Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Department Trip to Cuba



Right after finals week the Political Science Department is headed to Cuba!  Department Chair Dr. Chuck Moran and I will be leading a group of students, alumni, and friends of the university to the island nation.





We will depart on May 20 and stay in country until May 28.  While there we will spend time in Old Havana and Trinidad, as well as visit the Escambray Mountain Range.  






Cuba is of great interest to students of political science because of its revolutionary past and its promising future.  It is of course the location of the Cuban Revolution led by Che Guevera and Fidel Castro.





From an American political perspective, few figures loomed so large over the height of the Cold War.  These men grew into symbols of both the specter of anti-capitalist socialization and the international boogeyman of communist expansion.  





Cuba was where JFK’s failed Bay of Pigs debacle took place, as well as the backdrop for the Cuban Missile Crisis.  No closer has humanity come to destroying itself than those tension filled days in October of 1962.





For now Cuba stands as a country in transition from a closed economy to a blossoming member of the world community.  While the small nation’s fate is not yet written, and the winds of change might at least temporarily stall forward progress, it seems as if the country is opening up its borders.  Likewise, the world community is embracing Cuba.  In a few years Cuba will likely have changed substantially into something quite different than what it is today.  This is a once in a lifetime chance to visit a culture that only now opening its arms to its neighbors.



On a personal note, this trip is meaningful to me as a Rockhurst political science alum.  While a student here I traveled to China, Hong Kong, Israel, and Russia with Dr. Moran and Dr. Frank Smist of the political science department.  It is a joy to be making this voyage with students of my own as a member of the faculty.  I invite anyone who has an interest in this joining myself and Dr. Chuck Moran on this journey to contact me at matthew.beverlin@rockhurst.edu.  Initial deposits are due on February 20th, so don’t delay! 

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

AHA Conference in D.C.



Each semester I get the joy of meeting “new” students to teach.  I use quotation marks because Rockhurst is a small enough place that I have had many of them in classes before, or perhaps I’ve been on a service trip with them or serve as their academic adviser.  Even if the mix of faces is a blend of new people and the familiar, the group dynamic of the classroom is always unique.  

Not to mention the subject matter.  Because we have a small department I have the privilege of rotating through a variety of course topics.  This journey through different ideas keeps my teaching job fresh!   I can’t imagine spending a career teaching say an introductory course and one or two upper level seminars.  While it can be challenging to keep up with such a broad scope of subject matter, I feel very intellectually alive by the dynamic.  Yet there is one commonality I have come to see across the subtopics of my discipline: history matters.  

Over break I attended my first history conference: the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.  It was held in Washington D.C., a capital city filled with mammoth scale statues, museums, and office complexes.  There is the epic grandeur of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the somber starkness of Arlington National Cemetery, and the majestic Capital Mall: backdrop to so many historical events.  Pierre L’Enfant’s Washington has been built block by block with these granite and limestone edifices that celebrate and memorialize our collective past but also stake out history’s claim on our future.  

One of the first lessons of American government is to explain what is meant by political scientists when they write about “institutions.”  It’s an early step into college level abstraction to stop thinking of political institutions as buildings, official seals, and even collections of people; but rather as the rules and procedures that shape behavior.  The budget of this year is based on what?  Last year’s budget.  We don’t write the whole thing from scratch each year, in an attempt to rebirth America every 12 months.  We just sand down the edges, move around a few things, and of course build on a bit.

The government of this country is not giant buildings or cabinet departments, but better understood as the continuing effort to solve collective problems within a decision-making framework.  This is where history comes into the social science, because this framework is a lingering response not to today’s challenges, but yesterday’s.  Semi-eroded or on life support, the tools we have in our nation’s garage to address 2014 were purchased to solve problems at various points in the past.  

For instance, the most recent omnibus spending bill capped the number of TSA agents who can be hired.  So as we move over a decade past 9/11, and American involvement in the Middle East is fading, an important institution established to protect our safety is losing its head of steam…but yet remains, chugging along.   If history is any guide it will likely remain for quite some time, even as external threats to our country change quickly.