The University Record, March 8, 1999
Hollinger to deliver Academic and Intellectual Freedom Lecture March 15
By Jane R. Elgass
David A. Hollinger, Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver the ninth annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom, “Universities and Cosmopolitanism,” at 4 p.m. March 15 in the Amphitheater, Rackham Building.
The annual free, public lecture is named for three faculty members—Chandler Davis, Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson—who in 1954 were called to testify before a Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities. All invoked constitutional rights and refused to answer questions about their political associations.
The three were suspended from the University. Markert was subsequently reinstated and Davis and Nickerson were dismissed.
Hollinger, who was professor of history at the U-M until moving to Berkeley in 1992, will discuss some of the political dilemmas of universities in recent years, and will distinguish these dilemmas from those of the McCarthy Era. He also will address the contemporary cosmopolitan movement for its potential relevance to the defense of universities as distinctive institutions.
One chapter in his most recent book, Science, Jews and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth Century American Intellectual History, is a revised version of a lecture on the history of the U-M spanning the years 1938–88 that he delivered on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Graduate School.
His other books include Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historigraphy of Ideas and Morris R. Cohen and the Scientific Ideal.
Hollinger is the co-editor with Charles Capper of The American Intellectual Tradition: A Sourcebook. Recent publications include articles in Daedalus, Representations, Journal of American History and Public Historian.
Hollinger was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997. Other honors include receipt of the U-M’s Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Institute for Advanced Study and selection as the History of Science Society’s Distinguished Lecturer.
He is a trustee of the National Humanities Center, editor of The Dictionary of American History and the American National Biography, and on the editorial boards of The Journal of the History of Ideas and Comparative Studies in Society and History.
Active in faculty governance throughout his academic career, Hollinger served on the Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs while at the U-M. He is chair of the Budget Committee at Berkeley and a member of the Council of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate.
This year’s lecture is sponsored by the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund, the U-M Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the Office of the President, the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs and the Department of History.
Refreshments will be served immediately following the lecture.
