Episode 156: Dr. Kevin Gannon

This week my friend Kevin Gannon drops in to talk about his career in history education, how education has changed, what to do about A.I., and the role of social media as a scholar. This is a cool conversation with one of the coolest dudes I know.

About our guest: 

Dr. Kevin Gannon is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence (CAFE) and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte.

From 2014-22, he served as Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he also taught from 2004-2022. In addition to directing GV’s faculty development operations, he was also a department chair (2011-2014) and co-directed the New Student Seminar program (2005-2011).

His teaching, research, and public work (including writing) centers on critical and inclusive pedagogy; race, history, and justice; and technology and teaching. He writes at least semi-regularly for The Chronicle of Higher Education), and his essays on higher education have also been published in Vox and other media outlets. His book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto, was published by West Virginia University press in Spring, 2020, as part of their Teaching and Learning in Higher Education series, edited by James M. Lang. He is currently writing a textbook for the US Civil War and Reconstruction eras that’s grounded in settler-colonial theory for Routledge. In 2016, he appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th, which was directed by Ava DuVernay. He is a speaker and consultant about a range of topics on campuses across North America; in this work, he endeavors to bring passion, humor, and interactivity to my audiences. He is also delighted to work with smaller groups of students, individual classes, or selected groups of faculty and staff on these campus visits. You can find him on Twitter: @TheTattooedProf.

Kevin's scholarly work centers on Race and Racisms, Critical and Inclusive Pedagogy, nineteenth-century history (particularly the United States and the Americas), and historiography and theory. His teaching ranges widely: Civil War and Reconstruction; Colonial America and the Atlantic World; Latin American history; Research Methods and Historiography; and the History of Capitalism are in my regular rotation, along with survey-level offerings in Ancient and Medieval World History. He teaches regularly in both in-person and online learning spaces, and he also has extensive experience working with first-year and at-risk students.

As an educational developer, Kevin works closely with his colleagues in the faculty, staff, and administration to promote excellence and innovation in teaching, and to support faculty work across the areas of teaching, scholarship, and university service. He is a fierce advocate for professional development in all its manifestations, active learning, scholarly teaching, good technology, social justice, movable furniture, and humor in any environment.

Transcript

Jason Herbert (00:00.694)
I do have to tell you. so I was just thinking about this. we'll just start, we're gonna start like this. I was getting ready for the pod, you know, so forth. I went upstairs, took a shower, so forth, put on my clothes. I'm like, Kevin doesn't get two shirts. Kevin gets an undershirt today. That's a, you know, that's what you're, that's what you're getting, right now. Doesn't it though a little bit? dude, I, yeah, you want to tell the audience about the ball cap, what you're rocking there? Cause people can't see.

Kevin (00:14.753)
Never.

Kevin (00:19.18)
Feels appropriate, feels appropriate. Yep. You get the ball cap, so you know.

Kevin (00:29.152)
Yeah, so the ball cap is the Daytona Tortugas, who are the single A, low A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. And they play at Jackie Robinson Ballpark in Daytona, which is the oldest continuously operating minor league stadium in the entire minor leagues and in the entire country. And it is a gorgeous place to see a game. Highly recommend.

Jason Herbert (00:33.527)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (00:55.158)
Isn't it though? I like Daytona. Daytona is cool. You know.

Kevin (00:57.186)
I, you the sun was setting behind the outfield wall as the game hit about the fourth inning or so. And I just remember looking around and just thinking, this is it. Like it was one of those moments where I'm like, this right here is perfect.

Jason Herbert (01:13.25)
Well, I think, you know, baseball has that, has it going for more than any other sport is the romanticism of the game, you know, and I can go to like any game. When I was living in South Florida, I used to love going to spring training games, you know, and you know, you'd go and I was, I don't want to buy my tickets online. I want to walk up and physically buy the ticket at the box office. I want to do the things Kevin, you know, and it's just, there's a, there's, there's like this majesty to it. There's this feel this romantic.

Kevin (01:36.342)
Right?

Jason Herbert (01:42.284)
thing to it that I think baseball has that no other sport could even approach.

Kevin (01:46.944)
And there's a lot of sort of, you know, I guess sort of, I don't want to say overly sentimental, like the George Will kind of stuff, right? And it's like, come on, you know, but what I really like, there's a few things. One, minor leagues for someone who teaches, like seeing the minor league games and, you know, young prospects still learning, right? And observing how that's working and how coaches and managers are working. Like I, I enjoy that greatly. And it's always cool to like,

Jason Herbert (01:55.726)
Sure. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (02:14.86)
Yeah.

Kevin (02:16.693)
see a major league game and be like, I saw that guy when he was 19 going 0 for 4 in Kannapolis, North Carolina. But I also, what I think is relevant to today even, you we talk about the sort of pastoral origins of baseball, but really in its earliest days, baseball was very much an urban and an immigrant game. And I like, that feels important to me in this moment in ways that it didn't maybe resonate before.

Jason Herbert (02:32.194)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (02:46.241)
because it remains an urban immigrant game and in a lot of really important ways. And then finally, I'm not the only one to say this, but there's no clock. I mean, there's a pitcher's clock, but that's, mean, the game ends when the game ends, right? And everything else in my life is governed by the clock. And this is the place when I walk into a ballpark, clock doesn't matter. And that again, you know, where I'm at in my life right now and in this moment, that...

Jason Herbert (03:00.695)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (03:15.167)
more than anything else just feels awesome.

Jason Herbert (03:19.117)
Do you have a favorite professional team?

Kevin (03:21.823)
Yeah, I'm a big Cleveland Guardians fan. I'm a huge Cleveland and have been for decades. And I have never lived in Cleveland. I am not from Ohio, but that is my team. When I was a young kid, I was living in Hawaii when I first started following sports, because my dad was in the Air Force. And me and all my buddies like chose different pro teams to imitate when we were playing tee ball and football and stuff.

Jason Herbert (03:46.954)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (03:47.779)
And everyone, you know, it's the late seventies, right? So no one chose Cleveland because they stunk on ice. But I didn't know that, right? And so everyone else is choosing like Phillies and Pirates and Yankees or whatever. I'm like, Cleveland's my team. then, you know, about five months later, I'm figuring out why no one chose Cleveland, but I was invested in it and it's paid off. It finally has paid off. So, yeah.

Jason Herbert (04:00.865)
Hahaha.

Jason Herbert (04:05.101)
man.

Jason Herbert (04:11.539)
I, you know, people give me static cause I'm actually a Yankees fan and I'm, yeah, absolutely. But remember I, I chose the Yankees cause that was my tee ball team in bro bridge Louisiana when I'm five years old. Like that was, that was the, you know, we, we defeated. Yeah. The hated Astros in the bro bridge championship that year. Right. I scored the winning run. I mean, that was as close to like, that was as close to like being Michael J Fox and hitting.

Kevin (04:15.087)
Kevin (04:23.874)
Okay, that's fair. I'll allow it. I'll allow it.

Kevin (04:32.652)
Yeah. Hell yeah.

Jason Herbert (04:37.835)
the game winning free throw at the end of Teen Wolf and realizing the booth was really the love of your life. You know, that was, that was my moment. So if people like don't remember the Yankees were bad in the eighties, Don Mattingly never won a world series. You know, so I'm like, stop it already. We're like, you look, was like, yes, actually I'm a winner. mean, I'm wearing, I'm winning my, wearing my, drinking my university of Kentucky, tea mug here. I didn't go to UK either, but that's a whole other story.

Kevin (04:50.582)
Yeah they were. Nope. Nope.

Jason Herbert (05:07.475)
Kevin (05:07.616)
I heard someone say once that rooting for the Yankees today is like rooting for the house in Blackjack. And I thought that was actually a really funny way to put it.

Jason Herbert (05:16.087)
You know what, somebody's gotta pay the bills, That's, you know what, someone's gotta pay for the lazy river outside. So there you go. I wanna ask you, you mentioned like where you're at in your life. Let's start, let's go back a little bit. Where are you like quite literally physically in your life right now? Let's start with that. And what do you do for our listeners who don't know the majesty of Dr. Kevin Gannon?

Kevin (05:22.946)
That's a completely fair point.

Kevin (05:36.32)
OK.

Kevin (05:42.646)
So I am the director of what we call the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence or CAFE, which is basically Director of Faculty Development at Queens University, a small liberal arts university here in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I've been for about three years. Before that, I ran a teaching and learning center. I was on the faculty at a small liberal arts college in Des Moines, Iowa. So that's kind of my lane. And what I do at Queens, I support teaching and learning.

Jason Herbert (05:53.559)
Mm.

Kevin (06:12.481)
So I work with individual faculty all the way out to the whole faculty groups we do. mean, a lot of people in the higher ed space might be familiar with like teaching workshops and things like that. most of my work is one-on-one individual work with faculty or working with colleagues and administration and on faculty to help kind of move the needle on improved learning and more meaningful teaching and learning institution wide. I also support faculty scholarly work.

I do new faculty onboarding and mentorship. I run a mentorship program for new faculty. I help orient our adjunct colleagues. And one of the things I really like about my gig at Queens is I do leadership development as well. So I work with new or experienced academic leaders all the way up through the department chair, associate dean, director level.

And then I also work with faculty and other colleagues who see, you know, this might be a path for them in the future. And they're looking at kind of dipping their toe in the water. So basically whole career development and support. So it lets me, you know, put the experiences I've had as a 20-year plus faculty member, former department chair, former program director, all of that goes to work for my colleagues now. So I can be of service in that way. And it's a way for me to.

do kind of change work in higher ed at a scale that's a little bit beyond kind of my own individual courses and teaching. And so it appeals to me for that way too.

Jason Herbert (07:46.914)
Yeah, I want to come all the way back to I've kind of got this big circular Christopher Nolan, memento kind of envisioning of this conversation, Kevin, knowing what you do ahead of time, because, your degrees are in history, you have a PhD in American history, but you're not really teaching American history anymore. Is that correct?

Kevin (08:00.673)
Yep.

Kevin (08:06.717)
Only by invitation. So I am technically in this position. I am academic staff. I gave up tenure to take this position. I was a full professor at my previous university, taught 50 % course load and directed the teaching center as my other 50%. So Queens defines this role as an academic staff administrative position out of the provost office, out of academic affairs. So teaching is actually not part of the formal.

Jason Herbert (08:08.214)
Okay.

Kevin (08:36.267)
job duties, but I teach every fall. And the only reason it's not part of my formal duties is my provost wants me to be able to pick and choose the spots and the places where I have the time and the bandwidth and the capacity to do it well. And I have a faculty rank, which is largely ceremonial. But, you know, my colleagues in the history department and I are talking about ways that I might be able to support their curriculum and offer courses.

in places where they may need a gap plugged or where, you know, my teaching experience and expertise can complement the things that the department is doing as well. So I do anticipate getting back. I teach in a new student seminar program that we have right now, but I anticipate getting back in the history class sooner rather than

Jason Herbert (09:27.565)
Are you, are you teaching, now the faculty you're working with now over there, it's not just history, correct? Are you working with faculty across? So this has to be kind of a real amazing learning experience for you too. Cause like, I would imagine the needs, demands placed upon say maybe a chemistry professor or a English teacher or you name it, I don't even begin to know. Hopefully there's tons and tons of courses that you're engaging with are different though.

Kevin (09:33.089)
Yeah, it's everybody. Yep.

Jason Herbert (09:54.818)
then say the things that you came up with, the observations you've made as a history professor and stuff like that as well, is that correct?

Kevin (10:03.881)
yeah. What's exciting about it though is this is a job that lets me see how teaching and learning is happening across that entire spectrum you allude to, right? So I get to talk with biologists about how are you doing field conservation classes? How can I support that? My colleagues in finance, my colleagues in kinesiology, all across the spectrum. And I get to see what they're doing.

I get to see the thoughtfulness, the care, the dedication to the craft and to their students in just this whole array of contexts, which is a gift, right? Like I would never have been able to experience that if I'd stayed on kind of the typical faculty career track I was on. But it's also obviously, I'm not a chemist, right? I don't teach finance. And so there has been a learning curve. There's part of it that

Good teaching is good teaching, right? There are things that will help underlay an effective, meaningful teaching practice no matter what discipline or context. know, empathy, compassion, building relationships with students, you know, not being afraid to give up a little bit of control, right? Like there are traits that are in common to all of that. But yeah, I've had to learn a lot about some of the specific teaching needs for STEM courses, for example.

Jason Herbert (11:02.381)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (11:28.321)
I've had to learn ways in which, you know, lab instructors work with students, which is a much different sort of rhythm and set of constraints than regular classroom faculty. And so it keeps me learning, which is always fun, but it really gives me an appreciation for just the whole broad array of work that happens at a university and a real, I think, understanding and solidarity with my colleagues who are doing that.

Jason Herbert (11:59.028)
the vast majority of people who will be listening to this pod are probably going to be coming to this from a history angle or knowing from the conversations we've had, things like that online. And maybe that's the, maybe the best way to kind of just kind of focus in a little bit on the teaching aspects of this conversation I want to have with you, which is, know, Kevin, throughout your time now, you've seen, you've seen courses evolve. Obviously we talk about history as a continually evolving thing. the ways we look at the history and so forth. But I'm wondering right now, when you're talking to faculty,

whether they're new faculty, established faculty, so forth. What are the challenges that educators are having regarding history in 2025?

Kevin (12:40.853)
You got a week? Right? Like this, I mean, obviously the moment we're in is not a great moment for anyone with human compassion, but certainly in higher ed, right? Like, you know, it is really, really hard to do this work for all of the reasons. But I think where we're at now, you know, we've come out of pandemic pedagogy for a couple of years by this point.

Jason Herbert (12:42.689)
I was gonna say, you've got six hours, my friend.

Kevin (13:10.121)
And what we're seeing, and this is certainly true in history courses, but I think across the board as well, there's a lot of difficulty with connection, with engagement, right? Like, you we know discussion, for example, is an excellent way to sort of dive into sources or historical perspective or material. But there are more more students who, for a variety of actually really compelling reasons, choose not to engage in that way.

For faculty who've been doing this for a little bit, and I include myself, one of the biggest struggles is the stuff that used to work isn't working, or at least not nearly to the same degree. And so how do we connect slash reconnect with students? How do we find ways to engage students and meet them where they are now, as opposed to where they might've been 10 years ago or when we started our career? And then of course, generative AI, right? Worried about...

the process of learning can now be outsourced. And so, you know, if it's not one thing, it's another, right? But I would say the two biggest, and they're not unrelated, right? Because connection and engagement, you know, if you're fostering those things effectively in a learning space, the willingness or eagerness to maybe use Gen.ai to complete work, you know, that's not going to be the same, right? And so,

You know, this is somewhat of a rambling answer, for which I apologize. But I would say engagement, connection, motivation, and generative AI, those are the knots that instructors are trying to untie right now. And they're tied more tightly and in much more complex ways than I think any of us are used to. So the challenge is one of both, you know, meeting and addressing these problems, but also the scale and scope with which these problems are presenting themselves.

Jason Herbert (15:06.775)
That's a multi-headed answer. I want to, I'm thinking, I'm thinking about the, no, no, I'm thinking about the many. I'm thinking about the, I'm thinking about the many headed Hydra here. And I'm thinking about like, let's start with the basic idea. Kevin, I'd love to get your thoughts on like online courses. In history, do they work? Like universities are under a lot of pressure because they, those

Kevin (15:11.645)
Occupational hazard, man, you talk to historians. Causation is complex.

Jason Herbert (15:34.231)
those things fill up, but do you find that they're effective teaching mechanisms?

Kevin (15:40.0)
Yes and no. And I have taught many online history courses. My prior university, half of my teaching load was online, fully remote asynchronous courses. And to add to the fun, they were eight week courses. So ancient world, the survey of the ancient world in eight weeks, that was awesome. Yeah, something like that. so my approach or my perspective on this has evolved to change somewhat.

Jason Herbert (15:43.831)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (15:54.269)
my gosh.

Good luck.

Have fun.

Kevin (16:09.034)
Yes, it is possible, and I have seen it done, to do history courses online and asynchronously in ways that are engaging, in ways that build community, in ways that foster presence for both students and instructors, and have been extraordinarily meaningful experiences for all involved. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of time to do that well.

It is much harder to teach a course online and to cultivate those things than it is in an on-site classroom. And that's just the nature of the beast, right? That's the way the constraints of the class are created. So it is possible to do these things, but the ways in which almost every college and university does online learning, it's not possible because instructors have bigger and bigger class sizes online.

They're, you know, they're being asked to, you know, not only fit more students in, but maybe do compressed time scales, accelerated calendar, you know, all of these things that come into fully online programs. And, you know, there's no time, there's no bandwidth to do that work of building presence and relationships. Because those things are much harder to cultivate and maintain in an online environment than they are an on-site in-person environment. So in theory possible, but in practice rarely.

And that's a problem.

Jason Herbert (17:33.858)
Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like it's, it's almost because he, because you don't, I really struggled with it when I, when I was teaching, especially because I was teaching in high school in 2020, when everything went, when the whole world fell apart, we went immediately to everything was online. was just as an instructor, it was so hard to maintain engagements, especially for me as a lecturer, Kevin, I drew so much energy from

students, you know, just being there, atmosphere, could get, if I can get them going, there was like the smoke. If I could just start the fire once that, once that took over, I could really get going and really kind of push back with them. But what, what's the answer here to AI? You know, I have, I have friends of mine who say, Hey, let's just go old school, blue books all the way back around. We'll eliminate this. I have other folks saying, Hey, we need to lean into AI and figure out this is going be a part of life. We need to roll with AI and so forth.

Kevin (18:00.949)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (18:28.897)
Like have you found an effective strategy like to deal with this enigma?

Kevin (18:34.783)
No. But what I will say is, I have done and continue to do a lot of thinking and reading and researching and practice and working with instructors around generative AI. Personally, I'm pretty AI critical, very AI critical. And so there's part of me that resents all of the time and attention that I have to pay to this. And I think...

Jason Herbert (18:35.917)
Next question.

Kevin (19:03.089)
Some of that resentment comes from the fact that everything has a history, as the AHA says, right? And this sort of ed tech hype cycle has a history. mean, 2014 was the year of the MOOC. And we were told that by the time MOOCs went out to scale the massive open online classes, Sebastian Thrun, the founder of Udacity, one of the platforms for MOOCs said there's...

Jason Herbert (19:26.669)
Mm-mm.

Kevin (19:29.313)
30 years or whatever, there's only gonna be a handful of big universities in the country offering MOOCs and everyone's taking it, all the other colleges and universities will be out of business, which is of course fucking insane, right? But that was the sort of cycle. And I remember, you I was in a small liberal arts college and our president was like, we need to figure out how we're gonna get on board with MOOCs, at least in our own sort of context. And I'm sitting there like.

Are you, what is this? Are you high? We're a small liberal arts college that talks about the personal experience and you want to put resources into a MOOC, right? And so what happens in these sort of hype cycles, these bubbles, and we're very much at that point here, is there's what I call the sort of myth of autonomous inevitability, right? And so we hear a lot about Gen AI, like it's the future.

Your students are gonna have to know how to use it. This is the future of the workplace. Everybody's doing it, right? Like it's inevitable. Is it though? Like how did it become inevitable? Did it just magically happen? No, this is a product of choices and it is not, nothing is inevitable, you know, in theory, but in practice, like this is not, at least Gen. AI as it currently exists is not inevitable.

what we're starting to see, right? More more studies coming out now from places like MIT or Microsoft's own software engineers that are saying, you know what, there's some cognitive offloading problems here that we got to figure out, right? There's a very recent study that just came out that I'm about halfway through reading that is basically examining the way that large language models are built and saying, you're never gonna fully get rid of hallucinations.

the incorrect information that's been there because that's baked into the cake of how these things are constructed and trained, right? And so what generative AI will look like in the near future is gonna be different than what it looks like and how we're talking about it now. Part of it, and this is the cynical side of me, but look who's hyping at the most, the people who are really wanting to make money out of selling licenses to their products to higher education, right? But if you look at the conversation that's happening elsewhere,

Kevin (21:43.17)
it's a little bit different. And in higher ed, it's also, it varies widely by field, right? And so in a business analytics program, you know, that is going to be wound through the curriculum in ways that in a humanities class it wouldn't, right? And I think what we're starting to see are colleges and universities, at least the ones that are handling this challenge successfully, having interdisciplinary faculty conversations about what does this look like as a larger.

curricular thing. So you may be approaching the use of Gen AI one way in a history course. Over here in finance, it may be another. If the student is tracking through several years at this university, what is their experience going to look like? What proficiencies, what habits, what critical faculties are they going to develop? Not just course by course, but programmatically. And so I think where we're at now is the very beginning phases of that. What does this look like in?

a holistic college education, but how do we create the opportunities for students not just to learn how to use AI like all the talk about, you should have prompt engineering programs. No, that's bullshit. That's stupid, right? But you should have programs that are doubling down on critical digital literacy. And that's not just your STEM classes, that's everywhere, right?

You should have programs that prepare students to not just use tools, but to be discerning critical users of those tools. Why am I using this? Why does the tool look the way that it does? Why do I interface? What is the user interface is like this for a reason? Why is that? What are the affordances? What are the limitations? What does this do? What does it not do? And how do I as the user who should be driving this process?

make choices about whether or not to use the tool, but if I do use it, how and for what ends, right? Like those are the types of questions that need to be in a student's toolbox. And the universities, the colleges and universities that are at least most successful in sort of wrapping their collective head around generative AI are the ones that are thinking in that.

Jason Herbert (23:59.95)
I want to ask you about something that's of closely related to this, which is just technology in the classroom. And Kevin, I think you and I have had these conversations with our friends, our colleagues throughout the country. I have friends of mine who are faculty members at other universities, and they're terrified. Terrified when they are teaching history about talking about the messy, hard histories that are necessary to explain how we arrived here in 2025, worried about what we see down in Texas with...

students reporting on them and things like that and bad actors all the way around saying, I don't like what's being taught by professors so and so. What's the solution here? Should we ban technology in classrooms? what, what is this? this a, is this a concern of the people that you work with there as well? Like what are your thoughts here?

Kevin (24:47.452)
So as part of what I do, I visit a lot of other colleges and universities to work with their faculty and do professional development work. And this is a question that, as you might imagine, is coming up everywhere and much more frequently than it used to for me. I would say the last year and a half in particular, how should I talk about a class recording policy with my students?

or I teach online and I have video modules of the lectures that I give that are available on the LMS. And I mean, there's no easy answer. We're in the new McCarthyism, right? Like there will never be any, but the thing that colleges and universities need to realize is there will never be anything that will totally satisfy these people because they're out for blood.

They want the gotcha. They want the content. They want the spectacle of, you know, busting the commie professor talking about critical race theory, right? They don't know what those things are. They're not into the nuance of the argument. What they are is they're after content for the culture war. And so there's a couple, you know, within that reality, there's a couple of things that higher ed needs to think about. One, on the institutional, certainly academic affairs level,

If your provost and academic administrators don't have a plan for what happens when somebody gets targeted for online harassment or goes viral on one of these right-wing news sites like Turning Point or whatever, or ends up on the professor watch list, for example, if you don't have a plan how you're going to support that faculty member, you're failing at your job. Like there is no excuse for not having had that set of conversations and figuring out what you're going to do because it's when and not it.

But on an individual classroom level, this is where we get back to the importance of things like relationships. You need to have the conversation with students in a transparent way. If you don't want students recording your class, you have to tell them that. It's not enough just to put, don't record the class in your syllabus. Here's why I'm saying this. What happens in this room, certainly when we're engaged in discussion, people are making themselves vulnerable. People are sharing things.

Kevin (27:04.224)
No one else has the right to put that in public without that person's consent. And so that's the reason for these expectations that our work together here will be guided by. And if you're in a large lecture class, you still have to have that conversation, right? And it's a conversation. I mean, obviously as an instructor, there's the, I don't wanna end up on...

Jason Herbert (27:31.753)
Whatever. Yeah.

Kevin (27:32.834)
Charlie, you know, what would have been Charlie Kirk's Instagram story or something like that, right? Like, but there's also your classmates don't necessarily want that either, right? You cannot steal your classmates privacy. You cannot steal, you cannot impact your classmates learning or their experiences and engagement in this class. And so if you're recording in this class and other people know that recording has happened, they're not going to engage and participate in ways that

they normally would. And so you are literally stealing the opportunity for them to learn meaningfully. And I think I have found that framing this issue as a mutual accountability, mutual respect, providing support to one another, leveraging that sense of peer accountability, I have found that the conversation in those spaces is much more effective with students.

Jason Herbert (28:24.695)
Man, I just love that because I know that when I was teaching a thing, I would always say to my students, like, look, you come to this classroom to make mistakes. This is your laboratory. This is where you can come here. You can engage in conversation. You can try out ideas, right? You can like ask these questions that don't make any sense. And that's why you were here. If you knew the things already, you wouldn't be in the class. You know, we make mistakes here so we can nail it on test day. You know, I mean.

Kevin (28:45.682)
Exactly. Yeah, that's...

Yeah, learning is messy, right? And I tell my students, like, there are going to be things that you're going to be asked to do in this class. And it's no matter what class I teach, because it's true for every one of them, right? Like, you're going to be asked to do things in this class that you've never been asked to do before, or never been asked to do in this particular way before. And I don't expect that your first go at it is going to be fully successful. It will probably be messy. We all make, you know, the whole point of learning is productive failure most of the time.

Jason Herbert (28:52.343)
Yeah, it should be.

Kevin (29:19.146)
Right? you know, if you're going to, you know, failure is a powerful teacher, but only if it occurs in a context where failure isn't the end of everything and door shutting, where failure is an on ramp as opposed to the off ramp. Right? And so talking with my students about, you know, learning is messy, learning is nonlinear. We need to have the space and the grace to be able to screw up, to be able to do things unskillfully so that we could do them skillfully later. You know,

That's what this community is for. And so respecting and valuing the trust that you have with the fellow members of community is the most important part of the work that we're gonna be doing with one of

Jason Herbert (30:04.973)
backtrack just a bit and by that I mean about 50 years or so Kevin because you said earlier you're in North Carolina now you mentioned Hawaii just suddenly dropped it as in Hawaii as doing a thing right as eating poke on the beach it was fine where Kevin where are you from originally?

Kevin (30:16.64)
Yeah.

Kevin (30:21.414)
I was born in Austin, Texas, moved after about a year. I've lived in Austin, I've lived in San Antonio, I lived in Norman, Oklahoma, I lived in Tachikawa and Yokota Air Force bases in Japan. I lived at Wheeler Air Force Base in Hawaii. I've lived in Springfield, Virginia, Brandon and Valrico, Florida, Fairfax, Virginia, Harrisonburg, Virginia, Champaign, Illinois, Columbia, South Carolina, Beaumont, Texas.

Ames, Ferry, and Haverhill, Massachusetts, Des Moines, Iowa, and now Charlotte.

Jason Herbert (30:56.557)
Okay, my goodness. I have to, yeah, I think so. You know, I would hate to be your friend, actually, because I'd be having to like, move your couch across the country, you know, at this point in time. But I have to ask you. Okay, that works. Do you remember the first time you started thinking about like history? Like, and I'm not even talking about as a professor, but because I can specifically remember the sitting in the class in seventh grade.

Kevin (30:58.956)
Moving sucks. Moving sucks.

Kevin (31:07.712)
Yeah.

I got three younger brothers, so it was like a built-in moving cruise.

Jason Herbert (31:26.189)
I was like, this is cool. Like, how old were you when you started getting into the past?

Kevin (31:36.3)
So there was, when I was six, I was super into dinosaurs, which a lot of six-year-olds are, right? But what appealed to me, you know, was this was so long ago, and yet we're finding out all this stuff about them, right? And so six-year-old me was fascinated by the idea that you could learn things today about how things were millions of years ago. And I thought that was

Jason Herbert (31:45.195)
Get that great BF.

Kevin (32:05.151)
You know, like that was my obsession. Like I want to know stuff about back then. Right. And then I think from there, you know, I would we go to the, you know, I'm extraordinarily blessed that my parents, very, you know, were readers. They took us to the library on base all the time. There was never a point in my youth where I was not an active user of libraries. never been a point in my life where I haven't been an active user of libraries, but.

But that really helped me just sort of what are you interested in, right? And so I was drawn to history and biography. So part of it was the stories, right? Younger me really latched on to stories of individual experiences. But what was always important to me was what was it like to be in that time as this person? And so I'm paying attention to things like context, right? And that is I, you know.

read more and get a little older, I start thinking about like, you know, how these things relate to one another. What's causation? What's connectivity? What's context? Right. And then once I hit.

Kevin (33:16.609)
Class-wise, I had a world history teacher in 10th grade, actually, who really helped me, Mrs. Walker, Jacqueline Walker, Brandon High School, who helped me take all of these sort of various interests of reading and all of the stuff that had been swirling around for years and start to make sense of it. She helped me develop a cognitive-free work to think historically.

in ways that I was sort of doing, but I didn't know I was doing that, right? And then, so once I had that, and once she helped me connect with that, and I was like, that was when the switch hit on, right? And that was when even more doors opened, my VISTA got even wider. So, a little bit later, maybe in my schooling, but I think I had to sort of, kind of muddle through a whole bunch of things and cram a bunch of stuff in my head.

you know, try to figure things out and all of that. But then when I was ready, the teacher.

Jason Herbert (34:22.049)
Were you a history major as an undergrad or did you go into college thinking, okay, I definitely want to do history. Like, and where did you do, where'd you do undergrad anyway?

Kevin (34:29.686)
I went to James Madison University in Virginia. I did my last two years of high school in Fairfax, Virginia. And yeah, I went as a history major. I was originally going to be a history and theater double major, but then I changed. I thought I wanted to teach high school. So at JMU at that time, you majored in a content area that you wanted to teach and that you minored in education.

So I was a secondary ed minor for a couple of years and then I went and did my first observation at the local high school and was like, shit, I don't know if I can teach like younger, know, slightly younger versions of me basically, because I was kind of a punk and a delinquent. So, so I, you know, started thinking about grad school and higher ed after that point. But yeah, I came in as a history major. The history department at James Madison was top notch. I had the,

Jason Herbert (35:04.214)
Hahaha.

Kevin (35:24.256)
the great fortune to be mentored by just amazing human beings. And I was not a great undergraduate student for the first three plus years at JMU. And their patience and understanding, you know, were the biggest things that helped me go on to take the next steps that I did. So yeah, just, you know, going in as a history major and then.

the professors that I had my first two semesters of my history coursework, that just cemented. I was like, yep, this is my home.

Jason Herbert (35:56.75)
You did your PhD at South Carolina, right? Why South Carolina? What was drawing you to that school?

Kevin (35:59.766)
Yep.

Kevin (36:05.489)
So I actually did my master's in Illinois in Urbana, Champaign. And my plan was to do the PhD there too. When I was there, several of the faculty, do 18th and 19th century US slash Americas. And the early Americanist faculty members were gonna retire in the very near future. And it didn't look like my PhD mentor or my master's mentor would

Jason Herbert (36:09.26)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (36:35.239)
still be active when I was moving through the PhD. So one of those faculty members sort of suggested like, hey, you're doing great, no offense, if you want to stay here, great, but you should know, like it will be hard to find a committee, right? Like it'll be hard to connect with an advisor in these areas if you stay here. So I said, okay. And for a variety of reasons, I was kind of...

I think because I was so used to moving, I was kind of getting the itch to go somewhere else anyway. So I applied to a few other schools. South Carolina was the one that I applied to four places. I applied to Maryland, UVA, Chapel Hill, and South Carolina. I went one for four. So the decision was sort of, but in all seriousness though, South Carolina let me know first. And I connected with Lacey Ford, who would be my advisor when I got there.

Jason Herbert (37:23.031)
Yeah.

Kevin (37:34.133)
He offered me funding in the form of a teaching assistantship, talked about the community of students that was working under him, and I was sold. So I went and yeah, for me, it was the right place.

Jason Herbert (37:49.089)
I too, my friend was turned down by Virginia in North Carolina. And Minnesota was the first place to say, and I remember getting that first acceptance and I was like, right, sweet, who's next? And then the rejections, I applied to seven, got into three, waitlisted on one. And isn't it amazing how we can still recall who said no and why?

Kevin (38:06.454)
You

Kevin (38:10.742)
yeah, yeah. When I did my first round of grad applications, I got into Illinois, which was a shock. That was my reach school. I didn't think I would get into there at all. And I applied to seven others besides that. And I got into a couple, actually, no, maybe three or four, but I was so starstruck by Illinois, like, holy shit, I got into Illinois. Like that became the place right away. I will say along those lines, so for undergraduate, for my masters,

Jason Herbert (38:18.894)
Uh-huh.

Jason Herbert (38:34.359)
Yeah, I-

Kevin (38:40.322)
for PhD, because I lied, there were actually five schools I applied to for PhD. I'm thinking about this story now. I applied to William & Mary to go undergrad, my first round for master's, my second round for PhD, and to complete the whole sweep, I applied there for a take-your-track job when I was finishing grad school and I got denied by them too. So I actually was invited there to give a keynote talk this past year and I opened up saying,

Jason Herbert (38:50.626)
Also rejected from there.

Kevin (39:08.83)
I am finally here by your invitation after many efforts that were not successful.

Jason Herbert (39:10.92)
Hahaha!

Jason Herbert (39:17.996)
I know it's like I have a long standing joke with my friend Brett Rushforth, who is at William & Mary for the long time. And I applied over there and he wrote the rejection letter and I tease him about this relentlessly. You know, it was like, yeah, he's like our bad. Sorry. I'm like, yeah. People at Minnesota wish you would have said okay as well. But that's fine. Can we talk a little bit about your graduate school school experience? Like what was that like?

Kevin (39:29.218)
As you should.

Kevin (39:40.098)
Hahahaha!

Jason Herbert (39:48.002)
for you, Kevin, how old were you when you got to graduate school? How long did it take you to get through? did you have, did you enjoy, was it an enjoyable experience for you?

Kevin (39:57.731)
Yes, it was. It was enjoyable. I went straight out of undergrad. I took an extra semester in undergrad because it took that long to get my cumulative GPA over a 3.0 so I could apply. And then I took one grad seminar and just worked a third shift job that spring and then went to grad school the following fall. So I spent a year at Illinois, a calendar year at Illinois, got to South Carolina in the fall of 96. And I love Columbia.

I loved living there. There was a cohort of us in the program that, you know, we became this large friend circle. I had friendship and support. I met my ex-wife there. We got married before I finished my PhD, actually. She was at the master's program in public history, which is a really great program at South Carolina. So she was museum studies. Lacey Ford was my advisor.

just an absolutely awesome human being who, you know, really went to bat for me on a number of occasions, including after I graduated when I ran into some stumbling blocks early in my career. So he has continued to be a mentor. So yeah, I had a remarkable experience. I feel like I've been the minority on that. It's a lot of things sort of converged, you know.

immediately around me, whether it was my fellow students or the professors with whom I went, you know, the people who were on my committee, the faculty who I took courses from were just uniformly good people, right? And so I don't know if that was luck of the draw or I just kind of, you know, stumbled my way in or, you know, I get along with everybody or whatnot, but yeah, I enjoyed graduate school, which I know that's not always a word that we hear associated with graduate study, but I had fun.

Jason Herbert (41:54.831)
How much of that can we attribute to it being 1996 and Hootie and the Blowfish and the aura they brought to Columbia, South Carolina?

Kevin (42:00.419)
Every time we'd go out to the bars down in Five Points, you would see Darius Rucker like hitting on somebody at the bar. It was hilarious. It was kind of, yeah, it was like local site. Like, you know, you'd go to one place and then you'd go to another. So like I'd be at Sharky's and then I went down to group therapy and everyone was like, did you see Darius Rucker tonight? He was down at Sharky's. I was like, yeah, I was there earlier. Then he'd come wandering into group therapy later or whatever. So yeah, it was like this local folk he wrote.

Jason Herbert (42:10.53)
Are you serious?

Jason Herbert (42:19.182)
Ha

Kevin (42:30.167)
I just say.

Jason Herbert (42:31.788)
I wonder, you if you could talk a little bit about, I want to talk about history with you, right? You know, you've published, you know, you've taught like, were there books, Kevin, were there these seminal things that were like, okay, these are the things that are really exciting me on intellectual basis that made me want to say, choose 18th, 19th century history, talk about these different things and race, class, whatever, like, what, what did it for you? And what I guess maybe all the way now, I have to assume you still read what, what

what I guess then formed a foundational basis of your intellectual development. And then also if you can talk a little about the works that still can kind of push you to this day.

Kevin (43:14.338)
Yeah, so the answer, my answer to this will be a little weird, right? Because, I mean, it's all weird, it, later in my career, at my prior university at Grandview in Iowa, most of my teaching load was in ancient and medieval world history. And so really, a lot of the stuff that profoundly transformed me as a historian and that challenged me the most intellectually,

Jason Herbert (43:17.358)
Please.

Jason Herbert (43:29.762)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (43:40.075)
was the stuff that I was reading and immersing myself in to prepare to teach those courses well. And I still read a lot of ancient and medieval history on a global scale. I find that to be tremendously rewarding and perspective enlarging. And I think anyone who does modern history and in particular US modern history should read in ancient, you know, in all our spare time, right, should read in ancient and medieval world history, at least somewhat.

just what it did from my perspective as a scholar and a teacher. It's hard to, I can't even quantify it. And I wish that I had come to that place earlier to be quite honest, because some of the works even as a graduate student that I just absolutely connected with were not necessarily works that were in my particular area. So Eric Hobsbawm, I read a ton of Hobsbawm. Hobsbawm is still my favorite historian.

E.P. Thompson's Making of the English Working Class, like I know that's a cliche for historians of a certain political bent, but that was a tremendously, I read that in the first year or two of my PhD program and I was like, part of me was like, this is how it's done. And then part of me was like, shit, I'll never do it this good, right? So there was that. I would say if you move into the Americas.

Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom for me was a transformative book when I encountered it. Yeah, it's still here in my apartment. And the reason was, I didn't quote unquote, learn anything new. But the way that Morgan deployed evidence and made an argument and

Jason Herbert (45:10.68)
to run here somewhere. Yeah.

Kevin (45:32.578)
analyze things to answer this sort central paradoxical question, right? Like, and to do it as well and as convincingly as he did. Like, even if you look at Morgan now and say, you know, there's problem here, problem there, it's a little... I mean, it still holds up really well though. And I think that book, and again, as a master student, when I read it, I was like, this opens windows.

right? Like this is how scholarship can take things that you know we quote-unquote already know but help us see them anew and approach them anew and that was profoundly important for my

Jason Herbert (46:16.942)
It's amazing how, you know, years removed from your graduate experience, you can still be moved by the things that you read. was thinking the other day about Pekahima linens, the Comanche empire, um, which comes out in 2008 to, I remember reading it and seeing names like Comanche and Kiowa and all these different things. And they have this nominal kind of like, okay, know who these people are. And now in my own experience, I'm like, I'm down here. Like I'm on, I'm visiting with Comanche. I know people, you know, I work with Kiowa and I'm like,

the experience, it just, your relationship to the work changes over time. And I find that it's this odd delight, Kevin, as a scholar, where you're just like, wait, this has this different meaning to me over time, you know?

Kevin (46:54.654)
yeah!

Kevin (46:58.421)
Yeah, we come to a depth when we encounter things, at least in my experience, I've encountered things later that make me think of either reading or study or conversations that I had earlier in my career where all of a sudden those things take on new meanings because I've had this now current experience, right? And so when I think about when I had the opportunity to be involved with the film 13th, right?

Jason Herbert (47:14.818)
Mm.

Kevin (47:26.835)
some of the things that I had been reading and writing on and researching in terms of radical abolitionism, in terms of the way that race and incarceration wound together in the 19th century. I was on that road and very much sort of aligned with where that film was going, but being involved in that project and being put in a position where I had to talk about these things in a way that wasn't just a graduate student seminar, that helped me.

gain just new dimensions of understanding and resonance with both the scholarly work and the original sources that I had been immersed in for years, but was now, you know, now had the gift to really, to re-approach almost as if they were new. I don't know if that makes any sense, but just something that was, you know, really resonant, like this is what history does out in the world. And that was...

That came along at a point in my career where I kind of needed that reminder, right? Like it's not just about publishing an article or getting your monograph out for tenure. It's about this, right? And that was, you know, that was really, that had a big impact.

Jason Herbert (48:39.811)
Yeah, I think a lot of people know that you're in. I still get delight every time I see it. I haven't watched 13th in a couple of years, but every time I would watch it, I've seen it probably five or six times now, I'd get this little tee-hee moment. I'm like, that's my friend. Let's Kevin, right? Because I find myself always rooting for my friends anyway, like any friend should. But can you talk a little bit about how that, Kevin, came to be? How did you end up in 13th? I guess it's like, what did that, you could email one day, somebody call you, like,

Kevin (48:53.138)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (49:09.335)
What hap- how does that work out?

Kevin (49:12.706)
So for the folks who are listening to this for the history tape, this will scratch that itch, right? So in 2015, it must have been the early fall of 2015, Sean Wilentz had a New York Times op-ed where he was responding to a Bernie Sanders speech where Sanders had talked about the intertwining of the Constitution and of enslavement, right? That these two things had wound together to sort of shape US history.

And Wilentz, as he did repeatedly and has still done, is sort of arguing that, no, the Constitution was actually anti-slavery. And I'm not in agreement with his argument, but this was his thing. And so he writes this op-ed that really kind of very forcefully states this idea that actually the Constitution provided link of the tools with which he could abolish slavery, asterisk, and therefore it was anti-slavery.

Right, which, you know, I'm not a fan of that argument. So I wrote a Twitter thread because, you know, that was where I published it. Yeah. So I wrote a Twitter thread like, know, here's where I disagree and why. Right. Like, and I was actually working on an essay at that time about the Constitution and slavery.

Jason Herbert (50:20.814)
We're gonna come back to social media in a bit, but yes.

Kevin (50:35.586)
you know, in some fairly specific sorts of context. so, you know, I was, I, you know, I had sources, didn't, you know, and, and so, um, one of the, editors of the Junto blog, the early Americanist blog started by grad students and early career professionals, um, reached out, uh, DM me on Twitter and said, Hey, you know, we were going to write something in response to that Willimps piece, but then we saw your thread, you know, which, so you wrote it for us. Would you be up for writing, you know, writing it as a post and we'll publish it.

And I said sure and he's like, can you do it today? Because we really like to turn it around and I was like, okay sure, you know, so

Jason Herbert (51:11.404)
Wait, which word of what? Because I know all of those guys.

Kevin (51:15.57)
Mark. Yeah. So, and it was, I mean, it was fine. Like, I mean, I sat down and banged it out in like an hour and a half, right? Like, you know, cause of length restriction. didn't have to be that long. And, and so it went out and I was like, cool, 12 people will read this who are, you know, nothing against the gentle, but we're kind of a niche audience, right? You know? And so the next day my phone rings and I'm in my dining room at a small house in Des Moines, Iowa. And it's Ava Du Verde's assist production assistant.

Jason Herbert (51:16.526)
Okay, all right.

Kevin (51:44.259)
who says, saw some of the writing that you have out there and we wanted to know if you would be interested in interviewing as part of a project that Ava DuVernay is working on that touches on some of the same things that you wrote. And I was like, sure. And like a month later, I fly out to New York City. They bring me to a studio in the Bronx.

I'm on, you know, I sit down for an hour and a half with Ava DuBernay being interviewed on camera. And yeah. And so after the interview, cause I asked her, you know, I was, I was like, how, you know, I said, your assistant said it was, you know, some stuff I had written, you know, what, what was it that, that, you know, cause I mean, the subtext was just this fucking dude from Iowa. Like, what is this? And,

Jason Herbert (52:36.483)
Right.

Kevin (52:38.844)
She pulls out her iPad and I remember this because her iPad was like cracked, like the screen was a mess. And I'm thinking to myself like, you can't afford a new iPad? Like how do you not cut yourself? But as she pulls it, and it was the Junto piece. She's like, we saw this. And, you know, I'll spill a little tea. I hope I'm not out of line. But she said, you know, we had just finished talking with Henry Louis Gates and we felt like there, there, we needed some more, you know, we needed, and you know,

Jason Herbert (52:43.788)
Yeah

Jason Herbert (52:52.952)
No kidding.

Kevin (53:08.478)
a little more, I think what she was sort of conveying was, you know, forceful or spicy. And I was definitely spicy at that. And she's like, and then we saw this and decided to call you. And I was like, okay, all right. So yeah. And then, you know, a year later, I'm part of the group that Netflix brings out for the premiere in New York. And the whole thing still feels like kind of an out of body experience, but that's literally how it started me yelling on Twitter. And then.

Jason Herbert (53:14.915)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (53:38.432)
writing it up and she told me she said this was all over black twitter when it came out and i was like shit yeah like that's awesome

Jason Herbert (53:48.579)
Yeah, you know, there couple things that go here. I think there's a lesson here, Kevin, which says, you know, just write this stuff. Just put it out there. You know, I think when I was in graduate school, for those people listening, I finished relatively recently. I finished in 22, right? Like I'm a baby PhD. But there's, you would talk to people like I have to finish graduate school and then go here I'm going to publish in this journal and this journal and this journal. And I think one of the wonderful things about your career is it demonstrates the flexibility.

Kevin (53:55.084)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jason Herbert (54:17.646)
of like, Hey, I'm just going to do this and what happens is going to happen. And in this case, you know, one of those 12 people who, know, that read the Gento piece, you know, and then, and then, and this becomes like the realest foundational pieces of, think your career, you know, this participation in this. yeah.

Kevin (54:27.955)
Right? Yeah.

Kevin (54:35.873)
Yeah, it was my career. mean, that was the decisive moment that just opened up all sorts of opportunities, platforms, connections. Like, it was one of the most transformative moments of my life. And I just am immensely grateful to have had the opportunity. I'm grateful for it every day.

It was a film that did really important work. And that's the key thing is, you know, the work. But yeah, it, so yeah, mean, the lesson, write the thing, write the thing and get it out there. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be a referee journal. doesn't have to, if you look at my CV, I mean, I've got some referee journal articles, but I don't have a monograph in history, right? Like all my writing is, and sort of,

You know, what I have done in my career is writings for much broader audiences, film or a film, and, you know, the work that I do speaking and working with other colleges and universities faculty. Like that's where I ended up. And the reason I did is because I wrote the thing back in 2015.

Jason Herbert (55:57.327)
Yeah, okay, I got two other thoughts on this. First and foremost, before I forget, I'm gonna look right in the camera. Hey, Ava, call me, hi.

Kevin (56:03.81)
Let me just say, Rook, you know, when you meet somebody famous, you're like, God, I hope they're not an asshole, right? She, Ava DuVernay is one of the most intelligent, like,

awesome people I have ever met. Like she just, she was a black studies major and undergraduate. So we vied on a whole bunch of shared intellectual interests as we were having a cut, but just a genuinely good person and deserves every bit of the success that she has had. So just want to put that in like, I'm grateful to her for the opportunity, but also good things happen to good people. And she's one of

Jason Herbert (56:46.905)
I also want to be clear, I don't want her to call me for my historical scholarship. I just think she's hot. So there's that. But I do want to ask you about this larger thing, which is I want go back to social media. You talk about like you haven't punished this scholarly monograph as far as history and things like that. And as time has gone on, I don't want to knock university presses because they've got an important role. work with a lot of them to promote a lot of things and stuff like that.

As I've gone on, Kevin, I soured a bit because as I, I worry about writing a book that only the same people who have been attending the conferences I go to have been listening to me talk about for the last few years and nothing changes. And I want to segue that by saying that I had this moment on Twitter years ago when I started to feel like I had made it. And I swear to you, I swear to you right now, it was the day Kevin, you followed me. I was like, Oh,

And there are three people who were like, I remember like, it was like this, like internet cat, this, this prestige thing, like, like kind of thing. It's like the day you followed me, the date Joanne followed me. and then the day Annette followed me and I was like, okay. I guess I'm a grownup now. That turned out not to be the case. but I do want to talk about social media here because I think, you know, that has played such a large role.

in both of our lives as scholars and where the way we position ourselves now. Can you talk about like what Twitter and other facets, blues guy now have done for your career, the importance you think that it means to like historians trying to talk to other audiences? Like what's the role of social media for

Kevin (58:26.25)
I mean, huge, obviously. This is where I give the obligatory fuck Elon Musk, right? Because Twitter, the Twitter story and community, and especially for those of us who are doing this at smaller institutions where you're like the only person doing your thing maybe at the whole university, right? To have that kind of community, to have that space, like...

know, medievalist Twitter was awesome and when I was starting to teach in medieval, you know, like that was my support group. Like it, it was, you know, the community that I had there and the ability to sort of riff on ideas and get feedback and just, but mostly just engage with other human beings. Right. And I know social media is where a lot of bad things can happen. And I've participated in some of those. It's the kind of the nature of the beast. And there are things that I've done.

that have been remarkably unskillful that I regret. But for the most part, what Twitter was and what Blue Sky is for me in somewhat of a different way now is that's a community of actual people with whom I can, you know, not just throw one liners back and forth, although the silly shit is really important too. But I've had some of the most substantial discussions and conversations I've ever had with other scholars.

through the medium of social media, right? Or at the very least, the conversations that I've had with one or more folks on social media have been the genesis of a project or a line of inquiry or a line of reading that has ended up shaping something I'm writing or the ways that I teach or that I work with colleagues. And so it really has been foundational for me. It sort of blew my...

I've got a 20 year old and a 17 year old. so back in the day, my 20 year old dad, my daughter is the oldest and she is also extremely online now. But when she first got a Twitter account, she was 13 or 14 and her and her friend, her friend messaged her and said, do you know that your dad has 80,000 followers on Twitter? And sent her a screech, because she didn't follow me, because that would be totally uncool.

Jason Herbert (01:00:46.893)
Right, lame.

Kevin (01:00:47.904)
And she came home and was like, what the hell was this? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. But it was, I think I got like one or two cool points that day. But in all seriousness, it was a community for me. There were points, I ran into some really bad professional times. I changed universities, right? I've had some personal health issues, right?

It's been the community that I've been able to engage with online that has been one of the most powerful places of support and solidarity. So, you know, not to mention all the opportunities that I've had, right? But, you know, first and foremost for me, it was community at times where I really needed a community and benefited from being in community. And it's been a way to build community and solidarity, not just with higher ed folks.

even though that largely the conversations I'm in. So yeah, when Twitter went, you know, turned into the Nazi bar, right? Like that was a loss. That was a real loss for a lot of us. And I know someone who may not be as online or as invested in social media, be like, come on, man. You know, it's like, it can't be that. But for a lot of us, these were actual relationships with death, right?

Jason Herbert (01:01:58.575)
Thank you.

Jason Herbert (01:02:08.93)
No, you don't know.

Kevin (01:02:16.854)
You know, and I have similar relationships with folks on Blue Sky. It's a smaller scale, which I actually think is healthier in a lot of ways. But yeah, I mean, for me at least, my experience has been that I benefited and drew a lot of strength when I needed it from the communities that I was fortunate to be a part of on social media.

Jason Herbert (01:02:44.43)
You know, right before you start talking about Twitter, I wrote the word, I just circled it now, the word loss right here on my notebook, you know, and I felt the exact same way. was, it was, it was like, it was like mourning the loss of a relationship itself when we all stepped away from Twitter because so many of us, know, I totally credit Twitter for like getting me through graduate school, especially after I like moved back to Florida and kind of created history into the movies and made these friends, yourself included, who became actual friends. I have.

Kevin (01:03:13.868)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:03:14.232)
friends of mine, like dear, the guy in your old office in Iowa is a dear friend of mine from Twitter, Thomas LeCocque. I've never met him in person before. I talked to him every single day. You know, so many people that I could talk to, you know, that I almost married a woman I met on Twitter. was like, it was this thing. was like our thing. was like, it was almost like the void. It's like, it was like the moment.

Kevin (01:03:19.349)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:03:38.095)
in Goodfellas where like Henry's Henry Hill's talking about how great things were with the gang. Not that we were all criminals, but it it felt like we had our it felt like we had our thing, you know, and Blue Sky has helped to resurrect maybe some of that. But they're still feel like like it's like this is as close to 2018 Twitter as we've gotten. But it's still doesn't still feel that way. But did you ever feel, Kevin, like the pressure, you know, as someone who was

Kevin (01:03:45.506)
Speak for yourself,

Kevin (01:03:53.346)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:04:08.118)
very social media followed and present on social media to kind of perform. there a thing where you were writing and posting stuff like, did you ever feel the pressure to be a certain way as a scholar on social media?

Kevin (01:04:24.982)
I mean, I would love to say no, but the honest truth is I think there probably were times where it was sort of like, I gotta have a take, right? But what was helpful then, I think I was fortunate in the fact that I had people around me, both online and in real life, who I could run ideas past if I wasn't quite sure.

Jason Herbert (01:04:38.029)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:04:51.426)
And so I think for the most part, was able to sort of check myself and ask myself exactly that question, right? Like, should I say this? Should I post this? Should I dunk on this? Or is that just performative, right? Like, what am I really doing? What's my motivation here? And there were a lot of times where I would check myself and say, you know what? That stays in the drafts folder.

Jason Herbert (01:04:57.304)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:05:19.038)
or we're just gonna cancel that and discard it because what I valued about social media was the authentic ways, or at least what felt authentic, that I could engage with people and that people could engage with me. And so I was really cognizant of the need to remain as authentic as I could, right? Like to not have the social media me and the real me.

I've had people who I've met in real life after knowing on social media and they're like, you know what? What you see is what you get with you. And that's a really high compliment to me. That's the way that I want it to be. But yeah, mean, when you're on a platform like that and you think about audience and you think about the ways in which conversation happens in those spaces, and there's always so much to talk about.

Jason Herbert (01:06:09.09)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:06:13.46)
eminently understandable. Like I said, I'm sure I did it more times than I probably even am cognizant of, you know, where you, it becomes more performative or it becomes not, maybe confrontational is not the perfect word, but, but it could be part of that where it's like, you kind of go out, you know, looking to talk shit, right? Like fire up the hot take machine and let's, let's farm the engagement, right? Like,

Jason Herbert (01:06:36.002)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:06:39.446)
You know, there is something where you go into notifications and see large numbers and you're like, my God. And you know, part of it is like people pay attention to what you say, right? And like that, that could be intoxicating if you let it. and that, yeah, that, and so that was something, you know, that I tried to keep front of mind. I don't know if I always succeeded, but, but it was definitely a thing.

Jason Herbert (01:06:51.576)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (01:07:02.21)
Yeah, you know, I know that I was watching for a while I was watching my follower count really close. Like, where am I? Where am I trying? that guy is fuck him. He's got more followers. What does that guy have? You know, why the hell aren't they following me? You know? Yeah.

Kevin (01:07:14.442)
I mean, it's because it's quantifiable, right? Like that's the thing that's hard about social media is you look and you're like, oh, you know, 84,100 people, how long till I hit 85 or, know, know, how many people retweeted or reposted it? Like, because it's a number right there.

Jason Herbert (01:07:28.088)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:07:36.992)
And you could almost watch it change in real time depending upon the conversations that are happening. And that could be really addictive. I mean, that's, you know.

Jason Herbert (01:07:39.34)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Herbert (01:07:43.919)
Yeah, cause then you start going to look for those conversations that get the, changes the ways in which you start to talk and think about like the ways you engage, right? Cause like, I know if I post this kind of thing, I'm going to get an extra 400 followers. I'll just go ahead and say, whatever, right? Or, and that's not healthy. I've seen way too many public meltdowns on social media over someone's follower count or it's like, guys, what are we doing here? It's, it's, that's definitely the negative aspect of it. Um,

Kevin (01:07:53.206)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:07:59.104)
Right.

Kevin (01:08:04.256)
Kevin (01:08:13.058)
One thing that I always felt a little uncomfortable about is I didn't want to be in spaces on social media where it felt like a cool kids club, right? Like, because that seemed antithetical and especially like someone like me who's a, you know, I was a kind of a no-name university, right? Like I, you know, I wasn't in an Ivy league. I've, you know, I hadn't published a prize winning book, but yet here was a platform in which I could be part of the conversation. And I never wanted it to be something that.

Jason Herbert (01:08:23.074)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:08:42.902)
You know, people didn't feel like they could engage in as their full authentic selves if they didn't have enough followers or a hot enough take or whatever. And so, you know, I tried to sort of keep that in mind as well. know, social media is like any other social interaction, right? Like it could be fraught, the landscape could be tricky. But, you know, keeping your eyes open, literally and figuratively and knowing how you're navigating that landscape and being aware.

That's the important thing, but that's also the hardest thing, especially when your notifications are blowing up and follower count like again, you know, we love metrics, right? That dopamine shooting into your brain like, yeah, you know, and that's just not a great place to be sometimes.

Jason Herbert (01:09:30.126)
No, especially when you're tying those metrics to your own sense of self-worth or your importance as a scholar or anything like that. it's abs, it could be abs like you're saying it's absolutely intoxicating, but can add to absolutely unhealthy as well. And there's just this real fine line that you have to kind of walk. And I wrestle with this on the way that I present myself on social media. Like how much of this is me just saying, Hey, this is what I'm into versus I want to be seen as a certain thing. Right. And

Kevin (01:09:33.536)
Yes. Yup.

Jason Herbert (01:09:55.961)
Just as guilty as the next person going, wait, I'm doing this for this motivation and maybe not that motivation and how pure is said motivation.

Kevin (01:10:05.131)
Well, we curate ourselves, right? And that's not a bad thing. It's being sensitive to, I mean, just in general, right? Like being sensitive to the environments and the communities we're in, but it can become something that is ultimately destructive, right? Because we spend so much time in self-curation, we don't even think about what we're curating and we lose that authenticity. Now your kids are a little younger, I think, but a good antidote to this, teenage kids.

Jason Herbert (01:10:13.816)
Sure.

Jason Herbert (01:10:29.712)
Yeah

Kevin (01:10:33.193)
Right? Because like, you know, I would, you know, I post something and it would get retweeted enough that it would show up in my daughter's Twitter feed. And she would come and she's like, stop clout chasing. It's like, what are you doing? You know, I just given me shit, right? And yeah. And I was like, I mean, it was hilarious because my daughter, both my kids are hilarious. But just the way that, you know, it was, it was awesome. And at that time, you know, a great

Jason Herbert (01:10:33.535)
Hahaha

Jason Herbert (01:10:40.75)
Mmm.

Jason Herbert (01:10:46.926)
Check that ego right at the door,

Kevin (01:11:02.633)
something I needed, you know, a great way to be mindful about the spaces.

Jason Herbert (01:11:07.822)
Kevin, I want to of circle back. Maybe this can be our last segment today. I want to circle back now to, think that you and I are both very, very concerned about, which is graduate students. We'll speak to history graduate students, but maybe kind of more broadly as well. You and I both have a passion for teaching largely, for seeing typically young people who are coming through the ranks.

Kevin, what's your advice now to history graduate students out there, master students, but more specifically, maybe doctoral students, first, second, third, whatever year you're in, when you look around, say the job market, life in general, now that you and I have more gray in our beard than anything else, like, what's your advice to history graduate students out there in the United States saying, I want to make this profession, but I don't know where to go.

Kevin (01:12:07.179)
That's a really intimidating question. Like don't feel like I have very good answers to that. And I don't know if anybody does, to be honest, right? Like, I mean, we know that programs are closing, certainly in the humanities, but history in particular, we know that it's harder and harder to get funding. We know that the academic job market is a smoldering crater.

Jason Herbert (01:12:09.196)
Yeah.

Kevin (01:12:36.925)
and continues to get deeper for all of the structural, neoliberal, fascistic reasons that are swirling around us now. But one thing I will not do is I will not ever tell anybody, go to graduate school. I will tell somebody, think about it, or be really sure, or here are some questions that you're going to need to be able to answer for yourself. But I will never tell anybody, don't do that. I people tell me.

Jason Herbert (01:13:01.07)
It's hard. Yeah.

Kevin (01:13:06.625)
Don't go get a PhD. Getting a PhD was the culmination of a lot of, you know, a dream for me, but has, you know, led me to a life that I cherish. And so I am never going to tell anybody, don't do this thing. That ended up being one of the central events of my life, right? And it's not like the job market was any great shakes in 2004 either. But what I would tell somebody is like, you know, or questions that I would have them think about like,

How wedded are you to the notion of a traditional academic tenure track professorial career? And how aware are you of the odds of that actually manifesting? And so I would encourage people thinking about this. I know it's become a cliche. there's a lot of things you can do with a history degree. There are a lot of things you can do with a history degree. In higher ed spaces, in higher ed adjacent spaces, in

nonprofit, NGO spaces, all. So think expansively about how you can take the education that you're getting and the things that you're doing and put them to use or get into places that might not be immediately apparent. So you have to be a lot more savvy about knowing how to sell yourself and not just the stuff you know, but the ways of knowing, the habits of mind that you have refined and excelled in. Cause that's the stuff, right? And

Don't let your prior assumptions about what academia and higher ed and scholarship are or aren't dictate the choices that you allow yourself to consider. So when I was in graduate school, for example, there were some folks both at my institution and elsewhere student-wise who were like, I'll never take a community college job. You know, like it was gonna be slum.

Right. And like my first full-time teaching was at a two-year school and I learned more about teaching there than I learned at any other, you know, any other game. There, you know, there are a lot of jobs in two-year schools. There could be ways. It is a different seed. You're not going to be writing monographs. You're going to be teaching a five-five load, but

Kevin (01:15:21.8)
If you want to teach history on the college level and you value the ways in which you might be able to not only pass the disciplinary knowledge down, but to shape the lives of college students, two-year schools are the ideal venue to do that. So, you know, don't let preconceived notions of you or peers or anybody else, you know, close off options that actually might be the option for you.

And don't be afraid as well to, or let me put it another way, be choosy. If a program does not offer any funding, think about going elsewhere or reapplying to other places the next year. Because that right now is, you you gotta eat, you can't eat vocation.

But I didn't know any of the stuff going to grad school. I was like, I hope I get an assistantship and it turns out I wouldn't have been able to afford it without it, but I you know 23 year old me didn't think about that shit. So so, know be aware, you know You will be doing labor for the program that you enroll in You will be a teaching assistant. You will be a research assistant. You'll be saying you will be doing labor

Do not do the labor if you are not compensated. And if that compensation does not make it possible for you to be a part of that program. So those are the things that I would suggest. Everyone talks about be flexible, be open to possibilities. But I mean, for real, that means something much more now than it did even a decade ago. And I think that's where we have to lean into.

Jason Herbert (01:17:04.824)
Kevin, we've been talking now for coming up on it like since before the show started and now like almost an hour and a half. And I feel like you and I could go for a while. Let me ask you this. I just got my smoker going this weekend. You and I both love the meats. do you do you are you cooking next? What's what's what's for you?

Kevin (01:17:24.386)
All right, so this is tragic, but I live in an apartment now where we can't have grills on our patio. So when I go back to the house where the ex and the kids are, and my ex and I still have a very good relationship, we're good friends, I go over all the time, I gotta see the dog, right? But that's where my smoker still is. And so I've actually, I've been teaching my son.

Jason Herbert (01:17:26.424)
Tommy.

Jason Herbert (01:17:45.518)
Absolutely.

Kevin (01:17:54.579)
how to grill and smoke. So my son is a grill master now. He could do a kick ass steak. Perfect. And so the next step is we're gonna smoke some brisket. Cause that's his favorite. So, you know, I got a barrel smoker. We're gonna get a nice brisket flat. We're gonna immerse it in salt, pepper and garlic and just go to town.

Jason Herbert (01:18:07.65)
I love it.

Jason Herbert (01:18:20.034)
I love it. We've got to figure out a way to get you out to Colorado or me out to South, you know, for me out to North Carolina, one or the other, we've got to do some meets. We have to do a meet up. So.

Kevin (01:18:24.245)
hell yeah.

Kevin (01:18:29.696)
Yeah. So North Carolina barbecue is like, you know, I moved here and everyone talks about Western versus Eastern and like, I mean, I like it. Okay. I don't really like Eastern as much as Western New York or North Carolina barbecue. But what I will say is like, I've really had to bite my tongue, you know, being originally from Texas, then having gone back and lived there for years, right? People are like North Carolina barbecue. I'm like, excuse me.

Jason Herbert (01:18:42.402)
Mmm.

Jason Herbert (01:18:50.771)
man.

Kevin (01:18:56.18)
I haven't had good brisket here in any commercial establishment since I've moved here. Let me show you how this is done in Texas, right? So the barbecue regional smack talk will always continue.

Jason Herbert (01:19:06.786)
My brother in Christ, you are in the South. That is where pork is king, my friend. And for me, kills me because I'm from Kentucky and I have to tell you, my favorite barbecue is Western. And this is I love about PQ. It's like you get so regionally specific, right? Not North Carolina. I like Western North Carolina and North Georgia. You can be someplace around like Cherokee North Carolina. Forget about it. You know, if that forest ever comes open, I'm in.

Kevin (01:19:22.444)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:19:26.378)
Yep. OK.

Kevin (01:19:32.866)
So right next door to Cherokee and Coloway, North Carolina is a place called Gus's. dude, Gus's is some of the best barbecue I've ever had. I had a whole rack of ribs there and just rolled myself out to the car. So yeah, I'm down with, and you know, like my son likes brisket. I love brisket. Half my family are cattle ranchers. So the beef is always in, but I'll tell you what, man.

Jason Herbert (01:19:38.588)
yeah. I've been to Guss's!

Jason Herbert (01:19:44.909)
For real.

Kevin (01:20:01.63)
A good rack of ribs, Doug Memphis style, that's as close to heaven as a non-believer like me will get, I think.

Jason Herbert (01:20:12.75)
All well, the next pod you and I do will be over a rack of ribs and it'll just be you and I just smacking some for an hour and we'll lose every last bit of viewership, especially on the YouTube channel. It's going to be awful and glorious at the same time. Dude, Kevin, thank you so much for like popping in and doing this for me. I know I reached out last second. I was like, Hey, you want to hang out? And you're like, yes, do it. So buddy, this was the best excuse. Awesome.

Kevin (01:20:19.741)
Hahaha

Kevin (01:20:24.29)
I'm about to say that no one needs that in their lives.

Kevin (01:20:38.338)
I'd absolutely love to hang out with you. Thank you. Thank you. Much appreciated.

Jason Herbert (01:20:44.087)
Always.