Interview with Dr. Steven J. Diner

Interview with Dr. Steven J. Diner

Diner, Steven ; Gashurov, Irene

2019-07-08

In Copyright

Dr. Steven Diner.mp3

2019-07-08

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

70:02 minutes

fca0a349-cc9a-4a72-968d-aa8e5302782f

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Steven J. Diner
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 8 July 2019
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(Start of Interview)

SD: 00:03
Hi, I am Steven Diner. I received a bachelor's degree from Harpur College in 1966, and then a master's degree in history in 1968, and we are doing an interview here in my apartment in Manhattan. And anything else?

IG: 00:33
That is, that is it. That is very good as an introduction. So, give us, Dr. Diner, give us a little bit of background on where you grew up, what your parents did, whether they had expectations for you and your siblings, if you had them going on to higher education.

SD: 00:52
Yes, I grew up in the Bronx. My parents were both immigrants. My father from Russia, my mother from Poland, and they both came in the early 1920s, and they definitely, you know, as in a sense just the norm as Jewish parents, they put great emphasis on education, and while they did not necessarily expect me to become a professor, they certainly expected me, you know, definitely to get a college degree, and you know, to work in one of the professions, and but there is a side issue here that is kind of interesting. All of my friends, all of my cousins went to City College or Hunter College, which was in the Bronx family, and I got this idea that I wanted to go out of town, and my mother was just appalled at the idea that I would go out of town. I mean, I applied to Harpur College, and I got a, you know, New York State scholarship, and you know, so I could it was not very expensive; I could afford it, and I loved it, but you know she used to tell the, you know, people would say to her, "Well, where is Steven going to college?" and said, "Oh, he is going to Harpur College," and they say, "Oh, why did he not get into City College?" And of course, Harpur was much more selective than City College at that point. But she, you know, she wanted me to live at home, and she was embarrassed.

IG: 02:57
And-and probably they still have this idea about City College having the reputation that it did in the early part of the 20th century.

SD: 03:06
Oh yeah, no question.

IG: 03:08
Because it produced a number of Nobel laureates, as we know. And but we are not here to talk about City College.

SD: 03:14
Yeah.

IG: 03:15
So, what were your first impressions coming to Harpur College, and why? First of all, why did you choose Harpur College rather than another SUNY?

SD: 03:24
Well, I told you I wanted to go out of town, and I could not afford a private university, so I looked at SUNY. And at the time, I remember my- the high school counselor who went to said, "Oh well, if you want to go to SUNY, there are just two possibilities: Binghamton and Long Island Center at Oyster Bay, which is now SUNY Stony Brook, yeah, and everything else was a teachers' college, and you know that is not what I wanted to do. So that is how I got to Harpur College.

IG: 04:16
And so, what reputation did it have at the time?

SD: 04:21
Well, before I got the idea that I wanted to, you know, go out of town, I did not know anything about it. I am not even sure I had heard of it, you know, but-but that is not unusual. I was a high school student, but when I got interested in it, it definitely had a reputation as a very-very selective, you know, elite residential school that was not expensive, and you know, is a good place to go.

IG: 05:03
So, what were your first impressions? You were a city kid. You came to this very rural environment, and I mean, there-there are a lot of kids from New York City and Long Island, so you felt at home.

SD: 05:17
Yes, that is right.

IG: 05:18
Yeah, and did- had you encounter people from the from upstate New York? Did you before that?

SD: 05:30
Before that, no.

IG: 05:32
Yeah.

SD: 05:33
No. But it is interesting. I had two roommates my freshman year; the dorms, they were growing rapidly, and they did not have enough space. They turned two-room, two-person dorm rooms into three. You know, with an upper tier, and so my two roommates in freshman year, both were Jewish, as I am, but one of them was from Buffalo, and the other from the New York area, and I was fascinated, and I kept asking him, "What is it like to be a Jew in Buffalo, of all places, and you know what is it like to live in Buffalo?" This seemed to me very, very exotic, which shows the limitations of my exposure.

IG: 06:35
Right, and so tell us a little bit about you, you know, oh, before that, did you have an idea of what you wanted to study, what you wanted, did you have career aspirations at that point?

SD: 06:54
Yes-yes, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.

IG: 07:00
Yeah.

SD: 07:00
But I was very interested in history, and it seemed like history was an appropriate, you know, major for somebody who wanted to-to go to law school. But can I just-

IG: 07:00
Yes-yes-yes.

SD: 07:00
-follow up? You asked how I reacted to the campus. I loved it. It just seemed to me extremely different than, you know, going to City College or something like that, and I loved the idea that we all lived on campus, and that, you know, we had this relatively small community, and we could interact with each other and-and the like. It is interesting because, in retrospect, most of my career, I have been involved with urban universities and, you know, promoting the connection between cities and higher education and so on. But I did not feel that at that point because I guess it was just such a major departure from growing up in New York.

IG: 08:09
That is interesting. That is interesting, and-and-and certainly there is a different experience that you would get from living in this community rather than being a commuter student, right?

SD: 08:20
Yes. Yes.

IG: 08:21
So, how did you, you know, first experience the academics? Did you feel that you were prepared for the courses that you had taken? And what courses made an impression? What faculty members? What courses made an impression? Do you remember?

SD: 08:43
Well, I- yes, I felt prepared. I mean, I did not feel.

IG: 08:51
And I am sorry. What high school did you go to?

SD: 08:53
Oh, I went to the High School of Music and Arts, which is now LaGuardia High School.

IG: 09:00
How interesting!

SD: 09:00
But back then, you know what they did was they merged two different schools: high school musician art and high school performing arts, and they built, you know, building Lincoln Center. But back then, the high school musician art was on basically on the campus of City College. It was 135th Street and Convent Avenue, and it was, you know it was a wonderful school. It was a school that emphasized, you know, or basically the ideology of the school was most of you will not become professional artists or musicians, but we want you to get a rigorous academic education and have either music or art as central to your life in the future, and that is exactly that worked for me. I, you know, I sing in a chorus now, and I did for-for many years, you know, when I was younger, and you know, I am very big on music.

IG: 10:07
Are you a tenor of bass?

SD: 10:08
Bass, yeah.

IG: 10:10
So that that that is your background. And did you sing at Harpur College? Was there a choir?

SD: 10:19
There was a chorus, and I think I sang with it briefly, but I did not like it. I do not remember why, but you know, I sang for a while, and then-then I stopped.

IG: 10:40
So, you know any courses, faculty members that made an impression, and why?

SD: 10:49
Yeah. Well, probably the faculty member I was closest to was Al Rollins, who was a historian. Basically, he was a historian of post-World War II American history, which at that point seemed, you know, pretty exotic. Well, not exotic, but, you know, studying history 10 years ago, 20 years ago. But he was a marvelous teacher, and you know, so. And then he went on to become a dean and then a president. He was president of the universities in Virginia. I am forgetting, and I remember visiting him there, and we-we remained in close touch. He was not at Binghamton all that long, but he was there basically the time that I was an undergraduate and my master's, and that was a, that was a key.

IG: 12:00
So-so, you said that it was novel for you to think of history as something recent that you would study.

SD: 12:08
That you would study recent history. Yeah.

IG: 12:10
So, what, what, how was that recent history presented? You know, just give us a couple of examples that were eye-opening to you.

SD: 12:26
Not sure I can give you an example.

IG: 12:31
Just general.

SD: 12:33
Yeah. Well, here-here I was in a history class, and we were discussing the presidency of Truman. And you know, at this point in the (19)60s, this was Kennedy, and there was not a whole lot of space, so to speak, between those we were studying and the present. And given my more traditional view of history, it seemed unusual that we would be dealing with things so modern, so recent. But I loved it. I enjoyed it a great deal.

IG: 13:15
Did that, did that somehow determine your focus later on as a historian of- what did you study in your graduate?

SD: 13:26
Okay, well, I studied U.S. history and in particular 20th-century U.S. history. So yeah, in that sense, yeah, I pursued that. You know that line of-of work, although not although, but the bulk of my scholarly writing has been on the history of American higher education. You know, that was my first book, you know, which was my doctoral dissertation, and then my more recent book, and various articles in between.

IG: 14:13
That is a great field, a fascinating field.

SD: 14:25
Oh yeah.

IG: 14:25
How did you find the caliber of your students? Did they participate in- what- what kind of discussions did you touch upon present-day politics in your classes with Dr. Rollins, Professor Rollins?

SD: 14:48
A little bit. But it was, I think, the norm at the time where you do not discuss contemporary politics in class, so very little.

IG: 14:59
Yeah. Did you get a sense of Dr. Rollins's, Professor Rollins's political slant from that time?

SD: 15:10
Yeah-yeah, he was liberal, left liberal.

IG: 15:13
Would you say that-that is true of most of the department?

SD: 15:16
Yes.

IG: 15:17
Yes.

SD: 15:18
Yeah.

IG: 15:18
And did that shape your perception of what was going on around you-do you think, to some degree, their- their, you know, political orientation, or did you come being a liberal?

SD: 15:38
I came here-

IG: 15:39
Progressive. You became.

SD: 15:40
I came as a liberal. My father was pro-communist all of his life, and-and you know I grew up, you know, in a liberal political environment. But there are, by the way, a bunch of other professors. I remember well, and why am I blocking names now? I will come back to it.

IG: 16:19
That is fine. That is fine. That is fine. So, so tell me, you know, what-what was the most discussed topic in current events at the time amongst students? What were you most concerned about politically?

SD: 16:46
Ah, Vietnam.

IG: 16:49
Vietnam.

SD: 16:49
The war in Vietnam. No question.

IG: 16:51
So, how-how were you discussing that? What were you saying? Do you remember what was being said?

SD: 16:56
Yeah, most students, and I think most faculty, said this was a disaster, and of course we were particularly anxious about it because we could be drafted, and so we had an even stronger, you know, feeling about this. By the way, one of the other faculty members who I am still in touch with is Robin Oggins. He was a medievalist, and it is not that I did much medieval history, but it was very warm, and he invited me to his house, and he somehow just hit it off, and I-I email him periodically.

IG: 17:50
Do you know Bill Volkley? He is probably before your time. He graduated in (19)62. He is also a medievalist. So, he-he was a director of the Morgan Library Division of Medieval Manuscripts and Art for a very long time. So, he, I just wondered if your paths crossed. So, you know what-what, how-how did you think that you would sort of, you know, protect yourself from the draft? What were the options that were?

SD: 18:28
Oh no, that is a very good question. At the time that I was in college and in my master's program, if you were in enrolled in a college program or a graduate program, you were exempt from the draft. But my crisis came in 1968 when I got a fellowship to do my PhD at the University of Chicago, and I was actually reclassified 1A by the draft board because they said you can continue in the same program, but you cannot switch to a new program. And I argued. I went down to the draft board. I said, "I am just transferring from one institution to another. It is the same program. The master's is the first step toward the PhD," but they did not accept that, and so they said, "You know, you are eligible to be drafted." So, at that point, I, well, my father contacted the legislator who represented his district, and we also engaged, I think, a lawyer. And my parents did not have a lot of money, but. Was really-really important, and basically, I-I was eventually reclassified as a, you know, as a student and-and exempt, and it is interesting because I remember being called down to the draft board, and they-I was explaining to them that, you know, this is really a transfer. I had gone down the first time, and they said, "No-no. But then I was called down again, and I was explaining it, and they said, "Oh, that makes sense. We heard a question about that from Congressman so and so."

IG: 20:54
Right.

SD: 20:54
So, it became clear that it was the, you know, political connection that got me out-out of it.

IG: 21:04
Well, that is, that is very fortunate. I-I am just curious how what where the draft board was. Was it in Washington, D.C. Was it in one place?

SD: 21:15
No, it was in the Bronx. They were all over the place. But this one was in the Bronx.

IG: 21:20
And-and what kind of people were on the draft board? Were they members of the army or government, or-

SD: 21:26
I do not really know.

IG: 21:27
-civil servants of some kind?

SD: 21:30
I do not.

IG: 21:30
You do not; you do not remember.

SD: 21:31
No.

IG: 21:33
Certainly not academics.

SD: 21:35
No. No.

IG: 21:37
Were there any of your classmates that you remember who wanted to volunteer to fight in the war?

SD: 21:47
No.

IG: 21:47
No.

SD: 21:50
No.

IG: 21:50
No. Even-even your classmates from upstate New York did not feel who are none of them?

SD: 22:02
No-no-no enthusiasm-

IG: 22:06
No enthusiasm for the war. You know, tell us about where you were the day that JFK was assassinated. What were your thoughts immediately? What would happen? Was there fear about the outcome?

SD: 22:36
You know, I-I have a vague memory of [inaudible] Kennedy had been assassinated. I think we were in. I was in the dorm, and the word spread, and you know, a bunch of us rushed down to the television set to see that. But what I remember much more strikingly was when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and oh boy, everybody I knew, you know, said, "This is so horrific. This is so terrible, and you know, this just proves what a racist country this is." You know, and all of that, and I believe a bunch of faculty canceled class when King was assassinated, and I think others you would go into class and say, "Well, let us have a moment of silence in honor of Martin Luther King.”

IG: 24:05
Were you politically active on campus?

SD: 24:09
Yes, but mostly campus politics.

IG: 24:13
I see.

SD: 24:15
I was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Colonial News, so I spent, you know, that whole year constantly attacking the administration.

IG: 24:32
For what kind of things?

SD: 24:33
Oh, saying, well, the university should be governed by students and faculty, not by administrators, and-and that they were too bureaucratic; that they, you know, they-they did not respond to student needs. You know, very classically 1960s stuff.

IG: 24:55
So, what kind of student needs do you want to respond to?

SD: 25:01
Well, one thing I know we all talked about was the draft, and could they, you know, just refuse to respond to any questions from the draft board, and but more generally, just, you know, the sense of, you know, what is the university doing against the Vietnam War, and what is it doing to create greater equality. When I went to Harpur College, I think there may have been one or two black students in my entering class. You know, almost virtually none. That changed somewhat by the time I graduated, but you know we were very conscious of that, and thought that that was not a good thing.

IG: 26:04
And because your high school was more integrated.

IG: 26:08
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

SD: 26:10
High School of Music and Arts, I would say, was about eight or 10 percent black students. Yeah.

IG: 26:19
And here it was less than 1 percent.

SD: 26:21
Oh yeah, yeah, almost none in the freshman year. Now I do have a story for you. This is one of my favorite-favorite stories. When I graduated, or basically when I got my master's degree, at the ceremony, the provost, a guy named Stu Gordon, handed me my diploma and said, and this is somebody I had denounced in the newspaper over and over again, you know. And he said to me, "What are you doing next year?" And I said, "I am going to the University of Chicago to study for a Ph.D. in history." He said, "That is wonderful." That was his Ph.D. school. I bet you will end up in administration. And I told all my friends how insulted I was. How can he say this about me? He obviously understood me better than I understood myself. I have told you know, as an administrator all these years. I have told that story on numerous occasions. Everybody loves it, you know.

IG: 27:36
So, you left, you parted on good terms with the campus with-with college?

SD: 27:42
Yes-yes. Oh yeah.

IG: 27:44
And you kept in touch with some people. With-

SD: 27:50
Yeah.

IG: 27:50
-did many of them go on to higher educate- to-to you know, graduate programs to avoid the draft as you did? Was that a-a choice for many, or

SD: 28:03
Yeah, was a choice for a significant number.

IG: 28:06
Yeah.

SD: 28:09
Yeah, but I am still in touch with at least thinking two or three, at least three, you know, fellow students from those days.

IG: 28:22
And what-what lines of work are they?

SD: 28:25
Oh, okay. So, one of them is an academic. He-he teaches political science. Another, she was, yeah. She is also, I think, a political scientist teaching at CUNY, and then the third one had been a graduate student at Binghamton in history, but he basically dropped out and took over his father's business. His father had a business making and doing packaging or something like that. And but in any event, he and he was, you know, a real leftist, and you know, against capitalism. But then he decided he had no future in. He was working on his doctorate in history at Binghamton.

IG: 29:31
I see.

SD: 29:32
You know, and he-he dropped out and went into, you know, began taking over his father's business; um, he remains very interested in history. He reads history all the time. He probably reads more than I do, and his politics are still left liberal. And he is a close friend. We-we see each other often

IG: 30:01
So-so, you know. Looking back, how-how do you think? In what essential ways were you shaped by your Hartford College experience?

SD: 30:15
Well, one is that I do not think I ever had a large lecture course, you know. So, my notion of education was discussion and small classes and all of that, and you know today, as a, you know what we call a university professor, which means I do whatever I want. I limit all my classes to 20 students or so, which I could do because I like teaching discussion, and the students love it. It is a treat for them as well, and-and so on. So that certainly was a significant shaping of-of my feelings about teaching and the like. Could you repeat the question?

IG: 31:17
So, how do you think that the Harpur College experience shaped you for the future?

SD: 31:22
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, for me, of course, probably the key thing was being editor of the student newspaper, and that just created a tremendous orientation toward universities and how they were run and what was their mission, and that has been the center of my career. And it really began there, and it began as much as anything working on the student newspaper because this was an era when, you know, we were all criticizing administration. You know, it was the (19)60s, and students should run things, not administrators. So that, you know, not that I believe that anymore, but-but that really shaped, you know, that really shaped my interest in-in higher education. Although I should say, I think I had an interest in higher education anyhow. I did my undergraduate honors thesis on "How students dealt with the Great Depression at three different institutions." I looked at students at Fordham University to get a Catholic school, City College, and Columbia, and I went to the student newspapers as a way of getting sources on how students responded, and it was a lot of fun. That was my senior thesis.

IG: 33:17
Yeah, that is that is you know, a great project. It is great. It sounds like a really interesting project. So, what I am just curious: what did you learn in a snapshot?

SD: 33:29
It varied quite a bit by campus. At Fordham, the newspapers said almost nothing political.

IG: 33:42
Right.

SD: 33:43
At City College, it was extreme left-wing, and at Columbia, it was somewhat mixed. Not surprising, but yeah.

IG: 33:56
Okay, so-so you are at the University of Chicago. Just give us a trajectory of your career. So, you where that where that took you-our doctorate and

SD: 34:11
Okay.

IG: 34:11
Yeah.

SD: 34:12
So, as I say, I left Binghamton with a master's and then went to Chicago and had a full fellowship there for four years and got my Ph.D. at the end of those four years, and just when I got my Ph.D., there developed this crisis in history. There were no jobs, very few jobs, and I remember my advisor at the University of Chicago said to me, " You do not have to get yourself a job. You do not have to worry about that. It is my responsibility to get you a job.”

IG: 34:48
How unusual.

SD: 34:48
Well, that is what he said. The beginning of the year.

IG: 34:51
Right.

SD: 34:51
By the end of the year, he was frustrated and said, "I do not have anything for you." And-and I was really I had. I think I lined up a job at the university archives, putting together the papers of someone, but one day we got an announcement. I guess this is pre-email, but you know, an announcement saying we just learned from the history department. We just learned that one of our graduates got a, got a position through the Cooperative College Registry, and you may want to file with them. And the Cooperative College Registry was an entity in Washington that was a legacy of when there was a shortage of college teachers, and what people would do is put their resumes at the Cooperative College Registry, and you pay whatever, 20 bucks, and then people looking to hire faculty would go there and see who was there, and you know, by 1968, when-when I, you know, finished my no by 1972 when I finished my PhD. There were, you know, there were very, very few jobs, and but I filed with this entity, and one day I remember we were actually painting our apartment because we figured we were going to stay another year, and I guess-

IG: 36:40
Who?

SD: 36:41
My wife and I.

IG: 36:41
You-you had already married. How did you meet your wife? Just, you know, I am sorry.

SD: 36:47
Oh, oh no, no, no. We met at something called Social Science Tea at the University of Chicago. You know, we were both students there.

IG: 36:56
[inaudible]

SD: 36:57
Yeah, and that was, you know, a social thing they had every afternoon, and they did not charge. So, you know, try to encourage social interaction.

IG: 37:11
Right.

SD: 37:12
So yeah. So anyhow, yeah. And by then we were married, and so I am sorry. What was that?

IG: 37:20
So, you-you were married. When did you marry?

SD: 37:22
1970.

IG: 37:23
1970, and your wife has a PhD in also in history.

SD: 37:29
Yes.

IG: 37:29
In history.

SD: 37:30
Yes.

IG: 37:30
So, 1972, and you were about to get this job, or?

SD: 37:38
Yes, yeah. Oh, okay. So, I-I, you know, did not think I was going to get a teaching job, and I had sort of lined up this archival, and then the phone rang one day, and it was a fellow from a place then called Federal City College. It is now the University District of Columbia, and he said, "I am calling to offer you a position in urban studies," and I was blown away. He was. It turns out, Federal City College was almost entirely a Black student body, and there were a lot of black faculty. And he was the chair of the department, and he was black. He did not have a Ph.D., but he was working on one, I think, at the University of Maryland, and I think it was in history. And when he went to this Cooperative College registry, I had published one or two articles, and he read those articles, and he loved them, and so he called and offered me this job.

IG: 38:56
Do you remember what the articles were about? What were they about?

SD: 38:59
One was- the key one, I think the first thing I published was an article on Chicago social workers and their attitudes toward Black people in the Progressive Era. That would have been the main one, you know. But in any event, so he called, offered me the job, and so I said, "Well, I will come to Washington, and we will talk about it"

IG: 39:27
Right.

SD: 39:28
I did not know anything about this place, so basically, I had to interview them or him.

IG: 39:40
Right.

SD: 39:41
And I went, and we talked, and I found it a very interesting place. And I assumed that I would be there for a year or two before Harvard was ready for me. And I ended up spending 13 years there, and I found that I really, really liked teaching these first-generation students. You know, particularly black students, and we frequently, you know, because I taught about immigration, I taught about cities and so on. So, we talked about race quite a bit, and I found, yeah, first of all, I thought I am doing something really important here. You know, I mean, I was the only Ph.D. in my department of faculty at the beginning, and you know, and I remember one time in one of my classes, a student raised her hand and said, "Professor, can I ask you a question? How did you end up teaching here? Was it that you wanted to help poor and black people? Is that why you ended up teaching here? Because you have a PhD from the University of Chicago, you could have taught anywhere in the country." And I said, "Unfortunately,” I said “No.” Said, “I am very happy to be here, but I did not come as a missionary," you know, but it is interesting that you know even a student would perceive you know you are so different than our faculty, than most you know most of the faculty.

IG: 41:33
That is a very interesting experience. I was just wondering about urban studies. That probably was new-

SD: 41:40
Yes.

IG: 41:41
-a new field to you, and a new field, maybe in history. So, you have to kind of invent it, or to a degree.

SD: 41:50
Yeah.

IG: 41:51
Could you tell-tell us?

SD: 41:52
Yeah, that it was somewhat complicated, but what I ended up doing is teaching a course. They had a course on race and ethnicity and public policy in America, and one of my fields had been immigration history, ethnic history, so I, you know, started teaching that course, and that was amazing also because these are all black students, and most of them knew nothing about immigrant, particularly European immigrant experiences, and they were fascinated, and really had a very interesting time with it. And then the other course I taught initially was American urban history, and-and I had taken a couple of courses at Chicago in urban history, and so I knew some of it. Although I would not have defined myself as an urban historian at the time, but you know-

IG: 43:05
Became one.

SD: 43:11
Yeah, and then over time, I expanded to a variety of other things. One of the things I did was start teaching a course on Washington, D.C. And this is, this is part of my orientation. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Chicago. I go there, and I start, you know, teaching about Washington, and I wrote a bunch of articles and things about Washington, and then I went to Rutgers Newark, and I published, you know, articles about Newark and.

IG: 43:57
So, you very much have an urban focus.

SD: 43:59
Yeah, but also, I seem to be influenced by whatever city I am at.

IG: 44:07
Yeah. So, you spent 15 years at-

SD: 44:12
14. Yeah.

IG: 44:12
14,14. years. So, it is now what 8, 1986?

SD: 44:23
Let us see. I went there in (19)72 to (19)85, I think.

IG: 44:30
(19)85.

SD: 44:30
Maybe.

IG: 44:31
And-and your wife was teaching at the time as well, or?

SD: 44:35
Okay, she did not. When we first moved to Washington, she did not have a teaching job. In fact, she was just she had not finished her dissertation, and then she had a hard time. She did her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Chicago, which at the time was not considered a prestigious place to do a doctorate, but she did a lot of research and published one book, then another book, and over time I forget when- it took quite a while, but she got hired in a tenure-track and then tenured position at the University of Maryland. So that you know, and then when she was offered a title chair here at NYU in American Jewish history, I at the time had, you know, I had done administration. I was at George Mason University. I went there for 13 years, and that is the whole story. I should back up a little bit.

IG: 45:59
So-so 1985.

SD: 46:02
Yes. When I was at Federal City College or UDC, I applied for a program run by the American Council on Education, which was called the ACE Fellows Program, and its purpose was to take youngish, early mid-career people who are interested in university administration and give them an internship for a year, often at another institution, preferably at another institution, and so I applied for that. I got it, and what was so interesting in my interview for that, a couple of people, a couple of the interviewers, one of them said to me, "You have an amazing career ahead of yourself. You are a white guy who has gone to a senior position in a black institution," and you know, he- this was somebody who was provost at American University at the time, you know. But in any event, I, you know I part of my thinking was, yeah, I think I would like to do administration, but I also need to get. I do not want to spend the rest of my career at the University District of Columbia. So, I figured, well, if I do this, then I might get a better job in administration, and I also had an inclination toward administration. So, I did it, and-

IG: 47:54
What changed? What changed? You know, in you, why did you- how did you discover this inclination toward administration? When did you discover it?

SD: 48:08
Pretty early. I-I served as a department chair for four years at Federal City College.

IG: 48:19
I think, I think that is the piece we are missing.

SD: 48:21
Yeah, yeah. No, I served as department chair there, and I really enjoyed it, and so that got me interested in this. But the other motivator was, well, I do not want to stay in this institution forever, and you know this will give me a way to get out, so I applied for and got the ACE fellowship, and I chose to do the fellowship at George Mason University. And George Mason had never had an ACE fellow before, although they had a couple after me. But once I opened it up, but I persuaded the president that, you know, I would not get in his way, and-and we built a very good relationship. And so, I did my ACE fellowship, and you were supposed to return to your home institution for at least a year after the fellowship because the home institution continued to pay your salary.

IG: 49:30
I see.

SD: 49:31
And I returned, but then George Mason offered me a position of vice provost, and I think I worked it out so that I could leave mid-year and go to George Mason. And I spent 13 years at George Mason, and I was in administration there for quite a while, you know, four or five, six years, something like that. And then a new Provost came in, and she wanted her own people. She just did not want me, so I returned to teaching and actually published a book and-and all that. But sort of, you know, I taught for maybe four or five years and did scholarship, and but in the back of my mind, I always thought I would like to go back to administration. So, when my wife got the position at NYU-

IG: 50:32
What year was that?

SD: 50:34
That would have been when she got it in 1997. Okay, and the first year she commuted, you know, from New York to Washington. But you know, my thinking was there are many more institutions in the New York metropolitan area than in Washington, and I will apply, and so I did apply to a bunch of places, and I got this offer from an institution I have never heard of, Rutgers University in Newark. And um-

IG: 51:16
You really never heard of Rutgers University.

SD: 51:20
I have heard of Rutgers University, but not the newer campus.

IG: 51:23
Was it a newer campus?

SD: 51:27
I am sorry.

IG: 51:27
Was Newark a newer campus? No-no.

SD: 51:33
Post-World War II.

IG: 51:36
I see. I see.

SD: 51:36
It was not brand new. Not brand new.

IG: 51:38
Right.

SD: 51:38
But so, but I saw this, and I remember interviewing there, and what I said, and this was very straightforward, was, "You know, I am really interested in connecting universities and cities. This is my career." This is, and a lot of people there; their faces just lit up, and they said, "Oh, this is the right person."

IG: 52:06
The right person.

SD: 52:07
And so, I got the position of dean of arts and sciences there, and that was 1998. And I did that for four years, and then I became chancellor.

IG: 52:23
How did you connect? I am very curious. Some of the ways that you connected universities and cities.

SD: 52:32
Oh, well, one thing is that I spent a lot of time going out and meeting leaders in the city, political leaders, but also corporate leaders and the like. And in each case, I said, "Well, you know, are there ways we can connect and, you know, do things." And many of them then took on interns or other others, you know, built other kinds of connections,

IG: 53:06
[crosstalk]kind of pathways to for students to find employment. Yes,

SD: 53:13
The right and I, you know, greatly expanded internships. I think, you know, here we are in downtown Newark, so much going on here, and let us, you know, make lots and lots of opportunities available for students to study in the city. You know, well, to-to get experiences, practical experiences in the city.

IG: 53:39
So, what-what-what is your legacy at Rutgers New York? You created these internships. Did you fundraise for the university?

SD: 53:47
Oh yes, yes, I did.

IG: 53:49
So, did you go to these corporations that are, uh?

SD: 53:53
Oh yeah, yeah, and among-among other things, I-I got a I think million or a couple million dollars from Prudential, which is the corporation in Newark, and I had a good relationship with the CEO there, and but yeah, so I-I was involved in obviously in raising money, you know for you know for the campus, but also in connecting our programs to the city, and one of the things I did as dean, but then I continued it as chancellor. I, you know, whenever a new position came open in a department, wherever possible, I said, "You got to get somebody who studies cities, or studies race and ethnicity," you know, and I defined it that way. And my reasoning was: no university can do everything, and you do not need to be scattered over every field. Every university should have some kind of focus. And our focus should be urban. And recently, I had lunch with a woman who we recruited like my first second year, and-and she does urban sociology, and she said to me, you know, there are a whole bunch of us who get together periodically, and we are all urbanists, and we all were recruited by you, and we talk about you, and you know, and what you did for us."

IG: 56:05
That is lovely.

SD: 56:06
Yeah.

IG: 56:06
That is lovely.

SD: 56:07
Yeah. So that-that is part of my legacy. But one of the things I am very proud of is, well, I was. It is a long story, but I was removed from the chancellorship because, at the time, there was a lot of discussion or proposals to merge Rutgers University with the University of Medicine and Dentistry, and the president of Rutgers, to whom I reported, the president of Rutgers wanted only the medical school in New Brunswick, but not the larger medical school in Newark, and I was vigorously going out to legislators, you know, from Northern New Jersey, and-and arguing. And so, one day he walked in and said, "Well, we disagree, so you are out." You know, and that was very upsetting, and you know, very unhappy, but there was a period of some interim leaders. But within two years of my ouster, they recruited Nancy Cantor, and Nancy Cantor was a major player. She had been president of Syracuse, she had been provost at Ann Arbor, and probably most importantly, she was deeply-deeply committed to attracting working-class, first-generation students, minority students, and most people were very surprised that she took this position. But she said to me that she and I had met at several meetings of urban university leaders and so on, and she said, "Well, you talked so excitedly about what was happening in Newark that when I was approached about this, I thought, “Well, I should really look into this."

IG: 58:35
Yeah.

SD: 58:35
You know. So, I considered part of my legacy is that Nancy Cantor is now heading the university and pursuing, you know, the same-same goals.

IG: 58:52
So, what- where are you now?

SD: 58:56
Okay, I am a scholar, teacher.

IG: 59:03
Yes.

SD: 59:03
And I love my teaching. And as I said, I restrict my classes and so on. I teach two graduate courses, not at the same time, but one of them is American immigration history, and one of them is history of urban education in America.

IG: 59:26
Both-both very interesting courses.

SD: 59:28
Oh yes, yes.

IG: 59:29
I would like to be a student in your immigration class.

SD: 59:32
You are welcome any time you want. So, I teach those two, and then I teach two undergraduate courses. One is, and these are not history courses. One is called Newark and Urban America. That is about contemporary political, social, economic issues in Newark. And the other, probably my favorite course, is called. It is entitled Race, ethnicity, and public policy in America, or race, religion, ethnicity, and public policy in America. And what I do is I assign popular articles on opposite sides of the hot-button issues, and have the students discuss them and debate them. So, one week we will do racial classification and the census. How should the census count people? What are the categories? And we will do hate speech. You know, should there be hate speech rules, or universities have laws? We will do affirmative action and lots and lots of those-those kinds of things, and I love teaching it. It is, it is great, and students respond very-very well.

IG: 1:00:54
And do they debate these issues?

SD: 1:00:55
Yeah, although on many issues there is not a whole lot of difference of opinion, you know. I remember there was when we did immigration policy. You know, how should we deal with undocumented immigrants? There, there was it was interesting a difference. I would have thought all the students would say, I just forget it and let them come, which is what I would say. But a fair number of students, and our student body, by the way, is overwhelmingly immigrant and children of immigrants, and a fair number of students would basically say, "Well, they should not be able to come in unless they follow the rules." And others, you know, were much

IG: 1:01:51
As we did, as we did.

SD: 1:01:52
Exactly, exactly. But speaking of that, our student body: 12 percent of our undergraduates tell us their religion is Hindu. Another 12 percent are Muslim. Another 4 percent are Eastern Orthodox. 37 percent come from homes where English is not the first language. You know, so we really are a campus of immigrants, and that is one of the things I love so much about teaching our-our students is that I can relate to that. I mean, I was a child of immigrants, and I can really relate to that. And I just find their experiences so interesting. [crosstalk] Yeah, so yeah, yeah. So it is that is a lot of fun, and I really enjoy my-my teaching. This is during the undergraduate course in particular, and then I have been doing scholarship.

IG: 1:02:57
And what are you writing about now?

SD: 1:02:59
Well, I did publish the book. I am sure you know. Two years ago, Universities and Their Cities. Yes. Okay. And now, a very dear friend of mine named Harold Wechsler was a. I have known him since graduate school, but he was a professor of higher education at NYU, and he died about two years ago. And they found, like, a 1500-page manuscript that he had put together on minority access to higher education in America, and so eventually, his brother, who was the executor of his estate, and an editor at Johns Hopkins that he had been working with, both turned to me and said, "Would you pull this together into a 300-page book or whatever?" So, I am working on that right now.

IG: 1:04:08
That is very interesting.

SD: 1:04:09
Oh, it is very fascinating.

IG: 1:04:11
So, you are annotating a lot of it, or?

SD: 1:04:14
Yeah, I am doing well- had to. He had. I think, but I do not know this for sure. He had so many chapters, and each chapter was each chapter was incredibly detailed, and I think he used that writing as a way of keeping his research organized. I do not think he ever intended to publish it in that form. I mean, he knew perfectly-you know-you could not publish it that way. So, what I am doing is pulling together things from different parts of his manuscript. So, there is one chapter on access to higher education for blacks. You know, in the history of discrimination, one for immigrants. Then there is a chapter on-on commuter students and the access for them, and now I am working on a chapter on what minority students actually experienced in going to college, and while we do not have comprehensive information, he collected all kinds of memoirs, autobiographies, and statements. Has all these quotations from different students about what they experienced. So I am, you know, putting that together.

IG: 1:05:57
Wonderful.

SD: 1:06:00
So anyhow, well, that is where I am.

IG: 1:06:04
It sounds like you are constantly, you know, creative and-and working on one-one project to another, and-and it has great importance, I think, to the life of students and education. I think that you know we are coming to the conclusion of our interview, and what I usually like to ask my interviewees are: What are some of the greatest life lessons that you have learned in your career that could help Binghamton University students who are any students who are listening to this interview? What life skills have helped you personally, and could help them as they are embarking on their academic and professional careers?

SD: 1:07:03
Well, I guess I would say one thing is persistence. You know, I at first did not have a teaching job when I got my PhD, and then I got it at this obscure, you know, working-class college, and you know, I never gave up, and I continued to teach, and I did scholarship all through that, and so I would say, you know, I would say that you know about all aspects of my career. So, you know, when I was removed as chancellor, I did not disappear. I went and wrote another book about universities and cities, and got, you know, which got a fair amount of attention, and so persistence, you know, stay at it. That is one thing I would, I would certainly say. And the other thing I would say is, pay attention to the environment in which your university is located, or in which you are doing your work, that there is an older tradition which I think has largely disappeared, but that scholarship is about, you know, scholarly sources has nothing to do with local people or community, and I do not think there are many people who argue that anymore. But I would, you know, emphatically say that it is really critical that one connect to surrounding communities or individuals or people. Depends on what your field is and how you do that, but you know, for example, you know, I did not ask scientists when I was dean or chancellor that they had to do urban-based science, but there was one person who turned out to be the chair of what was originally been geology department, and then we renamed Earth and Environmental Science Department, and he was doing extensive research on water pollution in the rivers that ran through Newark, you know, and it was a great example. So, anyhow.

IG: 1:09:49
Any concluding remarks?

SD: 1:09:53
I think we have covered it all.

IG: 1:09:55
I think we have covered a lot. Thank you very much for a fascinating interview.

SD: 1:09:59
My pleasure.

(End of Interview)

2019-07-08

Irene Gashurov

1966

Dr. Steven J. Diner

Steven J. Diner is an American historian, educator, and university administrator. Born and raised in the Bronx, he graduated from Harpur College in 1966 and earned a master’s degree in history there in 1968. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Diner taught at several universities and held a number of academic and administrative positions. From 2002 to 2011, he served as Chancellor of Rutgers University–Newark, where he is currently University Professor of History.

Audio

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