Humanities’ Allen Matusow honored with 2010 Gold Medal

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Historian Allen Matusow has been awarded the 2010 Gold Medal for extraordinary service to the university. It is the highest award presented by the Association of Rice Alumni.

	ALLEN MATUSOW

Matusow, the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History, has had a long and distinguished career at Rice as a teacher, adviser, administrator and author. He has won numerous teaching awards, published critically acclaimed books on recent U.S. history and served as dean of humanities longer than anyone else in Rice’s history.

Matusow was called on last year to serve again as dean, this time on an interim basis, when Gary Wihl left to become dean of arts and sciences at Washington University in Missouri. He said he was asked to serve, in part, because of his previous 14-year stint as dean (from 1981 to 1995), so “the learning curve would not have to be very steep.”

He said he has enjoyed the current deanship, which will come to an end this summer when a new humanities dean, Nicolas Shumway, comes on board. “We have hired younger faculty in the intervening years, building to our strengths,” he said, and cited the efforts of the humanities deans who succeeded him — Gale Stokes, Judith Brown and Wihl.

When Matusow came to Rice in 1963 after receiving his doctorate from Harvard, he taught courses on the post-Civil War era of industrialization. Later he drew from many current events to develop a course called History of the ’60s. In addition to the major events of the time — among them the assassination of President John Kennedy, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War — the popular course included music by Miles Davis and Little Richard; novels such as “Catch-22” and “On the Road”; and the movie “Dr. Strangelove.”

Matusow’s books reflect a similar chronological progression: “Farm Policies and Politics in the Truman Years” (1967), “The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s” (1984) and “Nixon’s Economy: Boom, Busts, Dollars & Votes” (1998). Currently, he is working on a book about the end of the Cold War.

Matusow said his favorite moment is “walking out of a class and saying, ‘That was good.'”

He said, “Conversely, the worst low is thinking, ‘That stank.'” Many students and alumni say that the latter is a rare occurrence.

Matusow’s skill in the classroom has not gone unnoticed over the years either. He has won six Brown teaching awards and two Nicholas Salgo awards, and the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation named him a Piper Professor for outstanding teaching. “Allen has been one of our very best teachers over the decades,” said Gale Stokes, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor Emeritus of History. “He had to be retired from the competition for the Brown awards due to having won so many times.”

When the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy was launched, Matusow took on a new role as the institute’s director of academic affairs, and he also serves as a liaison between Rice faculty and the Baker Institute fellows. “It sounded interesting, and it’s turned out to be very interesting,” he said. “(The institute) has added a dimension to my career that I never expected and turned out to be remarkably rewarding.”

As a student of U.S. history, Matusow appreciates the think tank’s goal of building a bridge between the world of ideas and the world of action. “It’s one thing to study policy,” he said, “and it’s something else entirely to be close to those who make it and play a role.”

Looking back on his two stints as dean of humanities, Matusow said his top priority has always been to “help faculty members realize their professional ambitions.” He is especially proud to say he has always been a faculty member first and an administrator second.

“One of the advantages of being a dean at Rice is that you’re not a professional administrator,” Matusow said. “You can actually follow your scholarly pursuits.”

“I cannot think of anyone who has done more for the reputation of Rice and for our teaching standards than Professor Matusow,” said Franz Brotzen, the Stanley C. Moore Professor Emeritus of Materials Science.