May 2002

Studying America’s place in the world

Like many young people in the ’70s, David Schmitz was trying to understand the world helived in, a world that included not only the Vietnam war but its aftershocks — Watergate, oil shortages, and 1970s economic woes.

“A lot of things interested me about American history and about foreign policy, but Vietnam was right there the entire time I was growing up, so that’s where I started.” Schmitz graduated from high school in 1974 soon after the United States’ final withdrawal from Vietnam and began studying U.S. foreign policy in graduate school
in 1978.

Twenty-four years after he started on his journey of exploration and under

standing, Schmitz’s passion for the truth is evidenced in the books he has written. The Robert Allen Skotheim Professor of History at Whitman College, he is the author of The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940; Thank God They’re On Our Side: The United States & Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965; and Henry L. Stimson, The First Wise Man. He is coeditor, with Richard D. Challener, of Appeasement in Europe: A Reassessment of U.S. Policies, and, with professor Christopher Jespersen, of Architects of the American Century. Currently on sabbatical, Schmitz is working on yet another book, a second volume on U.S. policy and right wing dictatorships (from 1965-1989), tentatively titled Degrading Democracy, and conducting research for his next book — finally, his book on Vietnam, tentatively titled The Tet Offensive.

“In grad school, I started with Vietnam, then I was going to do U.S. policy and the Nazis, and I ended up writing about the United States and Fascist Italy. I’ve been working my way back to Vietnam,” says Schmitz. It wasn’t intentional, “but as I would explore questions, those questions would raise more questions, and they took me
backward.”

Questions and answers continue to play a large role in Schmitz’s life as he mixes scholarship and teaching on a daily basis on the Whitman campus. It’s a mix he’s very comfortable with. “I think teaching and scholarship mutually reinforce each other. My scholarship helps me decide what important topics to pursue; my scholarship also makes available to my students a lot of primary documents (from the archives of nearly every 20th-century U.S. president) they wouldn’t otherwise see. I hope and believe these documents bring a richness to the class.”

On the other side of the coin, adds Schmitz, his students bring up questions during class that lead to more questions, more answers, new research, and new classes. “I’ve created seminars around some of the questions. My class on the Vietnam War started that way, and I’ve devel-
oped seminars on U.S. response to revolution, which is a way for the students and me to work together on a lot of topics I’m researching.”

Another way for Schmitz to involve students in his research is through the College’s Louis B. Perry summer research award program. He and Mark Lanning, a senior, received a Perry award for intensive work last summer on Degrading Democracy. “Professor Schmitz and I conducted research at the National Archives II in College Park, Maryland, on the topic of United States policy in Chile during
the 1970s.”

The Clinton administration’s 1999 release of documents from the State Department, National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency in Chile, specifically related to human rights issues, gave him an unusual opportunity, Lanning noted.

“Being able to work with primary sources and sources that, due to national security issues, have been essentially frozen in time, is an experience that few undergraduates are allowed,” Lanning said. “I have implemented the research and information we collected in my own senior thesis on Chile, which has definitely added to its historical worth.

“David Schmitz is the quintessence of what a Whitman College professor should be,” Lanning said. “He demonstrates that rare blend of being an engaging and helpful teacher and also a respected and productive scholar.”

Schmitz is equally appreciative of his students. He has worked with four other Perry Scholars in the past, and he and Erin Gettling, ’03, were recently awarded a summer 2002 Perry for research on the Tet Offensive. Alex Rolfe, ’97, and Kristin Relyea, ’98, helped Schmitz complete his biography of Henry L. Stimson, one of the most significant statesmen of the first half of the 20th century, who set in motion many of the foreign relations policies that Schmitz studies today.

Eugene Hansen, ’99 conducted research for Thank God They’re on Our Side, Schmitz’s first volume on right-wing dictators. Vanessa Walker, ’00, like Lanning, worked with Schmitz on his second volume on U.S. policy and right wing dictators, which he is currently finishing.

Walker’s Perry research became part of her senior honors thesis. “I was able to dovetail this information into my thesis on Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy. We did archival research in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the National Security Archives in George Washington University and the Council on Foreign Relations Papers at Princeton’s library.” Seeing the actual texts, listening to the Nixon tapes, and “seeing things come together behind the scenes was fascinating.”

Walker and Schmitz have coauthored an article that developed from their research. The paper on President Carter’s foreign policy and human rights has been submitted to the journal, Diplomatic History.

“I have found this collaborative research to be very rewarding and beneficial, and believe that the students have gained just as much,” said Schmitz in the recent proposal for a Perry Scholarship with Erin Gettling. “Moreover, each summer the work has been more productive than I anticipated, allowing me to be further along on my projects than I originally projected. I believe these past efforts have been truly collaborative, and I expect that Erin and I will work together just as effectively.” By the end of the summer project, added Schmitz, Gettling will have experienced all aspects of historical research, from the conception of the project, through the research, discovery, analysis, and rethinking of ideas, to seeing how to begin to incorporate the work into the larger project.

“I know I benefit from the Perrys,” says Schmitz, “because the students always ask good questions, and at a certain point (after being taught what to look for) they assist me. In the archives particularly, when the student is working in one box of documents and I’m working in the other, I’m getting more done than I could possibly do by myself.” Of course, adds Schmitz, at that point he must trust that the student knows what kind of document he wants pulled and photocopied. That’s where the teaching comes in, and why Schmitz says he considers the summer awards to be another teaching tool.

“I love teaching,” says Schmitz. “I also like to write, and I love to research.” Whitman, he says, provides him with the opportunity to combine all three. As one of his former students, Walker says she doesn’t know how his schedule works, but “he’s always there, teaching history, coaching lacrosse, teaching core, running the history department; and then, we’d talk to him after class for an hour about the lecture or maybe the war in Bosnia — he’s always willing to engage on any subject.”

In class, Schmitz uses the traditional lecture and discussion format, which he says works for him. His students describe these lectures as animated and engaging — bringing to life historical events. His “favorite” class to teach, says Schmitz, is The United States Since the Second World War (1945 to Present) because it allows him to discuss the full context of how the United States has evolved. “It’s a serious way of trying to come to terms with how the U.S. became the nation it is.”

Much of Schmitz’s research and classroom discussions centers around the historical events he details in his books. An expert on U.S. 20th-century diplomatic history, he has worked on the major themes in this field — fascism, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the policies of national leaders such as Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war during World War II, and Senator Frank Church, Vietnam dissenter. To do this work, he has examined and analyzed the foreign policy documents of every president since Woodrow Wilson.

These documents often tell of secret foreign policy decisions that can make students angry and make them question U.S. actions and decisions, but Walker considers Schmitz’s research and teaching overall to be “a breath of honesty.

“In his newest books he reveals the not-so-savory side of our government’s foreign policy, but he never says that this country is a bad place. In fact you’d have a hard time finding someone who believes in America more. His work is really about provoking civic responsibility.”

Schmitz’s classes, teaching, and scholarship, she adds, “tune you into a larger context. This country’s actions have repercussions and we each have a role to play in helping America live up to its ideals.”

Walker, who is working this year at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., conducting health policy research, is applying for graduate school in history. As she applies to schools such as Cornell, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Wisconsin, she says she feels that she is following in the footsteps of Natalie Fousekis, ’90, who wrote a history honors thesis at Whitman, published an article with Schmitz, attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina, and is this year serving as assistant visiting professor of history at Whitman — filling in as Schmitz’s sabbatical replacement.

Schmitz’s nationally respected research and scholarship, his engaging lectures, his willingness to share documents, and his easy availability to students have brought him recognition on the campus. In 1987, just two years
into his career at Whitman, Schmitz won a Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award for his high teaching evaluations, commitment to students, and scholarship. Last year, he received the G. Thomas Edwards Award for the Integration of Teaching and Scholarship.

He counts these as his most significant professional achievements.

— Lenel Parish

Professor of history David Schmitz has won an NEH grant to complete his second book on U.S. policy and right-wing dictatorships.

* * *

“Being able to work with primary sources and sources that, due to national security issues, have been essentially frozen in time, is an experience that few under-graduates are allowed.”

— Mark Lanning, ’02

Professor of history David Schmitz played lacrosse at Roanoke College and coached at State University of New York, Stony Brook, before he came to Whitman in 1985. Left, he is pictured with his lacrosse team in a 1999 photo.