21 November
Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., Chapter 5, “The Iowa Interlude,” from In Retrospect: The History of A Historian (New York: Harcrout, Brace & World, 1963)
“Academically, the University displayed a pleasing contrast to Ohio State. There, I had felt the lack of a considered overall aim, a tendency to drift with the tide; but Iowa, under President Jessup’s vigorous leadership, had a well-defined purpose and clear-cut program. The purpose was to place the University through its Extension Service and other other means immediately at the disposal of the people. . . . The program was to offer on the campus a wide range of instruction in the liberal arts and the professions, both to broad the students’ intellectual horizons and to equip them for satisfying and useful careers.”
Allan G. Bogue, “Inside the Iowa School,” from Clio & the Bitch Goddess: Quantification in American Political History (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983)
“Some years ago I was intrigued to discover that an Iowa School of history had existed at the State University of Iowa during the 1950s and 1960s and that I had been involved in it. . . . Was there indeed an ‘Iowa School’ of American history at work [during that time’]? That phrase is much too grand, I suspect, to convey the meaning of the Iowa situation. But the program there was one in which fresh approaches and methods were encouraged and this attitude was not confined soled to quantitative methodology or to the specific fields of American and British political history.”
Stow Persons, “Thirty Years at the University of Iowa 1950-1980: A Memoir,” (1982)
“With a few exceptions Iowa faculty members went about their own business and left the management of the university to the administrative officers towards whom feelings of cynicism and suspicion were frequently voiced. Having no sense of joint responsibility for the welfare of the institution, faculty members distinguished sharply between their own functions and administration, which they were inclined to regard as contemptible. The administrators for their part saw how this attitude worked to their advantage in giving them a large measure of autonomy. I felt strongly that something should be done to bridge the gulf between faculty and administration.”
George Mosse, “The Iowa Years,” from Confronting History : A Memoir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013)
“The University of Iowa, as I saw it in 1944, was a strange mixture of avant-garde, sharp young faculty and elderly men gone to seed. The avant-garde aspect was the most striking, especially for one concerned with cultural history. The departments of art history, fine arts, creative writing, and theater were then at the height of their creativity and power, and it would have been difficult to find their equal anywhere else. . . . At Iowa one had the feeling of being part of a group characterized by a camaraderie of shared interests in which it mattered little to which department one might belong.”
“Perhaps my greatest triumph came with a motion I introduced after I had been in charge of the large Western Civilization core course and was subjected for several years to pressure from the athletic department to pass football stars who were either incompetent or too short of time to do justice to their studies. I proposed that football as a part of the university program be abolished, and that instead the Chicago Bears be hired as artists-in-residence, following the model of the artist-in-residence program in the art and music departments. The motion passed [The Humanities Society], and I got some satisfaction in seeing the usually unflappable president, Virgil Hancher, turn white. Though my motion made the local and national press, it was stillborn. The president managed to circumvent it, and the only lasting result was that I got the reputation of being the scourge of the athletic department.