When Fischer finally arrived on the Brandeis campus, he walked to the then new faculty club, where he was scheduled to meet Professors Leonard Levy and John Roche, both experts on constitutional history. Then he asked about enrollment in the course, and discovered he would be instructing 1,000 students. There, Fischer learned, he would be enlisted to teach the introductory American history course. The third university Fischer traveled to was a large Western university with its very own airport. The debate was about the best methods of execution. Once the discussion started, however, Fischer discovered the focus wasn’t on the pros and cons of capital punishment. During his visit, the topic would be capital punishment. Next, Fischer says, he visited a Southern university, “a great and honorable place,” where he was delighted to learn that some members of the history department had a long-standing tradition of convening every Monday evening to discuss the great topics of the day. Instead, the pair was more interested in “who my grandparents had been and where I bought my sport coat,” Fischer recalls with a laugh. To his amazement, Fischer says, at the first “very old and eminent school in the Northeast” he met the president and the dean - a sure sign a meaty historical discussion with two intellectual heavyweights was imminent, or so he thought.
A little more than a half century ago, historian David Hackett Fischer was a newly minted PhD from Johns Hopkins University with offers in hand from four universities, including one from a very young, brash institution in Waltham.Ĭlearly in demand, the ambitious historian set out to do what any well-trained scholar would do: conduct primary research about each potential employer.
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