The chair of Brandeis University’s history of ideas program, Professor David Katz, sat down with The Brandeis Hoot to shed a little light on the history of ideas program, its future and himself. This interview is part of a series of interviews with the chairs of a plethora of different academic departments and programs at Brandeis.
Why did you choose to come to Brandeis?
So I lived here as a child, but I spent my entire life in Israel and then went to university in England. In Europe, they have a compulsory retirement age, unlike in America. I could see [the] retirement age coming over the horizon and I wasn’t ready to retire. My friends who retired quickly lapsed into showing pictures of their grandchildren and doing what we used to call “the organ recital.” You know, “my liver hurts, my lungs aren’t good.” So I thought, “this is not for me.” Then, my wife, Professor Amy Singer got the Hassenfeld Chair in Islamic Studies at Brandeis. She’s a very distinguished professor of Turkish and Ottoman history. So, we both came over and Brandeis very generously said, “well, we have this kind of gap in the program and you do history of ideas.” And I said, “oh yes, I do history of ideas.” So it worked out perfectly well for both of us. We’re both in the same department for the first time because, in Tel Aviv, she was in Middle Eastern history [and] I was in European history. … Now we’re in the same department, but we don’t agree on almost anything. I do religious and intellectual history, she does economic and social history and we have very different views on almost every issue, except politics where we agree completely. So that’s why I came to Brandeis and it’s been terrific. … I had been to Brandeis before because I was once an external examiner for a doctoral thesis, so I had actually been in the history department with some of my future colleagues and I try to look back now and see what room I was in [and] who I talked to, but I had no idea I would be coming here, and it’s been terrific. … Coming back to this country after 45 years abroad, I’m kind of a recovering American. There’s this wonderful thing called Netflix, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. And this Amazon thing, you want something and it comes the next day. … And there’s this stuff that fell down this weekend, this white stuff. I don’t really understand what the point of it is actually. And I’ve never taught in English before, so I’ve kind of had to get used to the different language and different culture, but it’s been great, I’m very pleased.
What do you think that the history of ideas program does right?
The program when I came in was totally comatose. I mean, it had no students, it was nothing. Now it’s 16 minors. It’s a successful, big program and all you needed to have this thing run was someone really dedicated to the concept of history of ideas. I mean, you had directors before, but they were doing other things, and [history of ideas] wasn’t their main focus. And for me, as it happens, that’s my main interest. In the ’50s, history of ideas was a major part of Brandeis’ calling card. They had some very famous people who were connected [to the program, like], Frank Manuel and Herbert Marcuse, these were big names. … Everyone [who] thought Brandeis, thought history of ideas and that thing just kind of declined just because you didn’t have people. And Brandeis is a really small university… and you don’t have enough people to cover everything. And just by chance, you had people doing other worthy things, but not history of ideas. So when I came in, it was very easy, [because] there was a great demand for it. The difference between history of ideas and philosophy really is that philosophers want to find out “why is there evil?” whereas [in] history of ideas, we want to find out, “what did people used to think was the reason that there’s evil?” We’re kind of studying the ideas that were popular or pervasive in the past. We’re not as interested in the actual philosophical problems. So it’s a combination of history and philosophy really. And of course, English literature and other subjects, but that’s where the students come from. We had a big event at the beginning of this year. Remember you got a Constitution in your mailbox? That was my idea right here. First of all, I made sure every Constitution had a sticker with your name on it so you can’t get rid of it so easily, right? I got all these Constitutions from the government and everyone got a Constitution. Then we had a conference at the beginning of the year called “Just Read It!” And I brought together students and professors and I kind of had two students, one professor, two students, one professor and everybody just talked about what interests them in the Constitution. It was really a big success because I didn’t want to do it on Zoom. I did it only in person, [with] no recording. So if you wanted to come and see your friends, you had to be there. And then we had a great dinner. By the way, if you have salmon, you’ll get a great dinner. The one dinner you can get that’s going to be great in the Faculty Club is the salmon dinner… we’re going to do that every year.
Is there anything that you think that the history of ideas program could do better?
I just had to write [for] the first time in 18 years a report about what’s going on with the program. And one of the things I said in this report is that it’s an interdisciplinary program and all universities have a real problem with interdisciplinary programs because every division has a kind of different structure, even when the classes begin and end. …The biggest problem in philosophy now, which they call “the hard problem of consciousness” is how your brain cells create this consciousness that [lets you know that] you’re separate from the environment? … I had some students from neuroscience who also did a minor in history of ideas, and juggling the timing [of classes] is really hard. Neuroscience, they’ve got their own thing and they have so many compulsory courses. What I would like is to have it administratively work. So someone who’s in the humanities can take courses in social sciences because the divisions are really artificial. In this university, history is [a] social science. In Tel Aviv University, it’s [in the] humanities. I taught at Princeton for a year and at Princeton, it’s also [in the] social sciences. I think what we could do better is to somehow allow greater flexibility for interdisciplinary programs.
Why do you think that history of ideas is only a minor? What do you think the advantages and disadvantages of that are?
It’s an interdisciplinary program, so I’m not really concerned whether it’s a minor or a major. I kind of like the fact that it’s a minor because it means that people don’t need to do so much to be in it [the history of ideas program]. It doesn’t limit them, but the advantage is that they meet other people who have similar interests, which is good. Brandeis, I have to say, is really good at promoting non-professional subjects like literature and philosophy. At Tel Aviv University, if you look at the page that they send out to prospective donors, you’d think that Tel Aviv was MIT. They only talk about curing cancer and COVID, …[and] you might have something about archeology because it’s sort of a science. … I used to complain all the time about that. But Brandeis really showcases philosophy and literature, all the stuff that’s why you go to college. It’s just after you get a real job, you’re not going to have time to do this anymore. This is your only opportunity to study a little literature, a little philosophy, then you’ll be doing rental contracts for the rest of your life.
How was teaching at Tel Aviv different from teaching at Brandeis?
First of all, Israeli students are older. They come in at 21 because they’ve been in the army for three years. … Another main difference is that in [America], … the center of your life is the university for better or for worse. It’s not like that in Israel. Very few people are living on campus, [instead] they’re living somewhere in Tel Aviv. The university may not be the center of their lives. The center of their lives may be being a bartender or maybe they have something else going on. … So the university is one of the things they do, and the campus is pretty much dead in the evening because people go back to their lives. And also, Israeli culture is very different. I mean, people always think that American Jews think that Israelis are their brothers. No, they’re actually very distant cousins, … and it’s a really different culture. I would say they’re much more involved with politics, they’re much more involved with the world around them. And a lot of them have had life experiences, which have, you might say, matured them [because] they’ve all been in the army. Not everybody in the army’s a big hero, but you know, if you’re exposed to a completely different kind of environment … the army’s like college in that sense, you go through being on your own for the first time, no one telling you when you have to go to sleep. The Israeli army isn’t as disciplined as you might imagine, everyone’s called by their first names and people talk back and it’s not [like the] American army. No one salutes or anything like that. [And] I was in the army for 20 years as a reserve soldier, I was a captain in the army. I guess the big difference is that the social element of college is done in the army. So you get them [the students] at the other end and that makes it different. Another thing, another important difference is in Europe, not just in Israel but in Europe [too], you study one thing. When I was at university in England, I studied history. That’s all I studied. You become much more educated in a very narrow area. And I remember some of my friends in the early ’70s knew a lot about one subject, but you couldn’t ask them anything about the world. I used to say to my friends, “can you find Israel on the map?” No, they could not. They were so much better prepared [in a narrow field], but that’s all they knew. And the same is true in Israel. People in Israel tend to study two things, but they’re mostly related. So you’d say study European history and Middle Eastern history, for example, classic or middle history and Jewish history. … I used to think the English system was better and now I think the American system is better. One reason is that England has become very Americanized. I was still in the faculty in Oxford, and I went back to Oxford three years ago. I went back to the history department and I found the students were not any better than American students really … so I think now maybe the American system is better.
What’s your favorite food?
That’s a tough one. I do a lot of cooking. Shakshuka, add feta. That’s my clue. If you add feta to it, that changes everything. Nobody does it in Israel, but if you add feta, it’s a different experience.
What dish do you find yourself cooking most often?
I’m working now on perfecting the perfect French omelet, and I’ve bought this special pan. It’s all about moving your hands and flipping it. I do a lot of the cooking and my wife does a lot of the baking.
