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The History Department in the Seventies

By Anya Michlberger

Despite growing student unrest and activism occasioned by the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, the rapid expansion of American higher education during the 1960s meant that �������� and President Robert White entered a new decade that seemed filled with promise. With nearly a decade of service as president behind him, White began January 1970 expecting to oversee the final stages of a massive campus renovation that would not only bring new academic buildings for the Colleges of the Arts and Business plus a new library, student center, and football stadium to campus but also decisively reorient the geography of the university away from its historic front campus.[1] Within a few months, however, the events of May 4, 1970, would make Kent State known for something other than an extensive building program. The tragedy of that afternoon would initiate a period of great turmoil for Kent State as much of the decade that followed became a struggle over how May 4 should be remembered and how to do more with less in the face of a poor national economy and regular budget cuts from the state. Three presidents would guide Kent State during this challenging time: White, whose handling of the events surrounding May 4 led to a premature end to his tenure in 1971, President Glenn Olds, who struggled to repair relations with faculty and students in the face of growing budgetary constraints during his six years in office, and President Brage Golding, whose controversial tenure at the end of the decade featured many organizational and philosophical changes. 

               Although many of the cultural, political, and economic battles that ensnared Kent State’s leaders during the 1970s affected Kent State’s History Department, the department could at least count on consistent leadership: Chair Henry Whitney, who first arrived at Kent in 1947 and whose tenure as the department’s chief administrative officer began in 1961, remained in place for the entire decade.[2]  Even while a darkening mood characterized both American society and campus politics, Whitney oversaw a department that often bucked larger trends.  Among the many positive developments for the History Department during the seventies, its graduate programs underwent important curricular changes and continued to expand amidst a challenging job market, conferring 90 MA degrees and 75 PhDs in total.  While the administration of its graduate programs sometimes brooked dissent from students, the value of the History Department’s MA and PhD programs became apparent when President Golding’s 1979 proposal to halve the department’s graduate budget sparked outrage from all corners of the department and was overturned. At the undergraduate level, meanwhile, the challenges the university faced did not prevent the faculty from creating an impressive set of new courses that expanded the department’s chronological and geographic reach.  The seventies also saw the History Department develop an interdisciplinary orientation and a prominence within the historical profession heretofore unseen as History faculty worked with other departments, both within and without Kent State, to produce engaging seminars, craft new academic programs, and organize important events off campus. Finally, in the wake of the crises of the early 1970s, Kent State’s History Department retained its historic commitment to helping the campus community better understand world events by providing historical context for a range of contemporary issues, with many of the professors who gained national and international reputations during the 1970s leading the charge. 

               Staffing levels for the History Department remained relatively stable during the 1970s with over two dozen historians working at Kent State for the entire decade, including two faculty members with joint appointments (Dr. Elliot Rudwick held a joint appointment in history and sociology while Dr. Harris Dante held a joint appointment in history and education); nearly as many individuals who were tenured or on the tenure track joined them for some portion of the decade according to the university catalog. [3] 

Faculty During the Decade by Name

*Created using Course Catalogs 1969-1979*

**An end date preceding 1979 means that the professor was dropped from the faculty list during the academic year starting with that date; same with a start date after 1970. So, someone with an end date of 1975 was present in the 1974-1975 catalog but was absent from the 1975-1976 catalog.

Teaching Fellows During the Decade

*Created using Course Catalogs 1969-1979 and Newsletter 1971-1972*

Staff by Year

*Created using Course Catalogs 1969-1979*

               Several members of the faculty representing a wide variety of specializations proved especially active during the decade. Dr. Lawrence Kaplan, an expert in American diplomatic history, played a key role in founding the Center for NATO Studies at the end of the decade.[4] Dr. August Meier, who specialized in African American history,  was not only active in the Civil Rights Movement but also recruited an impressive cohort of graduate students working in that field.[5] Dr. Yeh-Chien Wang, who worked in Chinese history, consulted with historians in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan seeking sources to tell the economic histories of those nations.[6] Dr. Jerome Friedman, meanwhile, successfully advocated for a Jewish Studies program in 1975.[7] The department’s historian of Africa, Dr. Felix Ekechi, conducted an oral history project of the Igbo nation.[8] Toward the end of the decade, Dr. Robert Swierenga was the only Ohio representative selected to attend the US-USSR historical summits.[9] Dr. John Hubbell was invited to speak at the 1971 Duquesne History Forum on the topic of “The Northern Democrats and Party Survival 1860-1861” and the 1972 Symposium on Ulysses S Grant. Dr. Kenneth Calkins presented his paper “The Impact of Orthodox Marxism on the German Social Democratic Movement” at the Conference Group for Social and Administrative History that same year.[10] In the 1974-75 academic year, Dr. Donald Wade, who specialized in Roman history, worked in conjunction with the Department of Romance Languages and Classics to offer courses on Horace and Virgil.[11] The following year, Dr. S. Victor Papacosma worked to develop a Hellenic studies program, a project that complemented Dr. Glee Wilson’s effort to develop a Romanian Civilization program.[12] Wilson also organized a chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America at Kent State in 1971.[13]

               In addition to regular staff, the History Department in the 1970s also had a large complement of Teaching Assistants and Teaching Fellows, part and parcel of the early 1960s decision to make the History Department a centerpiece of Kent State’s commitment to graduate education. Teaching Assistants were MA or PhD students who received a stipend for teaching one credit hour per semester, with a faculty member lecturing for the other two hours of the course. Some Teaching Assistants, however, were allowed to teach more.  As the January 1970 quarter commenced, the History Department employed thirty-five Teaching Assistants, all but ten of whom went on to receive at least one graduate degree from Kent State.[14] Teaching Fellows, meanwhile, were doctoral students who received multi-year contracts to teach after having passed their doctoral exams.  (While “Teaching Assistant” has morphed into today’s term “Graduate Assistant,” there is no contemporary equivalent to the “Teaching Fellow,” as funding offers for doctoral students in the early twenty-first century encompass some of the “ABD” period.)  As with assistantships, the Teaching Fellow position also provided a stipend and remission of registration fees. Teaching Fellows were expected to meet with discussion sections from larger (lower division) survey courses, teaching under the guidance of a senior staff member, and providing general assistance to students. If such an assignment was unavailable, a Teaching Fellow would be allowed to teach a single lower division course solo.[15] Records detailing the presence of Teaching Fellows tend to be ephemeral leaving their full numbers unknown, but we know of at least four Teaching Fellows during the 1970s. It was noted in the 1971-72 History Department newsletter, for example, that Teaching Fellows Brown and Thomas had replaced Fellows Dubis and Churchill, who had fulfilled their four-year contracts.[16] As befitting a country caught in the throes of “stagflation,” the stipends awarded assistants and fellows lost purchasing power over the decade, but even so they compare quite favorably to the $16,892 stipends for doctoral students ($15,832 for MA students) awarded by the department in the Fall of 2025, and would look even better had stipend levels not remained frozen after 1976. 

Assistantships and Teaching Fellowships by Year

*Chart created using offer letters and Graduate Program Brochures 1971-73 and 1976-79*

Equivalent Amounts in Today’s Money

*Created using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator*

               The broad range of specializations and interests held by the history faculty translated into a wide variety of course offerings each year. Not surprisingly, the undergraduate curriculum expanded to suit the needs of both faculty members and students.  Despite this expansion of offerings, however, the basic framework of the undergraduate major in history remained rather consistent throughout the decade. For history majors in the seventies, the foundations for the major were laid via sequential survey courses in the “History of Civilization” (the Paleolithic to the High Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages to 1815, and 1815 to the present) and the history of the United States (the “Formative Period,” the “Middle Period,” and the Twentieth Century). Beyond these required courses, someone looking to earn a history degree would have to complete 30 upper division hours. Of these, 8 had to be in US history, 8 had to be in European history since 1500, and 5hours had to come from a wide group of other history courses from the African, Ancient, Medieval, Latin American, Canadian, or Far Eastern categories. The remaining 9 hours could be completed with whatever upper-division history course the student wished.[17]

               As noted above, over the course of the 1970s, the History Department expanded the geographic and chronological coverage of its courses. Going into the decade, the department offered  courses in a wide variety of areas and subdisciplines of history, including US history, English/British history, Ancient, Roman, Greek, European, French, and Germanic history. In the US history category, the many different subfields included (but were not limited to) immigration history, African American, economic history, what was then called “diplomatic history,” and the history of the Civil War era.[18] In the following catalog, 1971-72, many courses were added in Asian history (the History of China to 1840, the History of Modern China, the History of Japan, and the Economic History of East Asia in Modern Times), new courses in the history of the Balkans and France, as well as a colloquium on immigrants in American history. Catalogs from the early 1970s reveal that many broad survey classes in fields like Africa and Latin America were split into multiple courses, creating more options and specificity in the catalog.  Even more focused courses could be split so that a single course on the Reformation era could be transformed via the curricular process into two courses to address the Protestant and Catholic reformations separately.[19] The following year, 1972-73, only one new course is added, a generic Colloquium in History.[20] In the 1973-74 academic year, the course numbering system was completely redone—this is when the “ten thousand level” nomenclature still in use at Kent State was adopted.  Because of the massive amount of work that accompanied renumbering every course,  only two new courses were added in the 1973-74 cycle: Revolution in the 20^th Century: A Comparative Analysis, and Eary Modern Europe 1598-1789.[21] Following the precedent set in the previous year, the 1974-75 course offerings also reveal only two new courses: the “History of African Civilization” and American Labor History.[22] The following year, like the last two, saw the addition of two new courses, but also the elimination of two courses: “Chinese Civilization” and HIST 39095, an undergraduate version of Selected Topics in History, were added at the expense of History of China to 1840 and Teaching Social Studies in High School.[23] The 1976-77 academic year saw the expansion of the Jewish Studies program with courses like Hebrew Civilization in the Ancient Near East, The Course of Modern Jewish History, and The Holocaust. The other new courses of that year showed a more eastward focus with History of Byzantine Civilization and History and Society of Modern Greece, while the longtime holdout History of Canada was dropped.[24] 1977-78 saw only one new course—Romanian Civilization.[25] The 1978-79 catalog saw two new courses: Zionism and Israel, likely an addition to the Jewish Studies Program, and Late Antiquity in the Near East, another in a series of eastward focused courses.[26]

Course Offering Changes by Year

*Created using Course Catalogs 1969-1979*

               As they expanded their coverage of the past, history professors also had a strong commitment to keeping courses current. In the early spring of 1979 came the announcement that the course on May 4 in the Great Contemporary Issues series would be transferred over to the History Department. In Fall 1979, Professor Swierenga offered a Christian Life Style course, cooperating with a local minister to examine radical teachings about political, economic, and social life. Later that fall, it was announced that Dr. Leonard would be offering a Vietnam War Era course in Spring 1980.  In Winter 1979, the Kent Stater advertised a World War II course, directed by Professor Newman, which would involve collaboration with many of the department’s professors. Each professor who participated in this course would add material through the lens of their expertise. Dr. Calkins would collaborate with Dr. Wang to talk about the rise of fascist governments in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Dr. Friedman would talk about the Jewish community during that time, while Dr. Kaplan would speak on wartime diplomacy and Dr. Hubbell would address propaganda and mobilization. Additionally, documentaries and an interview assignment would supplement traditional lectures. [27] 

               The graduate program in history underwent more programmatic changes than the undergraduate program during the seventies. For the Master’s, there were three different tracks a student could take. The double major in history required two specific courses (3 hours), two seminars or one seminar and one colloquium (6 hours), a thesis (6 hours), and reading knowledge of one foreign language. The remaining 15 hours had to be split between three categories: European History since 1500 (3-6), US History (3-6), and African, Ancient, Medieval, Latin American, and East Asian History (3-6). The second option had the same general courses and language requirements. The 15 remaining hours were split between the three categories with 6-9 in at least two of the three fields and the remaining 6-9 hours going toward the minor. The final option was a terminal Master’s degree. In addition to the two specific courses, 14-15 hours had to be distributed between at least two of the three fields. A terminal MA student was only required to take one seminar or colloquium and had 8-9 hours to put into an individualized minor. For this minor there were three options: departmental discipline courses (such as history and education), interdisciplinary courses (such as humanities and social sciences), and a thesis with a course from one of the two beforementioned categories.[28] In the 1975-76 Newsletter, Chairman Whitney announced that the MA program would be allowed to have more of a teaching focus, as the Education Department phased out its entire Master’s program.[29]

               As for the requirements of the doctorate, in the beginning of the decade (1970-71), students could choose from eleven different fields. They were required to choose one major field and two minor ones.[30] By the next calendar year (1971-72), two new fields had been added to the list and others had been changed, allowing for three different periods in American history. This was also the year the department offered a separate list of specialized fields, more specific than the first list, consisting of: France since 1815; Germany since 1815; European intellectual; US diplomatic; US social and intellectual; US economic; US Afro-American; US constitutional; and US immigration. One item from this list could be used for the three chosen fields, but the other two had to come from the general list.[31] By the 1972-73 academic year, doctoral students were required to elect a fourth field to concentrate in, which had to either be before 1500, or on a different continent than his or her major field.[32] The following year, the courses were renumbered, along with the undergrad courses. None of the requirements for the program changed, but two new courses were added: the Seminar in African History and the Colloquium in African History. From this point on, graduate program requirements remained unchanged for the rest of the decade.[33]   

Awarded Graduate Degrees in the 1970s

*Created using the Department List of Theses and Dissertations*

               In addition to providing a variety of courses, the History Department showed itself to be committed to educational experiences outside the classroom. During the 1970s, the department hosted several speakers and other events on engaging historical topics. In April 1971, the department co-hosted Professor Joseph Boskin of Boston University, who spoke on “protest, radicalism, and the study of contemporary history.”  That May, multiple professors from the department spoke at the programming put on by the Center of Human Understanding for International Awareness Month. Dr. Ekechi spoke on “The Extended Family System in Africa” and Dr. Wang spoke on “The May 4^th Movement in China—An Intellectual Phenomenon.” In May 1975, the History Department sponsored the conference “America and a ‘Candid World’” for the Bicentennial, inviting Wyoming Senator Gale McGee to speak about “The Enlightenment and the American Revolution.” Dr. Papacosma coordinated with Hiram College to offer a trip to Athens in the Spring Quarter that year. In April 1978, Dr. Balsama mediated a debate between two Youngstown State professors and a priest over treaties concerning control of the Panama Canal held at the Newman Center. In March 1979, in conjunction with the political science department, the History Department sponsored a lecture by James Bishop, who had served with the US Foreign Service in Africa and the South Pacific. That April, Dr. Bronislaw Nowak did a lecture through the residence hall education program about Poland in the 20th Century. The following month, Dr. James Gidney, in conjunction with the political science department, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the American Indian Rights Association, spoke in a seminar about the possibility of World War III, which was followed by workshops about the nuclear arms race, the Middle East, Indochina, and the draft. Dr. Wade offered a trip to Italy in the summer of 1979. The trip included many different sites: emperors’ villas at Tivoli and Capri; Etruscan tombs in Etruria; the Temple of Isis at Pozzuoli; as well as the cities of Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae.[34]

               While many things were changing both within the university and the department, the History Department faculty were also very active within the wider academic community. In addition to publishing numerous books and papers, many of the faculty were invited to speak at national and international conferences. Dr. Robert Swierenga participated in an educational exchange program with the Netherlands in 1975, allowing him access to emigration records to continue his research on Dutch immigration into America. He also attended a conference concerning the impact of computers on historical research in 1971. Dr. August Meier and his colleague Dr. Elliot Rudwick were consultants for the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders and the National Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence. Dr. Lawrence Kaplan was invited to conferences during the 1970s, including Duquesne University’s 6^th Annual History Forum in 1972, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute’s Invitational Conference to Mark the 25^th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Korean Conflict in 1975, and one on NATO spanning different locations in Europe in 1976.[35]

  While institutional records most often preserve the perspectives of campus leaders and faculty members, the history of the 1970s would not be complete without acknowledging students’ continuing commitment to having their voices heard.  While one often connects student protest to the 1960s, the generation of students found at Kent State in the 1970s were uncowed by the events of May 4. Unsurprisingly, the denouement of the United States’s involvement in Vietnam continued to agitate students, starting with the crucial role played by history graduate students in organizing campus protests against  President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia on May 1^st, 1970.[36]  When administrators and faculty returned to campus in the fall of 1970, they discovered that students (including history students) were, if anything, even more committed to advocating for issues of importance to them.  Sometimes these issues concerned the ordinary practices of university life—for example, in the summer of 1971, a message from the Student Ombuds was forwarded to all history instructors that specifically noted that many history students had complained about not knowing or understanding course requirements and grading policies. The notice recommended giving students written copies of course policies, which is still done today.[37] Student voices would also be raised in defense of cherished instructors, as happened in January 1974, when student Robin Fraley wrote a piece in the Kent Stater announcing her outrage that the contract of an particularly effective Teaching Fellow had not been renewed. She recounted her struggle with learning history after having a particularly boring professor and explained how she found Professor Thomas to be the kind of professor who could make history interesting for her.[38] According to an article submitted by a staff member days later, Fraley was joined by two other students in her protest against Thomas’ cut. The staff member explained that Thomas had signed a temporary contract with a three-year limit, which was common practice for PhD candidates who were still working on their dissertations, and included statements from Thomas himself, to prove that he knew about the limit and had no objections to it.[39] While this was not likely the response that the students were hoping for, it shows that the department was at least willing to respond to students’ concerns. Two years later, another student brought his grievances concerning the History Department to the attention of the Kent Stater. Robert Kuhnen was extremely disappointed with how funds were being allocated within the university and made his point through a most impressionable combination of facts and sarcasm.  He brought to the forefront the plight of the American Studies program, while comparing it to the expenditures of the Athletic Department:

Of course, money’s tight. Why, the Athletic Department only got $10,543.72 for postage last year. No, that does not include the $30,885.93 they spent on phone bills…  that is the same Athletic Department which took $804,757.56 from the Instructional and General Fund in order to balance their gigantic deficit.

Well, the point of all this is that the American Studies Program has never been allocated what the Athletic Department spends just on stamps.[40]

In October 1978, history graduate students’ dissatisfaction with library circulation policies reached the attention of the Stater. A statement from the graduate student spokesperson explained that, since graduate students had 60+ books out at a time, renewing them every two weeks was a pain. In the article, Dr. Balsama (who was faculty assistant to the President) was very supportive of the students, and actively worked with the library to come up with solutions, which were presented in the article.[41]

               Perhaps the most notable example of student protest came at the end of the decade in January 1979.   Barely fifteen years after creating doctoral programs at Kent State and making the History Department a cornerstone of that effort, Kent State administrators for the first—but not the last—time decided that history’s graduate program was an extravagance that could no longer be maintained. In response to President Golding’s proposed budget cuts, history graduate students loudly attacked the proposal. Hired from a California university with the intent of cleaning up the university’s finances, Golding assessed all graduate programs and concluded that the History Department was a “non-productive department,” that should be phased out.  The Graduate History Council disagreed completely; their response prefigured budget battles that have continued to the present day.  In the moment, the Graduate History Council issued a resolution explaining their belief that Golding wrote off the many qualitative benefits of the history graduate program and explained that graduate students provided useful services in bridging the gap between students and professors as well as doing much of the grading and administrative tasks for large lecture courses. The Council also held the view that graduate assistantships only accounted for a small portion of the budget and observed that since very few graduate-only courses were taught, cutting the graduate program would not significantly reduce the number of courses that needed to be taught. They also mentioned that faculty quality was at stake since many professors came to Kent State specifically to work with graduate students.  While the History Department would eventually win this battle, in retrospect Golding’s proposal reads like the first battle in a much larger campaign.  In an article later that year, Bob Swierenga noted that under Golding’s proposed budget history’s graduate program would “nearly be cut in half” and perceptively observed that given such financial pressures, “At some point the program cannot remain viable. I think we’re very near that point now.”[42]

               Never far from the surface, tensions over how to properly remember the tragedy of May 4^th seriously affected the relationship between students and the administration for most of the decade. Approaching the 1-year anniversary of the tragedy, students, faculty, and Kent residents gathered for a candlelit vigil on May 3, 1971. The vigil passed without incident, and the following morning, President White conducted the official memorial ceremony. Many students were dissatisfied with this, and the student-led Mayday Coalition staged a sit-in at Rockwell Hall. The next year, demonstrations in late April ended with the state prohibiting further protests until May 10^th. By May 3^rd, a suit was filed against the order, and the candlelight vigil went on as planned. President Olds invited George Wald to speak at the commemoration, and the May 4 United Front put on an alternate program, arguing that the guardsmen were the ones who needed instruction on peaceful change. The new gym, which was proposed to be built on the site of the shootings, also became an object of great controversy between students and administration. On the seventh anniversary of the tragedy, speakers and students resolved to oppose the building of the gym on the shooting site. During their march, they found trustees conducting business as normal on May 4, a day that had become nigh-sacred to the students. The sit-in that followed eventually led to an assurance that the gym would not be built on the shooting site. Mistrustful of the administration’s promises, students set up a tent on Blanket Hill (the proposed building site), leading to the 62-day long Tent City settlement.[43]

               Amidst the backdrop of battles over the legacy of May 4, professors also remained at odds with the administration.  In late fall 1973, the administration announced possible faculty reductions due to budget constraints, news that was received poorly by a faculty that was going on its third year without sabbaticals and other traditional benefits. In 1975, the Faculty Senate resolved to engage in collective bargaining and voted to have the United Faculty Professional Association (UFPA) as its bargaining agent. By April 1976, the administration had rejected a slew of proposals allowing professors to remain without stretching the budget, and on the 15^th sent a document that would destroy the entire arrangement if signed. Twelve days later, the faculty voted no confidence in Olds and the administration, which did not require him to resign, but to start labor negotiations in summer and issue statements of intent instead of contracts.[44]

               In addition to the budget problems which afflicted both the History Department and the university, history graduate students confronted a narrowing market for their skills. As early as the 1972-73 academic year, the History Department Newsletter noted that new PhDs were having trouble finding employment, and subsequent issues exhorted professors to spread the word of any employment opportunities for PhDs. Chairman Henry Whitney, who wrote the newsletters, noted that the History Department was suffering from shrinking enrollment and “the decline experienced by the College of Education and in the number of Social Studies majors has had a particularly direct and adverse effect.” Whitney also expresses “an enduring concern . . . for the new PhD’s and ABD’s who enter the job market in this period of depression.”[45]

               However well-intentioned Dr. Whitney’s “enduring concern” might have been, the new PhD author of “The Other Side: What the Chairman Forgot to Tell Us in His ‘History Department Newsletter’” was quick to point out that, “Unfortunately for us [meaning new PhDs] (but not Dr. Whitney), ‘enduring concern’ is a poor surrogate for food.” He/she suggests that Dr. Whitney should “utilize a portion of the money he saved by denying the fellows a four hundred dollar raise for the 1973-74 academic year to relieve the pangs of the jobless ‘new PhD’s and ABD’s.’” The author of this scathing editorial also included many accusations of preferential treatment of certain PhD students over others. One specific example the writer cited was that of a fellow doctoral student who was granted a special dispensation to only take a few weeks to prepare for the candidacy exam, and then also received a four-year dissertation grant “normally reserved for those candidates who have demonstrated the ability to pass exams without any kind of special aid.”  The editorial went on to scrutinize the Teaching Fellow Committee’s report that morale was high when there were rumors of the teaching fellows nearing revolt only that fall. It also pointed out that Dr. Whitney created a special 4^th year grant with a stipend of $200 more per quarter than a teaching fellow’s salary, after having just denied them a raise. This special grant was then given to a student ineligible for the normal 4^th year grant. Yet, the most blatant offense against the PhD students in the writer’s eyes was the “serf-like practice” of allowing most candidates to only teach courses in the Western Civilization series, while upper division courses were being taught by Dr. Meier’s students “regardless of candidacy status.”[46] 

               Charges of inequity in teaching assignments hit hard among a graduate student cohort worried about their futures.  The academic job market did not improve as the decade came to a close, with Dean of the Graduate College Dr. Kenneth Hoving noting in April 1979 that he had run across, “some of the best, top students from some of the best schools who can’t find academic employment.” Hoving explained that by the end of the seventies, colleges were nearing the end of enrollment increases prompted by the “Baby Boom” and would do well to hang on to the student populations they then had.  Meanwhile, the time required to complete advanced graduate degrees meant that the history discipline, like many others, was continuing to churn out increasing numbers of PhDs in a world with fewer academic jobs; as Hoving observed, PhDs were still being earned faster than people in jobs requiring PhDs were retiring. This led some Kent State historians to ponder alternative career paths for their students: Bob Swierenga, for instance, commented that the “broadening effect” approach that the English Department adopted was the only realistic remedy to the employment problem. “Increasingly history graduates are going into public history archives, libraries, state historical societies,” he stated, a response that would drew increasing institutional interest in the years to come.[47] 

              The 1970s was a time of great change for the History Department--good and bad. Starting with the tragedy of May 4 (in which history students played a conspicuous part) and ending with a campus strained by tense relationships and facing budgetary problems, the seventies served as a transitional decade for both the university and the History Department.  Importantly, history students retained their voices throughout the decade and tackled concerns ranging from departmental hiring practices to the survival of programs jeopardized by funding issues. At the same time, Kent’s history faculty was, at its best, very active in their fields and on campus throughout the decade.  Working hard to retain student interest through offering new and relevant courses, the roughly stable number of historians employed by Kent State in the 1970s were also able to build out their undergraduate and graduate curriculums according to their preferred vision for each.   Professionally, KSU historians continued to publish important scholarship and to present their findings in a diverse array of settings.  Their collective commitment to research undoubtedly helped faculty members cope with changing university administrations and the emergence of collective bargaining, which ended well thanks to the assistance of faculty members such as John Hubbell and Ken Calkins. That said, the pressure put on the graduate program at the end of the decade presaged future developments.   Having weathered the turmoil of the 1970s, the department looked to the 1980s with apprehension and in a precarious position, with an impaired ability to provide assistantships and teaching fellowships.  And, for what seemed like the first time, the History Department was unable to convince university administrators to replace departing faculty in key fields—an inability made crystal clear by the 1979 retirement of Professor Alfred Levin, the  head of the Russian and Soviet Union Studies program and the only KSU historian specializing in Russian or Soviet history.  Even as the Cold War once again started to heat up, the claim that the university and students would benefit from the presence of an expert on the Soviet Union made no headway with campus decision makers.[48]