Oscar Handlin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1915-09-29)September 29, 1915 New York City, US |
| Died | September 20, 2011(2011-09-20) (aged 95) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3, includingDavid P. Handlin |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize (1952) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Academic advisor | Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
| Sub-discipline | |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Doctoral students | |
| Notable students | |
| Main interests | History of immigration to the United States |
| Notable works | The Uprooted (1951) |
Oscar Handlin (September 29, 1915 – September 20, 2011) was an American historian. As a professor of history atHarvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promotesocial andethnic history, virtually inventing the field of immigration history in the 1950s. Handlin won the 1952Pulitzer Prize for History forThe Uprooted (1951).[7][8] Handlin's 1965 testimony before Congress played an important role in passage of theImmigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that abolished the discriminatory immigration quota system. According to historian James Grossman, "He reoriented the whole picture of the American story from the view that America was built on the spirit of the Wild West, to the idea that we are a nation of immigrants."[9]
Handlin was born inBrooklyn,New York City, on September 29, 1915,[10] the eldest of three children of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His mother, the former Ida Yanowitz, came to the United States in 1904 and worked in the garment industry. His father, Joseph, immigrated in 1913 after attending a commercial college in Ukraine and being stationed inHarbin, China, as a soldier during theRusso-Japanese War. Handlin's parents were passionately devoted to literature and the life of the mind. Their experience of religious persecution inCzarist Russia made them fiercely devoted to democracy and social justice (Handlin was a proto-"red diaper baby"). The couple owned a grocery store, the success of which along with real estate investments enabled them to send their children, Oscar, Nathan, and Sarah, to Harvard.[11]
Known for his prodigious memory that allowed him to attend classes without taking notes, in 1930, Handlin enteredBrooklyn College at age 15, graduating in 1934, then earning aMaster of Arts degree fromHarvard University in 1935, after which he won aFrederick Sheldon Fellowship for research in Europe. "'I don't know why,' Dr. Handlin joked in a 1952 [Boston] Globe interview. 'I guess they just liked my face.' Traveling in England, Ireland, Italy, and France, he began assembling material that would become his first book 'Boston's Immigrants, 1790–1865' [1941]."[1]
Between 1936 and 1938, Handlin taught history atBrooklyn College before reenteringHarvard University.
According to Handlin, it wasArthur M. Schlesinger Sr. who "directed my attention to the subjects of social history that have since occupied much of my attention,"[citation needed] urging Handlin to write his dissertation on immigration to Boston in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.In 1940 he received hisPhD, joining the faculty in 1939 and remaining until 1986, his work centering around the topic of immigrants in the US and their influence on culture.
During his time as a graduate student at Harvard, Handlin was denied the position of vice president in theHenry Adams Club for being Jewish.[12] He was among the first Jewish scholars appointed to a full professorship at Harvard.[13] He also taught at theHarvard Extension School.[14] He was a staunch anti-Communist andVietnam War hawk in the 1960s.[15]
Handlin was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1999.[16]
He died at age 95 on September 20, 2011, inCambridge,Massachusetts.[1]
Handlin was very active as a scholarly organizer and administrator. In the Harvard history department he helped create theCenter for the Study of the History of Liberty in America, and directed it from 1958 to 1967; he also chaired theCharles Warren Center for Studies in American History from 1965 to 1973. From 1962 to 1966 he was a top official of theUnited States Board of Foreign Scholarships, which awardsFulbright scholarships. He served on the board of overseers ofBrandeis University, and was a trustee of theNew York Public Library. He was Harvard's chief librarian from 1979 to 1984 and acting director of theHarvard University Press in 1972.[1]
In 1972–73 Handlin was theHarold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History atOxford University.
Among Handlin's many important contributions was his pioneering work on immigration to America. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning bookThe Uprooted (1951), he opens with the famous declaration: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrantswere American history."[17] In the process, Handlin laid the ground for study of immigration by the succeeding generation of historians, even though many of them would dispute his immigrant archetype of a peasant guided primarily by religious conviction, having no familiarity with wage work or urban settings, and having experienced migration first and foremost as alienation from family, community, and tradition.[18]
Handlin was one of the most prolific and influential American historians of the 20th century. As an American historian and educator he was noted for his in depth examination of American immigration history, ethnic history, and social history. His dissertation (1941) was published as his first bookBoston's Immigrants, 1790–1865: A Study in Acculturation (1941).[19] The book was highly regarded for its innovative research on sociological concepts and census data. In 1941 it won the prestigiousJohn H. Dunning Prize from theAmerican Historical Association as outstanding historical work published by a young scholar. TheAmerican Journal of Sociology described it as "the first historical case study of the impact of immigrants upon a particular society and the adjustment of the immigrants to that society. The writer has opened a new field for historical research and has also made a significant contribution to the literature of race and culture contacts."[20]
In 1947, he and his first wifeMary Flug Handlin publishedCommonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774-1861, which revealed for the first time the importance of political action in the development of the US free enterprise system.[citation needed]
By the late 1950s, Oscar Handlin was publishing a book nearly every year, covering the fields of civil rights, liberty, ethnicity, urban history, the history of education, foreign affairs, migration, biography, adolescence, even a book of poetry. Sometimes he wrote collaboratively with his first wife Mary Flug Handlin and, after her 1976 death, with his second wifeLilian Bombach, whom he married in 1977.[1]
In the 1960s, Handlin published 11 books, wrote a monthly column forThe Atlantic Monthly, directed theCenter for the Study of Liberty in America, helped manage a commercial television station in Boston, chaired a board that oversawFulbright Scholarship awards, all in addition to his teaching duties at Harvard. From 1979 to 1983 he was director of theHarvard University Library. He also edited a 42-volume collection of books on subjects relating to immigration and ethnicity,The American Immigration Collection (1969). During the next three decades, Handlin published 12 more books, many on the subject of liberty, and edited at least 20 biographies. He continued his work with immigrants withFrom the Outer World (1997), which collected the travel accounts of visitors to the United States from non-European countries.[11]
Oscar Handlin argued that racism was a by-product of slavery, and that the main focus was on the fact that slaves, like indentured servants, were regarded as inferior because of their status, not necessarily because of their race.[21]
In 1964, Handlin publishedFire Bell in the Night: The Crisis in Civil Rights, which criticized white supremacists and suburban liberals, but also criticized leftists for their Communist-inspired solutions such as quotas, school busing, and affirmative action, writing: "Preferential treatment demands a departure from the ideal which judges individuals by their own merits rather than by their affiliations."[citation needed]
In March 1961, Handlin signed anACLU-organized petition of scholars demanding that theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) cease operations.[22]
In 1961, Handlin publishedThe Distortion of America, his critique of the attractions of Communism. The 1996 second edition coversYugoslavia,China, andArthur Koestler. "The study of the human past persuades me that, despite the frequent risks of failure, man has the capacity to make order and find purpose in the world in which he lives when he uses the power of his reason to do so."
His long-time colleagueBernard Bailyn noted Handlin's commitment to providing a historical perspective on policy issues:[23]
He published widely on all the major public issues of the time: racism, group life, anti-Semitism, prejudice, the Bill of Rights, the business corporation, ethnicity, and the Jews and other groups in American society. He was liberal in social controversies, especially those related to immigration, race, social justice, and equal opportunity. In the Vietnam era, however, shocked by what he took to be the naive views of the left-leaning professoriate, he turned to the right and became deeply conservative in his politics.
In 1979, Handlin publishedTruth in History, which criticizedNew Left historians and the corruption of American universities with faddishness, hiring quotas, overspecialization and fragmentation in history studies, and deficiencies in graduate training.[citation needed]
In December 1967, Handlin was one of 14 anti-Communist American scholars who co-wrote a report for theFreedom House Public Affairs Institute, which argued that disaster would strike if the US withdrew from Vietnam.[24] In 1988, Handlin,John Silber, et al. founded the conservativeNational Association of Scholars.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History 1972 | Succeeded by |
| Awards | ||
| Preceded by | Pulitzer Prize for History 1952 | Succeeded by |
