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Trevor's Head of School, Scott Reisinger, sat down for a thought-provoking interview with the co-chairs of the History Department, Roberta McCutcheon and Nina Rosenblatt. Together, they looked back upon some seminal historical moments for Scott, the nation, and the world. NR: Welcome to the school. how do you like being back in New York? SR: I love being back. e first time I came to New York I was eleven years old. It was 1969, and I'd won a trip by selling 75 subscriptions to the Rochester Times Union. My mother put me on a bus with 35 kids who were a lot older than I was, and sent me off to Manhattan. I subsisted on corn muffins out of the automat for 25 cents each. I just loved it, and from that point on there has never been a place where I have felt more alive. RM: oh, so you're coming alive again? SR: Yes, yes. I've come alive. I think it fundamentally changed my whole perspective on the world—that first trip and then living in New York in the '80s and '90s. So it is truly great to be back. NR: What did you see as an eleven- year-old that impressed you so much? SR: e things I remember most vividly are actually quite disparate. one was walking through Times Square and see- ing all the poverty. It saddened me. and I also remember taking the Circle Line. e World Trade center was just being built, the views of the Statue of liberty were magnificent, and I said to myself, "Someday I am going to live here." and look, here we are. RM: Indeed we are. Since we are focused on New York City, will you talk a bit about your experience as a graduate student at columbia University? SR: I started graduate school at columbia in 1987, which was an interesting time to be in New York. I had completed my undergraduate degree, as well as my first master's, at the University of rochester, and I transferred when my wife, anne, became a professor of political science at columbia. In some ways, I came along for the ride. I had always dreamed of going to columbia; all of my professors had gone there, and they would say it was the place you needed to be. I went in with one master's degree and set a goal for myself to complete all of my coursework in one year, which I did, on top of writing a second thesis. So you can imagine, all I did was work. RM: But did you have a good experience at columbia? SR: I did! I came to study the history of american slavery and religion. and I took courses with some of the greatest historians in the United States—in the world, even. eric Foner was chair of grad- uate studies, Barbara Jeanne Fields had just come onto the faculty, and alden T. vaughan was a professor of mine. It was kind of interesting to have a wife as a professor as well. When it came time to take my oral exams, my major field was the entirety of american history and we had to have two contemporary foreign languages and a minor field, which for me was Political Science with a specialty in the Presidency. I had to find someone in the political science department who would be my questioner, my inquisitor … what's the word? NR: Interrogator! SR: yes, interrogator! Much better! NR: yes, I remember my own process. Interrogator seems right. SR: Someone had suggested that anne could be my "interrogator" because many of the professors were on leave. Luckily, my major advisor did not think that was a good idea. I had a good experience with my exams, but it is an intimidating process in a lot of ways. you go into a room and you are sitting with people who know more about the subject than you will ever know, and everyone is taking notes. It took me about a year to prepare for those orals, because any of it was fair game. It was pretty scary. RM: Yes, it is intimidating—to walk into a room full of interrogators. NR: And you walk out of the room and just wait for their decision. SR: But eventually they come out. and fundamentally, something changes then in your relationship with your professors, doesn't it? Because you are now considered an equal—almost. Because you got there. NR: can you share some of your personal background that led you to want to study civil rights? SR: I grew up in a volatile time in rochester. I was raised in a German- Catholic working-class neighborhood in the inner city. ings were happen- ing that I had no appreciation for at the time because I was very young. our neighborhood changed dramati- cally. a lot had to do with the creation of the Interstate highway System, which went straight through the poor areas in just about every city in the United States. It displaced a lot of people and disrupted their lives, and it changed the dynamics of the city. ere was a lot of racial unrest in rochester. In the summer of 1964, there were fires and gunfire in nearby neighborhoods. My mother would tell me they were firecrackers. Many people were killed, as well as wounded History On An Interview with Scott Reisinger

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