University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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History Prof. Gerald F. Linderman teaches what may be one of the Universi- ty ' s most popular courses. Twentieth Century American Wars as Social and Personal Experience. A Yale graduate with post-graduate degrees from North- western. Linderman, 52. worked for the Foreign Service in Africa and India. The Wisconsin native came to the Uni- versity in 1969 and has since written two books. All of my work is focused on the ways in which we as a society fight our wars as those ways reflect our values and our social assumptions. he says. quietly, carefully. He was interviewed by Daily staffer Susanne Skubik. Daily: Your class on American wars is very crowded. Students sit in the aisles and demand more sections. Why is it so popular? Linderman: Well, I think that ' s a diffi- cult question and perhaps it ' s one better asked of those in the class than of me. I do enjoy immensely the oppurtunity to teach here, and perhaps something of that feeling makes its way through what I say. When a talk works, and when the students participate with you to help make it work, it ' s extraordinarily satis- fying, as satisfying or more satsfying than anything else that I do. It might be too that the topic is a rather important one, both because students wonder whether they ' ll be compelled to partici- pate in war and because war permits you to teach very fundamental matters. I think that ' s one of the reasons that the course is so attractive to me—it permits you to teach power and love: it permits you to teach force and persuasion, col- lective and individual experience. D: That ' s important stuff, sure. Is the class getting more popular? L: Well, it was getting out of hand, so that I could scarcely see those who sat in the last rows. And it was at that point that I decided to break the course in two, and to teach first in the early morning and then again in the afternoon. I think it ' s working out better, at least that it ' s no longer so large that I have to worry about the size inhibiting student p artici- pation. D: How do you characterize today ' s stu- dent attitudes and how do they compare to those of earlier generations? L: Student attitudes are today very dif- ferent from those that prevailed when I arrived. In 1969 and 1970, a significant number of students involved themselves in anti-Vietnam War protests and the Black Action Movement strike and the The University ' s architecture is as warted as it is attractive. PROLOGUE • 13

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drive to establish a student-affiliated bookstore, and so on. And the atmo- sphere was one in which, for example, that stretch limousine filled with soror- ity pledges that I saw on compus several weeks ago would have been wildly out of place. Some of the agitation entered into the classroom, so student challenged you as they do not today. They compelled you to defend what you said. They required you to explain yourself at points that you simply wanted passed on. It was some- times tense, but it was often very exhiler- ating. What I especially liked was that that process seemed to minimize note- taking in the classroom, seemed to mini- mize the importance of examinations and grades. And what was learned seemed to have a greater personal sig- nificance. I recall that in those years. I attached to several courses that I taught optional film programs and I invited people to come out on Wednesday even- ings, with the result that I often had more people attending the films than were enrolled in the course. Well, I realized that values in country had shifted when several years later, stu- dents began to ask if the materials in the films would appear on the examinations. And when I said, ' No, of course not, ' they would say. ' Well, I ' m sorry. I ' m too busy for an optional evening film pro- gram ' The movement of social concern is surely cyclical. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has re- cently said that it arrives in thirty-year cycles, that we can recall Theodore Roo- sevelt and his reform movement of the early 1900s, Franklin Roosevelt in the early 1930s, and John Kennedy in the early 1960s, and 1 suppose Arthur Schle- singer would have us look for a return of social concern, then, in the early 1990s. But I ' ve never thought that change that I ' ve experienced here was due to the sim- ple replacement of the Vietnam genera- tion by the ' Mc ' generation, by a more selfish group of people. So I ' ve been wary of those who say how much better it was in the late 60s and early 1970s. There was a considerable anger and some discourtesy and some insensitivity and among a few of them, there was an impetus to violence, these things togeth- er with that social commitment and that excitement that I enjoyed so much. It ' s often forgotten that the economic frame- work of life was quite different then. It