Help a Historic Cause
I don’t talk much about history here, but my father was a history professor and I grew up with history being a big part of family life and how we viewed the world. My dad knew a lot of history. It was one of his major lenses through which to view the world.
Growing up I didn’t like that view. Everything seemed to warrant lectures, from art museums to tourist places we visited. He didn’t understand science, sports, competition, or entrepreneurship, so we didn’t understand each other on many things.
But my recent book, Sustainability Simplified, in tracing the development of dominance hierarchies from the dawn of the Holocene until today into a global culture that we feel unable to escape or see alternatives to, overlaps with a lot of history. I also look at historical cultural changes, primarily abolitionism, which means history.
Visiting family over Thanksgiving, I looked at the history textbook he wrote, The World’s History, and found it covered things I’m interested anew for their relevance to my mission. It also gave a relevant view: global change from before the dawn of civilization until today. I remembered his views, which didn’t center the US or great individuals.
I wondered how much of this breadth and egalitarian view filtered to me. It seems to me that a lot of the exhorting of culture beyond focusing too much on the US or people with authority is old hat. I wonder how much my dad was ahead of his time. If so, he was by when I was born. He and my mom chose to live in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, a neighborhood still renowned for rejecting redlining and other divisive race and class policies.
I gave. I hope you will too.
Since he died last year, several colleagues and students created projects to honor and continue his legacy. I contributed to one creating a prize for history students in his honor. If you’re a history buff or like my work and value the historical view I bring, I recommend donating to this cause honoring him by providing a scholarship to students in his name. Click the button in the image below to learn more from a former student of his on the prize given to students in his name. You’ll be glad you did. You may make the history students you help even more glad.
His bio on his book
Howard Spodek received his B.A. degree from Columbia University (1963), majoring in history and specializing in Columbia’s newly designed program in Asian Studies. He received his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1972) from the University of Chicago, majoring in history and specializing in India. His first trip to India was on a Fulbright Fellowship, 1964–66, and he has spent a total of some twelve years studying and teaching in India. He has also traveled widely throughout the United States, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. He has been a faculty member at Temple University since 1972, appointed Full Professor in 1984. He was awarded Temple’s Great Teacher designation in 1993.
Spodek’s work in world history began in 1988 when he became Academic Director of a comprehensive, innovative program working with teachers in the School District of Philadelphia to improve their knowledge base in world history and facilitate a rewriting of the world-history program in the schools. Immediately following this program, he became principal investigator of a program that brought college professors and high-school teachers together to reconsider, revise, and, in many cases, initiate the teaching of world history in several of the colleges and universities in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Those projects led directly to the writing of the first edition of the current text (1997).
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