First, you’ll never see students on my campus dressed this way. Maybe if they are on the swim or dive team, but they they wouldn’t be out on campus like this. Rarely do I ever see guys without their shirts. It’s probably the only thing I miss about campuses in the South. 

Anyway, my first class seemed to go well yesterday, and I think I have a good group of students. It’s a small class, but once I get them all more comfortable in the class, I think we’ll get some good discussions going. I have my second class tomorrow, and then I’ll be teaching various classes nearly all day every day for the next two weeks. As I said the other day, it will slow down some after September, but it’s a marathon over the next month. After that, it will be a series of sprints for the rest of the semester. At least I get a three day weekend to rest before the “marathon” begins.

Something I never thought I’d see in Alabama has happened. The Magic City Acceptance Academy opened its doors to 200-plus students on its Homewood (a suburb of Birmingham) campus. The public charter school’s mission statement pretty much says it all: “The Magic City Acceptance Academy facilitates a community in which all learners are empowered to embrace education, achieve individual success, and take ownership of their future in a safe, LGBTQ-affirming learning environment.” 

The school had faced some issues with getting a city charter. Birmingham City Schools refused to allow the school in their district. Instead, Homewood granted them the charter to build the school in their city. The school welcomed its first students on Aug. 31. And while an LGBTQ-affirming learning environment is part of its mission statement, MCAA welcomes all students in grades 6-12.

“All is good up on the hill,” said principal Michael Wilson, Ph.D. “We’re just glad our students are feeling they’re safe themselves. In a couple of days, no telling how much they are going to open up.” Wilson continues saying, “It’s not all about sexuality and gender. We have kids who have been bullied for other reasons, and they just wanted a new start, and that’s why they’re here. We’ve got some kids that their parents felt their special needs weren’t being met, and they brought them to us. We’re working with our special needs teacher and looking at their educational plans to make sure we meet all their needs.” Growing up in Alabama and later teaching there, I’ve known and seen the bullying firsthand that comes with being a kid who others consider not “normal.” It’s so wonderful to see that these kids will hopefully experience a much better atmosphere for their education.

Sadly, a school of this type in Alabama requires extra security. The administrators know that there people out there who would feel such a progressive middle school and high school had no right to exist. Wilson said they would be “diligent about protecting” their space and their building. Wilson further said, “It took a lot for us to earn the right to be here, and we’re not about to give that away to somebody with an agenda that is just opposite of ours. We have as much right to exist as they do, especially when it comes to meeting the needs of children. Of students. They deserve the right to feel safe in a learning space that values them as kids and as students, and that’s what we’re determined to provide, and with all the resources other students have.” It also doesn’t hurt that the Homewood Police Department is directly across the street.

Rarely do I hear uplifting stories out of the state where I grew up, but it’s a wonderful experience when it happens. I wish MCAA and their students the best in their endeavors. I usually don’t favor charter schools because they give public funds to private schools and many of them are not of the quality they should be, but when it comes to schools like MCAA, I am all for the charter school system. These kids would not have had the opportunity to study in an affirming environment where they can feel safe if they were attending public school in Alabama. The one drawback is that admittance to the school is based on a lottery system, and there does seem to be more demand than what the school can accommodate. Also, many kids are not out and therefore cannot ask their parents to send them to MCAA. These are probably the same kids who get bullied and are too afraid to tell their parents or teachers about it.

The picture above reminds me of a trip I took to France as part of a study abroad program with my graduate school in 2005. At the time I went, I had no idea that my world, and the world of so many in Mississippi and Louisiana, would be turned upside down by Hurricane Katrina. I also had no idea that ten years later, this trip, which involved a class about oral history and public history, would be instrumental in securing me a new job in Vermont.

We spent several weeks in the Loire Valley touring the fabulous chateaux before spending a week in Paris to further our public history class by touring the museums in the city. We toured the châteaux of Chenonceau, Amboise, Chambord, Blois, and Clos Lucé, as well as the cathedrals of Tours and Orléans. We stayed in the Pontlevoy Abbey, which was the abbey of Cardinal Richelieu. In Paris, we toured the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Musée de Cluny, Notre-Dame, Sacré-Cœur, and the Eiffel Tower, among many other sites in the city.

While in the Loire Valley, we also conducted oral histories with locals in the area. Our professor split us into two groups for the oral histories. Since I had taken classes in oral history before, I was sent with one group to supervise and help the other interviewers, while our professor went with the other group. It was a great experience as the Loire River had been the dividing line between Vichy France and Occupied France during World War II. Many spies used the châteaux, especially the beautiful Chenonceau, a château built across the River Cher, to pass messages back and forth across enemy lines.

However, while maybe you enjoyed this journey down memory lane, you’re probably wondering how the image above reminded me of this trip. One night, we went to one of the nearby towns on the Loire River to have dinner at a riverside cafe. There was a beach between the restaurant and the river.

After we had eaten and some of us had a little too much wine, including my staunchly Baptist professor, my professor decided after dinner that he wanted to swim across the river. He took off his shoes and socks and his shirt, handed them to me with the keys to the car, and told me to meet him on the other side of the river. Then, he proceeded to jump in the river and backstroke his way across. We got in the car, and I drove across the bridge to wait for him to swim across the river.

If the guy above had gray hair, he’d look a lot like my professor. He was very handsome, and the background does look like the restaurant we had eaten. My professor was fun on this trip. Though a staunch Baptist, he let himself be a bit freer in France. He was a lot of fun.

One night, we went to a place called Ben’s Blues Bar in Blois. Ben, the owner, loved the blues and all things Mississippi, so he was always very friendly to the study abroad students from my Mississippi university. Back then, I’d still drink beer, and Ben suggested I try Chambord Beer (I know most people think of the liqueur, but they make a beer as well). It came in a weizen glass with an image of the Château de Chambord etched on the side. 

My professor asked me how it tasted. I handed it to him and said, try it. He said, “Mmm, fruity.” I replied, “Just like me.” He knew I was gay and didn’t have a problem with it, but I caught him off guard, and he blushed. We all had a good laugh about it, mainly because it was so unexpected coming from me, who was always a little quiet. 

By the way, I told Ben how much I loved the glass. He went back behind the bar and brought me back a clean one and said, “Yours to keep.” I still have that glass, and I love it.

That trip was wonderful. I had so much fun. The people of the Loire Valley are such friendly people. I can’t quite say the same about everyone I met in Paris. All in all, the trip was fantastic and memorable.

Every few days, I get an email from a particular organization. The organization’s name and the emails’ subjects are not important. It’s the name of the sender that causes my heart to sink every time I see it. The woman’s first name is Andrea, and her last name is the same as the last name of my former dissertation advisor, who was partially responsible for me not receiving my Ph.D. If it were just the last names they had in common, it probably would not be an issue, but said dissertation advisor’s first name was Andrew. Each time these emails pop up in my inbox, my heart sinks as I always misread them as my former dissertation advisor’s name. Only one letter differentiates their names. It’s only for a second, and then I realize my mistake. However, it makes me realize just how traumatized I was by that former advisor. His emails always brought some fresh new hell, and eventually, I became paralyzed with fear every time I received one of his emails.

Most of you know that I pursued a Ph.D., but I never finished it. There were many reasons for that: funding and the need for me to get a job. I ended up teaching 7th-12th grade social studies and English at a small private school, and teaching six different preps a day and dealing with challenging students left me with no energy when I got home at night, not to mention the amount of work I took home each night. Once I began working full time, I no longer had the time or the energy to continue researching and writing my dissertation. 

Before my teaching job, I had taken a year to devote entirely to finishing my dissertation, moved back in with my parents (trauma in itself), and had developed a set of deadlines to complete the chapters of my dissertation. I got the plan approved by my then dissertation advisor and moved home, and began to write. I met all of my deadlines within a week of their due date, but I felt I needed my advisor’s feedback before I could move onto the next chapter. Before I was assigned this advisor, I had an advisor that I had worked with closely throughout my graduate career. I knew what he expected, and he was excited about the research I was doing. My first dissertation advisor continuously encouraged my efforts. Then, he got a job in North Carolina and left. The department decided that this other professor, with whom I had never worked with and never took a class with, would replace my old advisor. This was a disastrous decision, and in hindsight, it is one that I should have fought and objected to, but back then, I was not assertive enough to do so. I am not a very assertive person today, but I was even less so back then.

My new dissertation advisor not only wasn’t familiar with me nor I with him, but he also hated my dissertation topic. He had been on my committee before as a minor member who was just supposed to offer some advice here and there but was not supposed to have the final say. I should have known there would be a problem with him as my dissertation committee chair when he held up my dissertation prospectus’s approval for over a year. Everyone else signed off on the proposal and was encouraging, but he insisted on certain changes. I will never understand this because he was the only member of my committee who was not tenured, and the other members should have overruled him, but they did not. I submitted one revision after another, taking into account his various criticisms. What was most annoying was that the final proposal was almost identical to the first one I submitted. I have always felt he gave me the runaround because he was insecure in his position and took it out on me.

Therefore, when he became my dissertation advisor, we agreed on deadlines that he and I would meet to keep the writing of the dissertation moving. He was supposed to review the chapters as I submitted them and suggest changes. If I remember correctly, he was given several weeks to do this. He took several months, and when he did return the chapters, I went through revisions similar to what he had put me through with the proposal. I was very frustrated. I seemed never to do anything to his satisfaction, and he repeatedly criticized my work when other professors did not. He held up my dissertation for so long that time was beginning to run out on my ability to finish. Finally, I got an email from him saying that he would no longer be able to be my advisor. He blamed me for the delays and said he could no longer work with me. In reality, I found out the university had denied him tenure, which was a requirement for him to sign off on the final draft of my dissertation. By university regulations, he could not be the chair of my dissertation committee. The department’s thought process had initially been that he’d have tenure by the time I finished my dissertation, and all would be fine.

At this point, I had to move on to my third dissertation chair. My final chair is who I should have begun with in the first place. I remember attending a conference at the University of Alabama that she’d also be attending so that we could sit down face to face and discuss my dissertation. I told her the problems I had with my previous advisor. She sympathized with me and told me two things. First, she apologized on behalf of the department because of all the turnover of faculty they had experienced during my time in the Ph.D. program. I had been lost in the shuffle. Second, she said that she had faced a similar situation where her dissertation advisor had balked at her dissertation topic. She said that she had persevered and wrote it anyway, winning them over with the final product. She told me not to give up, and she’d be behind me the whole way. This all sounded great, but that’s not how it worked out.

I had spent several years dreading emails from my previous advisor, wondering what fresh hell he was going to put me through. I was traumatized, and my psyche could not handle looking at my dissertation anymore. I was mentally and physically exhausted from teaching full-time at a private school that did not support me either, but I had financial troubles that were barely being held at bay with the meager paycheck I was getting from that job. At the time, I had issues, and maybe a good therapist could have worked me through those issues, but I lacked health insurance. During these years, I was also suffering from the worst headaches of my life, but I was not in a job that allowed me to take time off for being sick for any reason. I continued to teach whether I had a common cold, whooping cough, or the flu. As a teacher early in his career, I caught every disease the children brought to school, and for the most part, the school’s administration prevented me from taking sick leave. So, having a “little” headache was not an excuse for not coming to work. They never sympathized with just how much pain I was in.

I do not blame the circumstance surrounding my failure to finish my dissertation solely on a difficult dissertation advisor or with the lack of support from my graduate program. Although those two things were a major contributing factor, the blame also falls on me. In recent years, I have come to realize that while I was a great lecturer and could keep a college class enthralled to the point that they wouldn’t even realize that we had gone past time for class to be dismissed, I was not cut out for to be a middle and high school teacher. If I had received my Ph.D., I would probably be teaching at a community college or maybe even a university somewhere, and I would not likely be happy about it. I hated grading. I hated dealing with difficult students and cheaters. I hated the politics of academia. I would probably be miserable in a job teaching the same subjects semester after semester and if at a university continually trying to get published because of most universities’ publish or perish mentality. And if I had gotten my Ph.D., I would have never moved into the museum field and focused on public history. I still get to lecture and give presentations in my current jobs, but I no longer have to grade. I get to write and do research that I find exciting and rewarding. I get to do all the things I loved about teaching without having to do all the things I hated.

And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I

“What is past is prologue” is a phrase from The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I inscribed on Future (1935, Robert Aitken) located on the northeast corner of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. In The Tempest, Antonio uses this phrase to suggest that all that has happened before that time, the “past,” has led Sebastian and himself to this opportunity to do what they are about to do: commit murder. In the context of the preceding and next lines, “And by that destiny to perform an act, whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come, In yours and my discharge,” Antonio is, in essence, rationalizing to Sebastian and the audience that he and Sebastian are fated to act by all that has led up to that moment, the past has set the stage for their next act, as a prologue does in a play. When people quote the phrase “what’s past is prologue,” such as when it was inscribed on Future, the phrase means that everything up until now has merely set the stage for us to make our own destinies.

The second episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is titled “Past Prologue.” In this episode, there is a moral dilemma for Major Kira where she has to confront her loyalty to her past life and what her new life is going to be. Kira had been a Bajoran terrorist/freedom fighter who had done many things in her past that were morally questionable, but she believed they were for the greater good to force the Cardassians to end their brutal occupation of Bajor. When a terrorist and former ally of Kira attempts to rid Bajor of the Federation for good, he tests Kira’s loyalties to the Federation, which is her new life. It is here that Kira must make a choice: will she let her past rule her future, or will she use what she has learned from her past to create a better future? 

Whether personal or the greater history of humanity, our history can teach us how the complexities and continuities of the past teach us that progress is possible but not inevitable. The lessons of history teach us the lives of individuals, the choices they made, the values they embodied, the risks they took, the challenges they sometimes overcame. This is known as historical empathy, which many historians believe is the ultimate goal of the study and teaching of history, even more so than historical objectivity. When I was in graduate school, my professors always stressed objectivity as the history profession’s highest goal, but this has begun to change in recent years. While objectivity is a noble goal, some historians believe it is impossible to achieve, and instead believe that historical empathy is more important. I think the two work hand in hand and are equally important.

As we study history, we encounter a vast array of people who thought, spoke, and acted in ways that are foreign to us. The world and culture to which we are accustomed are unique. Simply judging another’s thoughts, words, and actions based upon our cultural norms shows a lack of empathy for their way of life. It often indicates a lack of objectivity if we go into research trying to prove a particular perspective. Developing historical empathy is perhaps the most difficult but one of the most important skills we learn as a student of history. To empathize with the past of the people, we must first work out what motivated historical figures. 

The study of history requires us to articulate the reasons people, groups, or cultures acted the way they did. What did they want? What did they hate? What did they think was important? What did they want changed? History teaches that individuals make things happen and that achieving important victories requires wisdom, good judgment, courage, and persistence. History teaches that when faced with evil, good people must stand up for the good; otherwise, we will be in trouble. However, we must also understand what motivated those who stood up for good and those who stood up for evil. Understanding those motivations can help us understand our present and how we can make changes for the good of all humanity.

Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, plans to terminate up to 113 faculty positions, including as many as 49 positions in the College of Liberal Arts. While many colleges and universities are streamlining liberal arts education and focusing on more “marketable skills” or “practical” disciplines such as the sciences and professional training, Wright State seems to be moving in this direction more than other colleges. Sadly, the liberal arts are suffering from the consequences of a culture war, where the humanities and the social sciences are seen as ideologically driven. As we have seen during the pandemic and the climate change crisis, science is also being derided by conservatives as ideologically motivated instead of driven by facts and research. Conservatives abhor educated individuals because they are less likely to be swayed by the Right’s faulty logic. They can more easily prey on the fears of the uneducated by telling them that their rights are being infringed upon by granting more freedoms and rights to minorities. For instance, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) recently accused Democrats of trying to rig the voting system, including attempting “to use taxpayer dollars to establish aggressive voter recruitment programs at leftist training camps — otherwise known as colleges and universities.”

No matter a student’s major, the study of history helps develop a deep respect for different societies and cultures. This recognition teaches students to respect regional and national differences to make them more socially aware and sensitive to other cultures. Significant accomplishments and change are never achieved without setbacks and the wisdom to make course corrections in one’s original strategy. History teaches that if great institutions are to survive and grow, they must balance preserving the core values that enabled past success while evolving and adapting to changing circumstances. The study of history prepares students to understand and meet the challenges of a complex and evolving world. History majors learn that the future is uncertain and unpredictable, including their future professional and life trajectory. History majors make important professional contributions in diverse fields, showing how the transformative power of a liberal arts education creates a better world. History majors can be found working at the FBI in counterintelligence and counterterrorism, helping to preserve the nation’s freedom; in law firms around the country, upholding the rule of law; at the Library of Congress, the research arm of Congress; as public historians, helping to preserve the nation’s history; and perhaps most importantly, in schools and museums, helping to educate our children and secure the nation’s future. These professions outside of historians’ perceived role merely scratch the surface of what history majors contribute to our nation and the world.