Reflections: Travel
Travel has been an important part of Allan Winkler's life for decades.
I’ve always loved to travel. Indeed, by the time you read this, I’ll be in Denmark with my wife Sara, visiting our daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons, who are there for a semester on sabbatical.
My first experience overseas came when I was 10 years old. My father had a Fulbright grant to England, and we lived in Wimbledon for a year. I went to a British school, won an award as the best new cricket player (I was the only new cricket player) and loved the experience.
A dozen years later, in 1967, I was studying for a Master’s degree at Columbia University. I had a continuing fellowship and planned to go on for a PhD until I saw an ad in the New Yorker which said, “Join the Peace Corps. See the world.”
Making a snap decision that I still don’t understand, I got my MA, left school, joined the Peace Corps, and spent the next two years in the Philippines. That experience changed my life. Living in Southeast Asia at the height of the Vietnam War made me realize I needed to study American history, and so I did — for my entire career. It also made me realize that we have a great big exciting world out there that I wanted to see.
Seven or eight years later, having finished a PhD, I was teaching at Yale University when my phone rang. It was someone from the State Department asking if I might be interested in teaching in Finland for a year. The Finnish and American governments had created a special chair in American Studies, and were looking for a senior scholar as the third recipient. They had someone in mind, but he backed out at the last minute. A colleague at Yale involved in international issues had recommended me, and after I figured out just where Finland was, I accepted the position, and went there for a year.
On arrival, our welcoming party looked around for a senior professor, and all they saw was me, a 27-year-old assistant professor. But the year turned out well, and it propelled me into even more international travel. As more and more senior colleagues have accepted the chair over the past 50 years, I saw my own reputation grow as a result, and that was nice.
Then, in 1992, Sara and I got married. She had already led two semester-long study abroad programs for Earlham College students in Kenya. She wanted to do that again, and so I applied for and got a Fulbright to teach at the University of Nairobi while she led her Kenya program. In subsequent years, we led more programs together to Kenya and Tanzania for both Earlham and Miami students.
Miami, of course, prides itself on the Luxembourg program, and a couple of years before retirement, we spent a particularly special semester teaching there.
During my time in Finland, and later as a chaired professor at the University of Amsterdam, I discovered that people all over the world wanted to know about America and American history, and I was lucky enough to be asked to lecture to audiences all over the world.
The last time I checked, I had been to 74 different countries. The numbers aren’t as important as the experience of seeing how others live, and understanding their values and concerns. And in our increasingly complex, and sometimes confused, world, that’s an experience I hope others, too, can enjoy.
Allan Winkler is a University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Miami University, where he taught for three decades. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press.
