So what did Hal Brands teach you about Latin America’s Cold War? He was taking a more international perspective with this one wasn’t he? Think how boring it would be to go through life repeating your old lectures.
Many professors never accept the influence of their students on their work. That is very generous of you to be so honest. The result is new angles of vision on some old issues, but also the identification of new ones that older scholars have rarely, if ever, written about. It’s also important, though, that the students are of a new generation, and that in itself brings different perspectives from my own. I’m lucky in that there are always new materials for my students to work with in the field of recent international history, not least those that have opened up in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere since the Cold War ended. Usually that comes from how you organise and present the materials yourself, but surprisingly often it originates with students – particularly at the graduate level but sometimes also at the undergraduate level in seminars and senior essays. Part of the fun of being a teacher is that you always learn from teaching. What do you think your students have been able to teach you? Your five books are actually all written by your former students. Beyond that, I wasn’t thinking in any particularly sophisticated way. Getting in on the ground floor of Cold War history seemed like a good bet – it was still going on at the time, and very much on everyone’s mind.
A good dissertation, I thought, should have fresh sources, should be on something significant, and should have the potential to become a book that people might still find useful ten or 15 years into the future. I was in graduate school during the late 1960s, when the first American documents on the early Cold War were being declassified. Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we talk about your five book choices I wanted to find out a bit more about what made you so interested in studying the Cold War and international relations?.
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