Hans Rosenberg as a Teacher: A Few Personal Notes

In: Central European history, Band 24, Heft 1, S. 58-63

Abstract

When I returned from a long summer in Israel, following the Six Days War of June 1967, Berkeley seemed to belong to an altogether different universe. Things that had been upper-most in my mind, indeed in everyone's mind, during those months in Jerusalem were of marginal interest to the bustling students and respectable faculty members on campus. In comparison with the hectic atmosphere in Israel at that time, even the most politically involved campus in the United States appeared like the proverbial ivory tower. After a brief hiatus during which everyone had breathlessly observed the events of the war in the Middle East, these events quickly receded into the background, and on the shores of the Pacific other issues seemed far more important. While activists were busily preparing an attack on United States government policy in Vietnam, everyone else, secluded in the innumerable Berkeley classrooms, seemed concerned with purely academic matters.