Gene R. Garthwaite oral history interview

Gene R. Garthwaite, Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. Oral history interview documenting his experience teaching at Dartmouth during the Vietnam War. Garthwaite describes growing up in the Midwest and his undergraduate education at St. Olaf College. He discusses his decision to join the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at St. Olaf during the Korean War draft and his post-graduation service in the United States Air Force at the height of the Cold War. Garthwaite recounts his graduate studies following his military service, including a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, coursework at the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago, an archaeological expedition in Iran, and the completion of his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He discusses his career at Dartmouth, which began in 1968, and his identity as a young, liberal professor at a time when the faculty was predominantly older and conservative. Garthwaite describes his participation in campus activism alongside students and a small group of faculty with shared political and social views. He describes activism related to the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, and the Vietnam War, including teach-ins and anti-war protests. Garthwaite details in particular his observations of the student occupation of Parkhurst Hall in 1969 and reflects on the changes he has witnessed over the course of his career at Dartmouth.