Jefferson Lecturer: Robert Nisbet, noted historian and sociologist, has been named the Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities for 1988. Professor emeritus at Columbia University, he is the author of The Quest for Community (1953) and History of the Idea of Progress (1980). Since his retirement from Columbia, he has been a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Professor Nisbet will present two lectures on the ideas of community and progress, one in Washington on May 11, 1988, and another to be announced.
History Software Cited: A history program was one of seven instructional computer programs for higher education to be selected as winners in a new effort to identify exemplary software and reward its developers. The software was chosen by a panel of researcher and educators. The contest was run by the EDUCOM Software Initiative, a project to promote development and dissemination of instructional software for higher education.
The winners were chosen from 139 programs submitted to the National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning at the University of Michigan. The winner of the best humanities software is “The Would-Be Gentleman,” written by AHA member Carolyn Lougee and Tom Maliska, both of Stanford. The program is a simulation of social mobility set in the France of Louis XIV. Students take the role of a member of the French bourgeois class by making social and economic decisions in keeping with the times.
More information about this contest is available from the EDUCOM Software Initiative, PO Box 364, 777 Alexander Rd., Princeton, NJ 08540; 609/520-3340.
New Television Course Focuses on Constitutional History: The United States Constitution and its development over its two-hundred-year history is the focus of “This Constitution: A History,” a new television-assisted open-learning course developed by the International University Consortium at The University of Maryland University College, in association with the AHA-APSA Project ’87 and Maryland Public Television.
“This Constitution: A History” was developed through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and involved a team of constitutional scholars chaired by Herman Belz of The University of Maryland and including Michal R. Belknap, California Western School of Law; Michael Les Benedict, Ohio State University; Richard C. Cortner, University of Arizona; Thom as E. Cronin, Colorado College; Don E. Fehrenbacher, Huntington Library; Tony Freyer, University of Alabama; Kermit L. Hall, University of Florida; Ralph Lerner, University of Chicago; and Peter Onuf, Southern Methodist University.
For more information on “This Constitution: A History,” contact The International University Consortium, The University of Maryland University College, University Blvd. at Adelphi Rd., College Park, MD 20742-1612; 301/985-7811.
