11/11/14 – I was happy to be interviewed for today’s Star Tribune article about the 70th anniversary of the G.I. Bill and its impact on Minnesotan colleges and universities. You can learn more about that landmark legislation and what it meant for schools like Bethel at our Bethel at War blog.
Twenty-five years ago this Sunday, about 20,000 people from the east side of Berlin walked over to the west. Of course, this kind of population movement happens every day in every city in the world, as urbanites go to work, eat out, visit friends, attend plays, etc. But Berlin of 1989 was a famously bifurcated city, with a 28-year old wall … More Twenty-Five Years after the Wall
Funerals make historians of us all. The death of a loved one compels us, individually and collectively, to slow down and dedicate ourselves to remembering. Sometimes the task warms our heart, sometimes it rips open old wounds; invariably, it leads us to make meaning of what came before, to reflect on how the past produced the present. So before my colleague … More History as Christian Testimony
Having started the week by sharing an article questioning whether we really ever learn “lessons” from the past, let me close the week by considering another way that Americans commonly try to make the past useful: by deploying it as a rhetorical weapon in the most heated debates of the present day. Two versions of this come up a lot. … More The Wrong Side of History
10/27/14 – If you’re in the Twin Cities, you can catch me this Saturday morning, Nov. 1st, 10:00, at the Minnesota Genealogical Society. I’ll be speaking on the history of Poland in the century since 1914, with particular emphasis on the Polish experience of Communist rule. More broadly, I’ll have us think about the nature … More This Saturday: My Talk on Poland since 1914
Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana) We learn from past mistakes only to make new ones. (A.J.P. Taylor) Tellingly, the cliche above that seems to encourage historical studies is the one that doesn’t come from a historian. Taylor is quoted by French historian Robert Zaretsky in a new piece for History News Network that … More Does History Teach Lessons?
As I prepare to take another group of Bethel University students to Europe to learn about World War I, I’m particularly eager to show them how the war has been commemorated — in cities like London, Paris, and Munich, but also on the former Western Front itself. Two of the most striking memorials from the second … More Ottawa: The War Memorial as a Scene of Violence
It’s one of my favorite teaching weeks of the year at Bethel University: Renaissance week in GES130 Christianity and Western Culture, the multidisciplinary course that’s at the foundation of most Bethel students’ general education experience. It’s not so much that I enjoy the Renaissance itself (I think we once devoted a whole segment of our CWC podcast … More What If Education Serves Primarily to Teach Us How to Pray?
10/20/14 – Thanks to Dave Bruno and John Fea for responding to my post last week suggesting “Six C’s of Writing Institutional History”! In a comment on that post, Dave elaborated on his suggestion that historians might practice a kind of institutional “confession,” while John — busy writing his own institutional history, of the American Bible … More Responses to My Post on Institutional History
During the Conference on Faith and History (CFH) meeting late last month, I had the honor of chairing a session on the role that historians can play in helping institutions during seasons of change. Despite the early start time (8:00 on a Saturday morning), we had a nice crowd show up to hear a terrific set of … More Six C’s of Writing Institutional History
The Pietist Schoolman 