Access to Democracy
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Access to Democracy
"What's So Important About History?" - Prof. John Mazis, Professor of History, Hamline University
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Host Bill Raker sits with Professor John Mazis of Hamline University to discuss the importance of understanding history and how it can predict our future.
Hello, and welcome to Access to Democracy. We're delighted to have you join us. I'm your host, Bill Raker, for this edition of the program. And before we get to our guest, I'd like to take a moment to recognize and thank our sponsors, the supporters who make this program possible: Recalibra Health, 45th Parallel Distillery, Sharon and Dulas Law Firm, and Truestone Financial Credit Union. So we're welcoming back to Access to Democracy a returning guest who's, I think, is a third uh appearance here with us. It's Professor John Maziz, who is a professor of history at Hamlin University. Professor Maziz, welcome back to Access to Democracy. Now we're going to be chatting with you about a few questions that are related to history and some of the things that we can learn about history. You know, maybe why is history important? Why should we care? But before we get into that discussion, I have a question I want to ask you. You know, as a college professor, I would imagine that you sometimes have your students write essays or other writing assignments that are done outside of class. So how do you deal with the possibility that there might be some artificial intelligence used in these compositions?
SPEAKER_01This is a serious problem and it's becoming even more so because it's undetectable. In the good old days, uh we could go on the internet and look, and quite often we find the culprit. Now you cannot really. So now the question is: do I ignore it? Uh take the attitude that uh you're an adult, you're here to learn. If you don't really want to learn, there's nothing I can do. On the other hand, how fair it is to the students, and there are quite a few who will not do that if you receive an A and they receive a B or a B plus or whatever it is. Uh I am, I have not started preparing for next year's uh classes yet, next falls, but I am leaning towards a model, and I know how how feasible that is, of giving the students a question, let them think about, but then answer it in class. Sure. So that way at least a good chunk of the answer is going to be yours. I cannot think of any other way to assure that once you are home, you will not uh cheat because that's what it is. Uh and sometimes it is very clear. Sometimes you read somebody's sentences, that's not his or her voice. I know the student, that that's not them, but what can you do? You cannot accuse somebody. Um sometimes it hasn't happened to me, it has happened to colleagues. Uh you go and you check their uh uh footnotes and they don't exist. And indeed, my personal favorite is one colleague whose student used her, but the book, she never wrote the book. So she says, well, at least when you cheat and and you use me, write down the book I wrote. So so it's it's it's uh you know, uh it's a brave new world.
SPEAKER_02It's it's something we have to deal with, yeah, you know, especially in the field of education. And the model that you describe sounds like it has some potential where you ask the students to, you know, think about this and and prepare what you might write about it, but I'll have you write in class. Yes, yes. And if you're not aware, I will share with you, I won't share this with the viewers just yet, but I became aware of a couple of applications that can be used to detect whether or not artificial intelligence has been used in composing a text. And they've been shown to be highly effective and highly reliable, 80 plus percent correct on each time of their uses. So you you might uh learn a trick. I'm not too old. I'm not too old of a dog to learn a new trick. So so, Professor, let's get into the history. Uh you know, history uh uh has uh running throughout its themes and and errors and uh are uh eras, not errors, but I'm sure there are errors in there too, uh, unfortunately. Uh what are what are some of the the topics that are being featured uh are of real interest and curiosity among yourselves and students right now?
SPEAKER_01Uh among historians, uh we have books and essays written about fascism, illiberal, non-liberal, democratic system. How do we go from a democratic or not democratic system? Students are also interested with that. Students, it seems to me at least, they're more interested in there's a change, there's a change happening right now. Uh is it good, is it bad, how would how to deal with it? That's their their uh preoccupation, I think.
SPEAKER_02Well, I would suppose that the they might be looking for some reference or some guidance that might help them deal with it, do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I mean, we expect history to give us some answers, whether or not history does that, and whether or not we receive the answers we think we receive from history, that's a different that's a different question.
SPEAKER_02Well, there are two parts to that, right? You know, history may be trying to tell us something, but are we listening? Right? And then the other part is that history may be trying to tell us something that really isn't true. That's also true. Okay, I mean I I think we're dealing with some of that right now.
SPEAKER_01I I just published uh an article, uh, and the title was uh Maybe the Past Was Not What We Think It Was. Sure. So and it takes that theme exactly that we are we have an idea of our own history that uh in general it's right, but not necessarily so.
SPEAKER_02So I I once heard a phrase, and you probably have experienced or heard it as well, is that history is written by the victors.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it is written by the victors. However, uh, the last 50 years or so, we have a chorus in history. Gone are the days that historians all came from the same background. Um white males, by the time you become a professor, you're kind of an older male, also middle class. And for quite a while now we have working class people who, through scholarships and other things, became professors. So their views are different. We have women, of course, we have people of color, we have immigrants. Well, we always had immigrants who became professors. So we have more voices now. So even though you're absolutely right, the victors write history, there are other voices there. Uh only yesterday, uh Carlo Ginzburg died in in Italy, a famous Italian historian who wrote the history of the Lilu people. Oh. So his, you know, he didn't talk about kings and presidents, he talked about the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and he was quite successful on that. So we have that that uh uh part of history also.
SPEAKER_02Well, those people can live interesting lives too, that that we can learn from. I hope so. If they if they share them. So, you know, I I remember uh history being a subject that not a lot of students liked. You know, they didn't find it interesting, or why do I care about what happened in the past, or you know, so what? Yeah. How do you work to make history interesting and and relevant uh for your students?
SPEAKER_01A couple of things. One, you have to make it relevant, to point from point A to point B, yes, this is happening, but also let's and it is the job of a historian, the teacher of history, to point this is happening today or can happen today, or yes, it happened in ancient Rome, but also happened here 20 years ago, or or whatever. So that's one thing to connect. The other, and I blame us historian, uh academic historians for for uh college university historians, we have gotten away from the narrative. And yes, there was a time that the narrative was a uh a litany of presidents and kings and queens, but we've moved to a point now that that young students take take uh a history course and they hear a lot about theory, which is important, method, which is very important, but they don't hear the narrative. And that is what will make it interesting to students, I believe. Make it interesting to everyone. Why is good biography still selling? Because it tells us a story. Why did people uh like Selby Foote, the late uh Southern historian, uh, why he became so successful? Because he told us a story. Of course, he also pointed to how it happened, why it happened, when it happened, but there was also a narrative there that attracted people. And I think that's, in my view, that's the key. Go back to the narrative.
SPEAKER_02It sounds a little bit to me like it it's something along the lines of now stay with me and help me connect all of these dots, and you'll get the full picture and then really appreciate what it's all about.
SPEAKER_01Right, but make it don't don't drag it through, don't lose your audience. Don't lose. I mean, I'm sure you and I have sat in in very informative lectures of any kind of of of any nature. And by the time the person came to the important, interesting point, we've lost interest.
SPEAKER_02Well, we were asleep.
SPEAKER_01We left the church before we heard the the end of the sermon, yes.
SPEAKER_02So that's why it has to be interesting all along the way to to keep going to get to the points, the the major points that it's uh.
SPEAKER_01I I know some of my colleagues saying that's kindergarten stuff. No, it is not. It is our job to make it interesting.
SPEAKER_02Uh what is stu well you say the word interesting. What are your students seem to to say is the most interesting thing about history that they learn or appreciate taking one of your courses? Why?
SPEAKER_01Why? Why? The rest we more or less know. Who? Lincoln. When 1861, what happened, Gettysburg, or why, and try to explain uh why the Germans lost the First and Second World War, why the depression happened, if you're an American historian, of course. No, explain the why behind it and show to students that important questions, important events do not have one reason for happening. There are a variety, or some more important than others, they're not all equal, but there are three, four, ten, twenty. I don't know how many, but there are more than one. That simplistic idea, it happened because of this.
SPEAKER_02That's rarely, if ever, the case. Let's pick that up and pursue it a little bit further. But at this point, we'd like to take a short break for a message from our sponsors who make this program possible.
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SPEAKER_02So we're back with Access to Democracy, and our guest is uh John Maziz, who's Professor of History at Hamlin University. And we're talking with Professor Maziz about uh how to make history interesting and relevant and why students would want to study history and what we can learn from history. Why is history important? So let's just get right into that question, Professor Maziz. Why is history important?
SPEAKER_01Well, I forget who said it, and I should go back and look at it because it is important, I think. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Mark Twain, I think that I think. I thought so too, but I was not sure. As a historian, I have to be careful when I so there are some lessons, general lessons, to take from history. What happened in ancient Rome or in ancient Greece, or even the United States a hundred years ago, will not happen again, at least not in the same way. But we can look what happened, what we did to address it, what we did right and what we did wrong, and maybe get some sense of our world, our country in this case, and maybe how to go about dealing with whatever the issue is. So there are lessons to be learned. Oh, yes, there are. The problem is that we oversimplify it and we think, aha, there's the lesson. Do this. Well, that was good in 1935, but it might not be good in 2026. So we have to be careful with those things.
SPEAKER_02And sometimes we have an environment, a situation where someone doesn't like what happened in history, and and so they either change it or they try to ignore it or put a different spin on it. That's that's a bad thing to happen, don't you think?
SPEAKER_01Well, we uh as as academic historians we encounter that. You don't need a license to write a history book. Well, that's interesting. You don't even need a degree in history to write a book. Exactly. So you can sit down tomorrow and write a book with your version of what happened in a particular era, and people might like it, and it might become a bestseller. And good luck to me now try to, you know, 20 students at a time debunk what you said. So we we uh it's it's a free-for-all sometimes. Um we uh you know we hear things like, well, that's not history, that's an opinion. It might be an opinion, but all opinions are not the same. Um I I I I I spend my whole life, well, most of my life anyway, dealing with European history in detail. Um now, if if also uh cut the grass of my yard once a week, does that make me an expert horticulturalist to write a book about it? That's the same thing, you know. You're a medical doctor who, in your free time, you like to read and eventually write about the civil war. That's nothing wrong with that. And you might be right, I'm not ready to say, but for you, this is a side gig, so to speak. Right. Uh for me, that's my life. That's what I do day in and day out for the last 15, 20, in my case, my goodness, 50 years now.
SPEAKER_02That's much more important than just having an interest in history. Right. But you use the word opinion, which I I'd like to uh explore with you just a little bit more. You know, uh everyone is entitled to their opinion. Absolutely. You know, they're not entitled to their own facts, I've heard someone say. But um just because I have an opinion about something doesn't make it factual, doesn't make it true, doesn't make it important, may not even make it relevant. So we have to get be beyond having an opinion, which could be different than having an interpretation of what happened in history, right? So draw a distinction, if you can, between opinion and interpretation.
SPEAKER_01First of all, interpretation is based uh uh not only on knowledge but also context. What is the most important thing I have done as a historian is read not only the history of my particular area and era, but also a broader area and a broader era. So I have a point of comparison as opposed to isolate an incident. I'm gonna tell you why in 1861 this happened without any understanding or knowledge of what was happening in the whole world, in the rest of the country, in the rest of society. I think that is the difference, that an opinion can be taken out of thin air sometimes. While a historian's interpretation is based on understanding, of knowledge, of course, understanding, it's also based on debate. When I go and I present a paper somewhere, uh, there are other historians in the room. And depending on the on the conference, uh, there are historians who have been dealing with the same issue for quite a while. So if I am mistaken, if my interpretation is wrong, they will push back and I will either have to change my view or push back with more facts, more understanding. So at the end of the day, when I sit down to write a paper that would be published, it has gone through a process, uh, ideally, that that will it will make it beyond reproach by no stretch of the imagination, but it is not the first draft that came in my mind after I read a book about the Civil War. I read this great book about the Civil War, and now I'm gonna write my opinion about it. That's not how we do it. Well, it sounds like this process kind of helps to keep the DNA of history pure.
SPEAKER_02As pure as possible, yes, yes, yes. So we've used these words uh a few times. You know, history is made up about uh what, who, when, where, why, how. So when you try to parse those and look at them uh separately, which maybe it's difficult or impossible to do, which of those appear to be most important, most relevant to how you teach history?
SPEAKER_01The why, the question about it. Now, the others sometimes are easy, sometimes are not. In other words, we know when the Second World War starts. Or do we? Right. We think we are we think we know. We think we know. The the conventional is 1939. There are some people who say, since it was a world war, we should include the invasion by Japan of China in what, 1932 or so. So other times we say, okay, uh a war we can say, you know, bombardment for Sumner in 1861. Um where does the Renaissance start? We don't have a particular time and day. So it can be a little more fluid. But generally speaking, we have an idea. It didn't happen in ancient Greece, the Renaissance. It didn't happen in ancient Greece, and it didn't happen in 19th century Britain. So uh but the why is the important. That's where knowledge, interpretation, uh, dialogue, uh uh, controversy will come together until we somehow are able to formulate some more definitive opinions about it.
SPEAKER_02The the who, what, where, why, when, how are kind of the the facts of history, but you you need to view them in the Context exactly of what was happening.
SPEAKER_01That's the narrative when we're talking earlier. I'm going to try to explain to students the why and how we connect it. But the narrative is again an important battle, an important development, and so on and so forth that makes the narrative of history.
SPEAKER_02Is it the narrative that that is subject to getting opinion and viewpoint interjected to it?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, it can. We have, I'm dealing with that issue right now. If you are a historian, I have an acquaintance who's a fair he's a good historian. He idolizes Napoleon. Well, I cannot take his views on Napoleon without question, because I know this guy starts from a particular point of view before he even answered the question, he has the answer. He was a great, great man, a positive influence in history, and so on and so forth. And so that that that that's the other side of the coin there. The historian or the writer, who might or might not be historian, who starts with a pre-formed idea?
SPEAKER_02That is a great transition to the question I want to ask you, Professor. There are many great figures and leaders in history, and there's some not so great ones as well. But given the world, the environment, the political situation that we're living in today, not just in this country, but globally, are there some uh historical leaders and political figures that we should be uh taking some lessons from and looking at and evaluating more carefully? Be careful.
SPEAKER_01Because those leaders in history lived at a place and at a time that are quite different than ours. Let me give you an example. I'm a Russian historian by training. There's no question that Peter the Great was a monumental, had a monumental influence in the development of that country. Indeed, in the 19th century, somebody said uh we owe so much to Peter, we should call this country Petrovia. But he was an undemocratic, he was oppressive, he could be brutal, we don't want that. Uh Charles de Gaulle, great leader in the 1950s and 60s. But would such a patriarchical conservative figure be of any use today? I tend to look at a couple of British figures. And I use Britain because Britain has a long tradition of stable democratic government. And those are two leaders that were not particularly flashy at all. H. H. Asquith and Clement Atlee. Asquith was prime minister from 1988 to 1916, Atlee 1945 to 1951. A, they were people of integrity. They were true believers in the democratic tradition of their country. They followed it, and at the same time realized that there's change to be made, and we will make it within the democratic process and tradition we have. And I think, and and how interesting it is that those people are kind of fly below a radar screen, right? No, no. So we have to keep that, we have to keep that in mind. Also you have to keep in mind the uh surprise. Uh Otto van Bismarck, a very conservative uh man, famous for his foreign policy. He started, I think, the first country in Europe, maybe the world, and what they call back then old age pension. He realized, even though he was a conservative, that this is something that our society needs. We need to take care of people who don't have the means, and at some point they will stop working. That's a great surprise for somebody like them. So we have to keep in mind those um many years ago, a wise professor, no old professor of mine, um back then he was younger than I am now, so maybe he was not that old. Uh he said to me, if you have to make a choice between leaders, between a leader who is smart and a leader who has character, pick the guy with character. Because you can buy or rent smarts, but you have to know a person with character will hire the best person to be Secretary of State and Secretary of Treasury and all those kinds of things. But a smart person without character is dangerous. Yes. Now, that doesn't mean even if you have character, you're not going to make mistakes, and there's no guarantees. But I I I remember those uh because again, the answer is, well, of course, the smart person, right? Well, think about what your history is. Think again, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Professor, we have a couple of minutes to wrap up this program. We we could go on because there's a lot more to talk about this, but uh but what I want to end kind of on this question. If you were to write uh a history text today, what would you name or title some of the chapters that you would put in it?
SPEAKER_01Uh the end of the old world. By old world, I would don't mean, I will not mean old Europe, but the old system that we have.
SPEAKER_02The end of the old world system. Old world system. The end of the old system, yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh uh The Globe or the World in Crisis, which is a book that uh that uh Churchill wrote, but in The World in Crisis. Shifting alliances and hegemonies as we go down. And the one that I've been thinking lately, uh are we now in the era of in the pre-World War I era? Where all of a sudden we have four or five countries almost equally matched, not exactly, who start doing their own thing and and it is not as simple anymore. We left a dangerous but simple time, the Soviet Union, the United States, a bipolar world that with all its problems, there were either A or B. Now we have A, B, C, D, and God knows how many others, and and the permutation of all those solutions uh is a headache.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, in one respect, having too many options uh makes it difficult to make a decision at all, doesn't it? Professor, this has been a most interesting, fascinating discussion. It's always a pleasure to have you with us on Access to Democracy. We want to thank you for being with us again, and we want to thank our viewers for joining us today. We're also on podcasts now these days, in case you didn't know that. This program is available on uh TV as a TV program, and it's available on a broadcast as a podcast. We've delighted in having you with us today. There's more Access to Democracy on AccessTodemocracy.com and on YouTube.
SPEAKER_00This program was recorded at Egan High School, and the views and opinions expressed on this program are solely those of the producers and or the persons appearing on the program, and do not reflect the views and opinions of ETV or those of District 196 schools.