Teaching the Great Depression during the Great Recession

The timing could not have been better--or harder--to teach the Great Depression than this week. Better, because it was easy for my students to engage with the material and relate to the fear of economic downturn and the confusion of the how to fix it. Harder, because it's hard to talk about that crisis without talking about this one, and I am no expert on the economy. Better and harder still given that the stock market reached a 12 year low and unemployment numbers a 26-year high this week, and Obama delivered an address to Congress explaining how he planned to fix things. I spent a lot of time reading historians' perspectives and learning about the present problems to feel ready to take on this teaching challenge.

There's always disparaging talk among historians about presentism--looking at the past through the lens of today. To a certain extent, it's impossible to avoid: people are most interested in historical topics that strike a chord with events in their own lives. I've always thought historians were too quick to condemn comparisons between past and present; if we don't study history to better understand ourselves and our world, what are we doing?

I approached comparisons between the Great Depression and today's crisis delicately in my teaching. I created a table with stats and other economic factors comparing and contrasting the two crises, which I only shared after asking the students to first explain what caused the Great Depression and then what they understand about today's crisis. Finally we discussed whether it's a fair comparison to make and what's at stake.

The nuance of their answers really impressed me. As several pointed out, today's employment numbers are counted differently from the numbers in the 30s, so it's hard to know just how they compare. Another student asked how you can compare or quantify human suffering. Several worried that if we compared today's crisis with the Depression, people would be so afraid they'd stop spending and worsen things. Others wondered whether looking to the New Deal for solutions was a good idea or a bad one.

I think--or hope--that I got the point across that we can't make historical comparisons blithely and without consequences. I closed the class by reminding them of what they learned about people who were left out of the New Deal. Who might be left out in relief efforts today? They looked stunned when I told them feminists were worried that Obama's stimulus plans didn't help women. If learning history is opening their eyes about the present, I consider mine a job well done.

A Night at the Palestra

Ever since college, I've been obsessed with college basketball. I had been to a few college games at the University of MD before college and I'd even played on a team for two years when I was around 11 (and absolutely hated it). But when I started sitting--rather, standing--in the student section at my own school, watching our team rise from obscurity to a top 10 team, I got hooked. I loved the feel of the arena when it was full and you could feel the bleachers shake with energy.

When I went to a game at Penn's palestra with my parents recently, I gained a whole new appreciation for the kind of energy an arena can generate. The palestra, a graceful brick arena built in 1927, is the holy grail for college basketball fanatics. It's not just that this place has hosted more games than any other in the NCAA's, or that you can still see the original exposed brick with its hand-painted signs. The key to its popularity is that the palestra is a fantastic place to watch basketball.

Getty Images

I doubted this when we first arrived and hiked up the steep concrete stairs to our seats, near the top of the seats behind the hoop. I wasn't thrilled that I'd be sitting for two hours squeezed between people on a steel bench. But when I sat down, I was shocked to see how close I felt to the court. At almost double the size of my college's arena, the palestra nonetheless seems like an intimate space.

The sense of history at the palestra is palpable, particularly in my case since my grandparents watched games here. Banners from decades past hang from the arched ceiling. There is no jumbo tron, just a simple scoreboard behind each basket. The crowd noise reverberates and the sound of Penn's small pep band filled the arena; no need for music to be piped in through speakers to get the crowd excited. The opposing student sections--Penn was playing St. Joe's, which is using the palestra as its home arena this year--traded taunts via rolls of fabric with handwritten slogans passed over the students' heads like a wave.

Given the atmosphere of this place, it's no surprise that the palestra played a role in making basketball popular in America. The first ever NCAA tournament was held here and Philadelphia's famous Big 5 tournament was played here for decades. New arenas may have more comfortable seats, fancy boxes, and jumbo trons, but the historian in me can't help but feel at home in the palestra.

"Let it be told to the future world..."

The past and the future came together in Obama's inauguration this week. Among the many changes he is making, Obama is setting a very different tone down to the way he uses history. While his predecessor, President Bush, referred most often to history as that field which would vindicate him in the future, Obama is looking to the past to learn its lessons. That turn backward often leads to Philadelphia.

The inaugural weekend began with a train trip from Philadelphia to Washington, echoing the trip Abraham Lincoln made at his inaugural. Obama's new home street is so named because it connects the capitol and the White House, and Pennsylvania is where the Constitution (establishing these branches of government) was written. When he took his oath of office, he read words written in Philadelphia by the founders. Finally, he closed his speech with a rather strange choice of quotes: a writing by Thomas Paine, published in Philadelphia and read to the troops at Trenton during the American Revolution under George Washington's orders.

Paine, a radical revolutionary who is rarely quoted today, wrote a book called The American Crisis in the freezing winter of 1776 to boost the morale of the troops. Opening with the phrase, "These are the times that try men’s souls," Paine continued on with the words Obama quoted:
"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]." Just as Obama emphasized the need for all Americans to take action and effect change, Paine continued, "throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but 'show your faith by your works.'"

I have a hard time imagining that what Obama calls "this winter of our hardship" is as desperate and daunting as the prospect before most American in the winter of 1776. Indeed, Obama's speech today was unusually grave. Will today be the start of a revolution? As I suggested before, I think it will be a peaceful revolution, more centered on how we live and think than how we govern ourselves. I hope it will be told to the future world that we succeeded in creating a new and better era in America.

The Intelligentsia Goes to Washington

"You know how Obama always said, 'This is our moment; this is our time?' " Yale law professor Dan Kahan told the Washington Post. "Well, academics and smart people think, 'Hey, when he says this is our time, he's talking about us.' "

As both supporters and naysayers agree, president-elect Obama is bringing a new intellectualism to Washington, a natural aristocracy that would warm Thomas Jefferson's heart. The Post's article notes the staggering numbers of Obama's appointments thus far that went to the nation's top universities. There is some debate, despite the debacle of the leadership of eight years of an unintellectual president and his cronies (most of whom, the Post notes, didn't go to great schools), over whether staffing the administration with the intelligentsia is a great idea. As one libertarian law professor noted, "These degrees confer knowledge but not judgment. Their heads are on grander themes . . . and they'll trip on obstacles on the ground."

As a "leftist academic" in training, I am puzzled by the idea that higher education teaches knowledge rather than judgment. In the humanities, our goal as PhD students is to learn how to think and where to access information, not to memorize all there is to know. We learn to evaluate claims and the best ways to prove an argument. These logical reasoning abilities, which are similar to those taught in law schools, should equip people well to serve in government. As for the idea that academics have their heads in the clouds, it is true that some academics deal with the theoretical rather than the realities on the ground, but these don't tend to be the people that enter public service. Even so, having some visionaries in the mix could help policy makers see the bigger picture and the implications of their decisions--things to which this administration has been obscenely blind.

The question all of this leaves me with, actually, is whether this is my time, too. Legal, economic, and policy scholars are obvious players in politics, but what is the historian's role? This circles back to my perennial question about the usefulness of studying history. Here are a few places I'd like to see historians put to work:

• Department of Education: the analytical skills that history teaches should be better integrated into teaching; studies have shown consistently low levels of historical knowledge among American schoolchildren, leaving them ignorant of where we've been and how this can help guide where we're going
• State Department: the cultural diplomacy efforts coming out of State have been dismal and academic guidance about how to speak to people in different parts of the world is needed; foreign policy makers could also benefit from historical perspective
• Department of the Interior: since this department deals with Native Americans and arbitrates their claims--but has done so quite poorly--more historians are needed here as researchers and advisor
• Supreme Court: in a court where precedent is so important, why not appoint a legal historian (a person with a JD and a PhD) to the bench?
  

The president-elect at independence mall

I was surprised to learn on the evening news last night that president-elect Obama and most of the nation's governors were in Philadelphia yesterday. It appears to have been more gimmick than substance, but the illustrious group met in Congress Hall for an address from Obama. What struck me most when I saw the video of the governors sitting upright on the straight-backed wooden benches was, of all things, the light.

(Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Despite the film crews, the room was lit mostly by natural light, just as it would have been when a much earlier band of political leaders met in this room. Accustomed to the fluorescent glare of the senate and house chambers, I suddenly saw these politicians as people, not television stars. They were people who looked slightly ill at ease sharing the stiff seats in a room where the American republic took shape and whose predecessors left them a legacy that is becoming harder and harder to fulfill.

What Obama's Victory Means to Me

"Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution"--FDR

Yesterday was the latest stage in that peaceful revolution. From Jefferson to Jackson to FDR to Reagan, the election of a new president has often ushered in a new era. For me, it is a privilege to be a part of President-elect Obama's revolution. There are moments in history which are only seen as pivotal in retrospect, and other moments that the historical actors know will have resounding importance. The election of Barack Obama is certainly one of the latter moments; the celebrations in the streets around the country and the world attest to that.

I had only a minor role in this peaceful revolution: a few hours here and there volunteering to help get out the vote during the primaries, register new voters, and arranging rides to the polls on election day. The funny thing about this revolution is that the thresh hold for participation seemed to be as simple as believing in Obama. Everybody I heard on their cell phones yesterday--including friends who weren't from the U.S. and couldn't vote here--was announcing, "We did it!"

We. The power of Us. Of the many, rather than the few. Of the hopeful, not the cynical. That is the source of Obama's power and why we expressed collective jubilation in the streets last night. He made us believe that we could make a difference, not just in individual lives but in the way we govern ourselves, the way we discuss politics, the way we conceive of race. That's why his victory is not just his own, or even African-Americans'.

This is only my second time voting for president, and I did not grow up in a time or a place where race or gender were obvious barriers to success. I grew up hearing that "anybody could be president," and it never disturbed me that all of our presidents had been white males. It was only a matter of time, I always felt. Yet I was surprised at the elation I felt yesterday after I pressed the button to vote for our first African-American president. I always knew the day would come, but the reality of it made me so happy I practically skipped down the street as I left the polls. I had voted for a man who might not have even been able to vote, much less run for president, when my parents were growing up.

This victory does not just mean that anybody can become president. It means that even in a country where there is still bigotry and hate, in a world riven by divisions of class and ethnicity and religion, there is space to halt and change paths. Where that path is going to lead we can't be sure. But for the first time I am more than just wishing for a change--I have seen that change and I have been part of it.

In violent revolutions, there is anger; in peaceful revolutions, there is hope. I cried tears of joy last night, and this morning I awoke to a new America.

The Socialist Mystique

I've been puzzled recently by why the crowds at McCain rallies are booing wildly at McCain and Palin's claims that Obama is a socialist who wants to "spread the wealth." Part of my confusion is due to the fact that I have no problem with redistribution of wealth, but I think a larger part is because calling somebody a socialist hasn't been a common political tactic for most of my lifetime. I seriously doubt that most Americans even know what socialism is. In that case, what is the resonance of the term for people a generation older than I, people for whom "socialist" is a bad word?

I initially hypothesized that socialism is just a 21st-century way of accusing Obama of being a communist, and I'm well aware that calling somebody a communist during the Cold War was both a very serious charge and a cynical political tool. To be a communist was--as, if you follow McCain's rhetoric, being a socialist is--to be anti-American. What I hadn't considered was the connection such accusations had to race. As Adam Serwer explains in the American Prospect, "Conservatives, now and in the past, have turned to 'socialism' and 'communism' as shorthand to criticize black activists and political figures since the civil-rights era."

What I am still at a loss to explain is the McCain supporters' horror at the idea of "spreading the wealth." That is (to a limited degree) what taxes and church tithes have done for centuries. Were the Republican party still pro-small government and anti-spending, I could understand opposition to this idea. But can you remember who our last fiscally-conservative, Republican president was? Popular consesus among my historian friends says--Herbert Hoover. Ah, the irony.