B.A. IN HISTORY

Everything you see around you, and many things you do not see, has a history.  Nothing that you see -- law, electricity, democracy, universities, constitutions, economy, religion, etc. etc. etc. – “popped” into existence out of Zeus’s or anybody else’s head.

History is rich in FASCINATING persons, customs, and monumental STRUGGLES. We can see how people, with their ideas and hopes, their plans and grand schemes, tried to make their way through this world. History is the lab experiment of human nature.

In the study of history we find ourselves and how human nature and human needs are the same throughout time.  But human solutions vary wildly! We see that the seemingly infinite complexity of the past can be distilled down, philosophically, to experiences that we can learn from, that they reveal themselves again and again, in all their variety and identity.  The lessons of history are for all of us to learn, or to ignore at our own peril. One great example: Lord Acton shows that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”