The Problem
After serving as guest columnist for The Sun in 2023-2024 and speaking to a great many students and colleagues here and elsewhere, I have concluded that United States universities and colleges should require a year-long world history course for freshmen. The focus should be on how present international conflicts are shaped by the past and what we can learn from the past to anticipate the future. The goal is to give our students the necessary information to think critically by presenting several perspectives on the issues underlying these conflicts. The course might be entitled: World History: Contexts and Conflicts.
Universities are communities of inquiry where ideas are tested. The give-and-take of informed discussion provides laboratories for future elected and appointed leaders in our democracy. But such a dialogue can only take place when students are informed, and that is often not the case today. Were students better informed, the possibility of civil dialogue on intractable global conflicts would be much improved, notwithstanding the divide that separates students on current issues. The most obvious example is the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are strongly related to the ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel and between Iran and the United States.
Throughout my fifty-seven years as professor, I have found that dialogue between people with deeply held points of view is possible when both sides try to understand the point of view of those with whom they passionately disagree. Put another way,
knowledge is the mother of at least partial empathy. That face-to-face discussions informed by facts softens prejudice is a cornerstone assumption of most United States colleges.
Many if not most students to whom I spoke in the last year knew almost nothing about the history of Israel and Palestine or had a skewed, uninformed view of that history. That is, they knew a reductive version of one side or the other. Few knew that Zionism began not as a Western colonial project but as a rural, socialist movement in the later nineteenth century when Russian and Polish Jews were victims of violent racism in the form of pogroms. They did not know that the Jews are as indigenous to the land of Israel as Arabs and that the immigrating Jews before and after the Holocaust believed that they were returning to their homeland. Other students knew little about the legitimate Palestinian claims for a homeland and why a two-state solution was a viable option.
The Solution
What would my proposed history course look like? One and a half terms would be world history — not just European but African and Asian, too — and the second half of the second term would focus on one or more controversial conflicts foregrounded in the current news cycle. In 2023-2024, and 2024-2025 the focal subject would have been the forementioned Middle East conflicts. Knowledgeable professors would present their view of how the present is defined by the historical contexts of the past. Professors with different perspectives might argue passionately but civilly, while encouraging dialogue beyond the classroom.
Another year the focus might be on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including the historical contexts that defines that war and why NATO is involved. Other years the focus might be on the tension between China and Taiwan, or the issues that divide Sudan and its Darfur region.
The focus of this course would be on how the past shapes the conflicts of today, including the damage done by colonialism and slavery, the abuse of natural resources and the failure to recognize climate change. It would also stress distinctions between various authoritarian systems of government and democracies and examine how these distinctions shape twenty-first century history.
Possible Objections
Skeptics might say that such a course would exacerbate campus tensions. As a professor and intellectual, I am certain that a well-informed student constituency is a path to understanding other points of view with sympathy and empathy.
Others may claim launching such a course would require some serious logistics, but I am sure colleges could divert professorial resources from current teaching assignments and find qualified discussion section leaders.
And It might be argued that such a course should be taught in United States high school and often is. In some communities what is taught is limited by school boards which control the syllabi and textbooks and, in some cases, respond to conspiracy theories and special political interests. Moreover, many students come from other countries where views of the past are quite different and where sometimes government censorship defines history.
My proposed course would teach students that mustering evidence to support one’s views and participating in the give-and-take of diverse points of view are the cornerstones of democracy.
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