 2003.
Korean
War Veterans Roundtable,
“Free Speech and Antiwar Protest,” Wilmette,
February 6, 2003.
Media Interviews:
SouthtownStar on “Lessons Learned Since September 11,” September 7, 2008.
Louisville Courier-Journal, on Democratic primary, May 8, 2008.
Jame
Jan TV (Iran
Television), on 2006 Israel
Lebanon
War and US Foreign Policy, July 23 and August 13, 2007.
“Ward
Churchill Fired,” InsideHigherEd.com by Scott
Jaschik on July 25,
2007.
“Congeniality vs. Academic Freedom” on Chicago Public
Radio by
Shawn Allee, June
12, 2007.
“DePaul Rejects Finkelstein,” InsideHigherEd.com by
Scott Jaschik.
Interviewed in Washington for article, June 11,
2007.
“Furor Over Norm Finkelstein,”InsideHigherEd.com by
Scott Jaschik.April
7,2007.
Tony
Trupiano Radio Show, “The
Tony Show” out of Detroit,
March 15, 2004.
Kosovo
War and Yeltsin
Instability in Russia,
"Chicago
Tonight," Channel 11,
WTTW, May
17, 1999.
Kosovo
War, Jack Taylor Show,
Channel 23, WCIU, April
1, 1999.
India
and Pakistan’s
Nuclear Testing, Channel 26, WCIU, May 15, 1998.
Swiss
Banking Practices During
World War II, "Chicago Tonight," Channel 11, WTTW, July 29, 1997.
Le Figaro (Paris),
Interviewed on relevance of 1968 Democratic Convention in
Chicago.
August 26, 1996,
p.2.
Yeltsin
Firing of Lebed, "Chicago
Tonight,"
Channel 11, WTTW, October
17, 1996.
UN
at 50 and Bosnia
Crisis,
"Chicago Tonight," Channel 11, WTTW, October
24,
1995.
The Manhattan
Project and the
Atomic Bomb, Loyola
University
Radio, WLUW,
July
16, 1995.
The Atomic
Endings of World War II, Channel 60, WEHS, July 5, 1995.
V-E Day and
the Post-Cold War, "Chicago
Tonight," Channel 11, WTTW, May 8,
1995. Appeared
with John Mearsheimer, professor of political science, University
of Chicago.
Foreign
Policy and Public
Opinion, "Chicago
Tonight," Channel 11, WTTW, March 27, 1995. Appeared with John Rielly,
President, Chicago
Council on
Foreign
Relations.
<>
< style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Professional
Organization Activity:
Vice-President,
American
Association of University Professors, Illinois
Conference,
2007-. Chair
Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
Co-President
St. Xavier University
chapter of A.A.U.P.
At-Large
Member, Executive Committee,
S.X.U., AAUP chapter, 2007-2009.
At-Large
Member Executive
Council, A.A.U.P., Illinois
Conference, 2004-2007.
American
Association of
University Professors: appointed to Committee F:
Chapters,
Conferences, Members
and Dues (Washington,
D.C.), 2000-2003.
President,
Saint Xavier
University AAUP chapter, 1999-2003.
Professional Organizations:
American
Association of
University Professors
American
Historical Association
Historians
Against the War
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