Second interview with Jurgen Herbst

Jurgen Herbst #52 Transcript

LS: Yes, well, how did you get into educational history?

JH: Well, it was part, really, of my training in the history of American civilization, which is what I did as a graduate student. And I picked that, I picked the history of education as part of that, because in Germany I had done work. I thought I'd continue that.

LS: Now, excuse me. I think it would be a good idea if you would come close enough, if you could actually hold onto this and speak into it. Because we can [unclear] and when I ask a question, this won't--

JH: Then why don't we pull that chair a little closer? This is pretty tight. Yeah, this is a lot better. Sure. That should do.

LS: And when I want to ask a question, you can [unclear] So start again.

JH: I got into the history of American because it was a minor field that I had in my PhD training in the history of American civilization. And that, again, I 00:01:00picked because before I came to Harvard, I had been working in Germany with American officials on German education. So that was an interest I had, and I continued that.

LS: And you were from Germany.

JH: Originally, yes, yes, I came from Germany.

LS: You came here. When did you come here to this country?

JH: First, as a student in 1948. And then again to stay here in 1954.

LS: Well, what I'd be interested in today is to have you describe a project. You're going to talk about the one you're working on now.

JH: Yes, yes, surely. That is the legal history of American colleges and universities, to the time of the Dartmouth College case in 1819, which is the first time that a college or university issue came up to the United States Supreme Court. And in fact, legally confirmed and set up our two-pronged 00:02:00educational system of both public and private institutions. Which makes us quite different, from, for example, Europe, where about 99 percent of all college type and institutions and universities are public. And so the Dartmouth College case is a key document in that whole history. And I was very interested and intrigued how it had come about that this developed. That and in a general sense, I think quite specifically in 1967, 1968, at the time of the unrest in the universities, there were a number of court cases here in the federal court of the Western district of Wisconsin, Judge Doyle's court, at which time Judge Doyle asked me 00:03:00to write him a paper on the relationship between civil and university jurisdiction. And that was, you know, with court deadlines, all that. And I did it. But I also knew at the time that I was talking about something I really knew very little about. (laughs) So essentially I said to myself, I've got to do this right. So I've been doing that ever since.

LS: And this fitted in because you weren't at the time working on another topic?

JH: Oh, I was at the time working on another subject with a far more general history of education, in fact, with the phenomenology of education, what does education mean. But I gave that up when these much more pressing issues came up, and decided to do that first. Phenomenology will come later, when I'm through with this.

LS: So how did you go about doing it?

JH: Well, basically, I had to familiarize myself first with a certain amount of 00:04:00legal matters, of which I knew nothing. So I did a great deal of reading in history of law and English, particularly English court reports, since the origins of our system obviously go back to Europe. And I had to look into that first. So that was, in a sense, the first stage.

The second, then, was a great deal of time spent in university archives. Mainly on the East coast, since that's where our early colleges and universities were, to dig into their archives, into their papers, to see what I could find out. And essentially what I looked for were always matters of conflict. Conflict between the faculty and the head, the president, the teachers and the president of the college. The students and the faculty. The colonial government and the 00:05:00university. And when it happened, court cases that had come up having something to do with students or with faculty or with the administration.

So essentially, that whole problem of public controversy is what interested me. And I rather systematically went through that, and went through the various archives to see what I could learn. And that's the hardcore of the material that will be in the book. The story and interpretation, of course, of these conflicts, what they really had to say about what kind of institution was an American college before 1819.

LS: When did you get time to go to these Eastern archives?

JH: I did some of it in the summer. And then I was fortunate enough to receive some grants. The National Institute of Education, the National Endowment for the 00:06:00Humanities. The university gave me a couple of grants, one semester each. And so, whenever I could, I did it. There are about up to fifty-some colleges founded before 1819. I obviously did not get to all fifty-seven or whatever there were of them. In fact, that wasn't even necessary. But I did go to probably about fifteen, that's a rough guess. I'd have to sit down and count them again to see.

LS: You, did you have any difficulties getting into archives or finding material?

JH: No. In fact, I was always amazed how helpful and willing archivists were. And I became rather fond of them. And I had some marvelous experiences with 00:07:00them. I do remember the visits to what is now Washington & Lee University in Virginia. When I first came there, yes, they thought they had some archives. But throughout their history, which began in the late eighteenth century, their bursar was, by definition, the secretary of their trustees. So he had the papers.

So I was sent to the administration building. It was a brand new building, glass and concrete and all that. And I got in there and there were whirring computers and steel files. You know, just like a business office. And the bursar just looked as though he perfectly well fitted into this brand new modern construction.

And so when I said I was interested in papers from the eighteenth century, he looked at me kind of queerly and said, "Well, there is a little storeroom here. 00:08:00Let me take you there. We'll see what we find."

And indeed, there was a little storeroom. It was sort of an enlarged janitor's closet. And a totally different atmosphere prevailed there. First of all, the dust was an inch thick. There was no gleam, no steel, no whirring computers. But very old fashioned furniture. So obviously, all kinds of junk had been piled in there. And loads and loads of boxes. And indeed, we began to look into them, and sure enough, there were the old minutes, and there were all kinds of papers from the eighteenth and nineteenth century. And he sort of brought a dust cloth along and wiped a piece of a, a part of a table. "Go sit down and make yourself at home." Which I proceeded to do.

And I stayed there for about two or three days. And found a great deal of stuff. Very fascinating. And was very happy. And then I went home.

And about a year and a half later, I received a letter from the librarian of 00:09:00Washington & Lee University, telling me with great joy that the library had just acquired all the papers that had been in the bursar's possession. And they were now opening up the archives of Washington & Lee University. And they thanked me profoundly, because I had sort of given the impetus for them to start a university archives. (laughs) Well, you know, that kind of thing makes you feel rather good. And I thought that was very nice.

Most places that I did go did have archives set up by themselves. But all of them, you know, without exception, were exceedingly interested in what I was doing, and gave me all the help I could possibly ask for. So I have, and then they themselves got interest and kept looking for things to help out. So I have nothing but exceedingly pleasurable memories of all these research trips.

LS: Could you give me an example of a case of conflict that you found that would be of interest?

JH: Yes. In the early days, one of the disputes that came up at a number of institutions was between the colonial government, or after the revolution, the state legislature and the university. That the university out of their tradition of English law always claimed to be a corporation under a charter which could not be touched by governmental interference. And to the contrary, the government is usually claiming that they had a responsibility and could either alter the charters or just interfere in the college's affairs. And that is one of the constant themes. In fact, it is the main theme in the Dartmouth case itself. But 00:11:00it has a long history of preceding the case itself, of similar events before. So that struggle is really one of the main themes.

Another one are disgruntled students who try to sue the university. And the first time that that happened, I've forgot the year, I have to look it up again, was early at Harvard College. And there the interesting thing was they tried, the student tried to bring the university into court, into county court, in Charlestown, near Boston. And the university's main concern them was that it was a provincial institution. That is to say, it was an institution of the province, what now is the state of Massachusetts, and then the colony of Massachusetts Bay. And that as a provincial institution, it could not be brought into a county court. That in fact the only court it would acknowledge was the court which had 00:12:00founded Harvard College itself. Namely, the general court in today's language would have been the state legislature, the assembly, of the colony of Massachusetts. So they fought very vigorously against being hauled into county court. And prevailed, of course, in those days. But that's the type of--

LS: What was the issue?

JH: The issue was that the particular student had made, I forgot, as a matter of fact, by now. It's years back that I had worked on that, and I have to come back to it now. The student had in one form or another insulted the government of the college by having made some disparaging remarks publicly. And therefore, the college refused to give him his master's degree. That's what it was. So the student demanded that he had to get his master's degree and it couldn't be withheld on these grounds. And that matter went into court.

LS: Times have certainly changed, haven't they? (laughs) Making insulting remarks about--

JH: Yes, yes. But what interests me about it is in the context of current discussions in the 1960s, we all then seemed to think that it was unheard of that a student would drag a college into court. And that riots and such things, I remember back in the '60s, we used to say when we read in the newspapers Egyptian students were rioting, Persian students were rioting. Such things never happened in America, certainly not the America of the '50s. So when the '60s burst upon us, we all thought this was novel. But the point is, it isn't novel at all. We've had riots, we've had court cases way throughout our history. But somehow by the '50s we seem to have forgotten it all. It seems as though a brand new affair had come upon us. That's one thing that I found out, that there was ample precedent for these matters.

And there are other, to me, very fascinating themes that again really tie up with our thinking of the '50s and '60s. I remember that one of the first sentiments among the faculty at the time always was that the state legislature had absolutely no right in any way to interfere into affairs of the university. That faculty members stood on grounds of academic freedom, and legislators stay out. And the argument that one heard at first had something to do with the corporation of professors that made up a university. Which is a medieval idea, and which is historically correct. That's the way universities had originally been founded by scholars coming together, banding themselves together, forming a corporation and governing themselves.

Well, there's a lot of time intervened between the Medieval period and, for my 00:15:00purposes, and for the whole history of American colleges, the far more important part is that played by the Reformation. [pause]

Is this being registered now? Is that needle-- what the Reformation did, in short, was to bring state, church and religion together. For example, if the king of Saxony was a Protestant, then because he was a Protestant, his subjects had to be Protestants, and the Protestant Church was the established or state church. And the same thing happened in Bavaria, only there it was the Catholic Church.

And the point is, in America, we started out that way, too, to some extent. Virginia was, by definition, Anglican, as a British colony. But Massachusetts was settled by Puritans, who became Congregationalists. So that was the established church.

Well, that didn't work in Pennsylvania, for example. Well, you had Quakers and Lutherans and Schwenkfelders and Pietists and, you know, a great diversity of groups. And because of that, the notion of an established church with an established college became more and more difficult.

And in fact, it was in New Jersey where you for the first time had a second college founded. It was then called Queens, and it's now today known as Rutgers. That was the second college after the official, the established college of New Jersey, which today is known as Princeton.

Now Princeton was the provincial, established, college. Rutgers, or Queens, was this new type of thing that was specifically founded for Dutch Reform people who no longer wanted to have their children to send back to the Netherlands, but wanted to give them a college education in the colony. And it's out of such 00:17:00beginnings that you get non-established colleges. Which, in fact, later then became what we know as the private colleges. And there, the two-pronged system really began. And it was, again, the Dartmouth College case that in 1819 put, if you will, the legal seal of approval on this development, which made us really quite different from Europe.

And the reason, of course, is that of [provolism?]. Ask the right question, and when you ask the right question on the subject, then you really start talking about American history quite in general. This doesn't just explain the colleges, this is one of the key facts of what America is all about, that we are such a heterogeneous nation, for which there really, I should say very few precedents. Switzerland, of course, comes to mind, but by and large for which there really had not been many precedents in the Old World. And here, then, where the college 00:18:00history comes together with the broad, American themes.

LS: Have you finished your research on this?

JH: Oh, about seven-eighths of it. I'm now writing on what I hope will be the last chapter, namely the Dartmouth College case in itself. And then what's left is to take all the chapters or independent essays that I've written so far and put them together as one book, which means a bit of revamping and shortening and putting together. And developing one man theme throughout it.

LS: When do you do this? I know you have this office here in the history building, and you work here in the morning.

JH: Yes. My best time for this type of work is in the mornings, when I'm freshest. So now, of course, I'm on leave, and I can do it all day. But during, when I'm not on leave, and when I've worked on this, I've always tried to do this in the morning, and to be with my students, do my teaching, and whatever administrative duties there are in the afternoon. And in the evenings, I prepare 00:19:00the next day's classes. That's been the pattern.

LS: And do you work weekends, too?

JH: Oh, yes. Sure. The marvelous part of a professor's life is that he can say, she can say, too, that my work is my hobby, or my hobby is my work. So I don't really distinguish forty hours of work, and then something else. It's all part of the same.

LS: What does your wife feel about, how is she affected by this?

JH: Well, I don't think it's very easy on spouses in that type of situation. When your husband or your wife is engaged in something like this. It obviously does not give me to her as much as she might like to. And that's a problem. Yes.

LS: But you never, you can't go out and close the office door.

JH: Well, one doesn't. Once you are working on something like this where you're 00:20:00searching for explanations, where something's in your mind where you know you have, let's say, seven-eighths of a story, but a part is missing, that doesn't let you go. You worry about it. And in fact, sometimes the answers don't always come out of further documents. Because in so many cases, there simply aren't any more documents. There are no more facts to be found. But it is your own working mind that has to supply the connections. And that comes at the most unexpected hours. And then when you get it, you sometimes rush for a piece of paper to jot it down before you forget it again. So it works in you all the time.

LS: What happens to your teaching? How is your teaching affected by it?

JH: Very much the same way. In fact, I can't conceive of my teaching without this type of work. if it weren't for this kind of research, if it weren't for this being involved in an ongoing process of exploration and further thoughts and discoveries, I would think my teaching would be rather dull. Of course, it 00:21:00may be dull anyway. But I hope not. And if it isn't--

LS: I think you're a very good teacher.

JH: And if it isn't, it comes through this. The way I notice it myself, and of course, you realize it's my students who should be saying that and noticing it. But to the extent that I notice it, it's the fact that I not very often teach the same course twice. I don't mean that I don't teach the history of American education in various semesters. But what I do within the course changes. And it comes from new insights that one gains.

And the thing is, when you gain an insight, let's say out of a particular event or a happening, let's say, in 1812, you begin to realize that it doesn't just apply to 1812. But if the true insight of how things work, you begin to apply it to the rest of your history wherever it is possible to apply it. You try it out 00:22:00and to look for new revelations in that way. So your teaching is, in effect, permeated with that.

LS: So research doesn't interfere with teaching.

JH: Oh, I would never say it interferes, no. No, it helps. It flows into it. Teaching really isn't possible, good teaching, I mean, with the teacher being inspired. And the question is, where does the inspiration come from? And I'll just be careful and speak for myself. And I say it does come from research. It does come from the kind of questions that come from you contemplating new facts, new data that you hadn't known before.

And you ask yourself over and over again, what does it all mean? And that, I think, is the key question. And to keep that question fresh and to have it recurring without it becoming just simple repetition, you need new materials, 00:23:00materials you hadn't seen before, events you hadn't heard of before, that's set up new questions in your mind which then eventually always come around to it all, when you have it all done just as I had told you now, I'm seven-eighths done. And I look at all the little points I've already accumulated, and I ask myself, what's the big picture? What does it really, in one big thing, all add up to? And wrestling with that to come to final interpretations of what your history, what your data means. That is, you know, it's always on your mind.

And because it's always on your mind, it naturally gets into your teaching. And without that, I think, your teaching, or one's teaching would be rather lifeless. It would very often simply be repetition. Same facts. You could always say what happened in 1812, but that's not really the point. You want to find out, well, whatever happened, what that means. And what it might--

And that changes, too, with the world that you live in yourself. New questions 00:24:00come from your own life, from your own times. And that's why history's always, and always has to be, rewritten.