Pearl Harbor may have shaken U.S. isolationism politically, but it was news last week when a professor challenged its tacit acceptance in U.S. history teaching. At Columbia University's Barnard College (for women) Professor Eugene Hugh Byrne announced a course in "de-isolationized" U.S. history: "World history from the American standpoint1500-1942."
Brusque, dogmatic Professor Byrne started preparing his new course by asking 45 businessmen and scholars: "If you were to go back to college and take one history course, what would you want included in it?" He got a spate of suggestions that made eminently good...