What’s the Point?

In my interview for Contingent’s “How I Do History” series back in 2020, I was asked about the kind of career I thought I’d have if I wasn’t a public historian. In response, I talked about my service in the Army National Guard, and how if I ever stopped “doing history,” I’d want to somehow get involved with training future officers. It never occurred to me that I might someday have a job where I did both, but that’s exactly the situation I found myself in three years after that interview, when I spent the 2023-24 academic year serving as a visiting instructor in the Department of History (now known as the Department of History and War Studies) at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.¹

The view from the top of Fort Putnam, which overlooks most of West Point’s campus and the Hudson River. All photos provided by the author.

From the moment I arrived in June of 2023, I knew I was going to enjoy my time at West Point. Everywhere I went, I found myself surrounded by traces of the past. My house on post was just downhill from Fort Putnam, the largest surviving remnant of the defenses built by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War to prevent British forces from sailing up the Hudson River. Down the road was the West Point Cemetery, the final resting place for Civil War generals, two Apollo astronauts, and countless other notable alumni. Even Thayer Hall, the massive building that contained my office and classrooms, was a reminder of a bygone era—it was originally built in 1909 as a riding arena where cadets were taught horsemanship.

Thayer Hall, home of the West Point Department of History and War Studies, as seen from the banks of the Hudson River.

Thayer was where I and my fellow new instructors spent most of that first summer, participating in the History Department’s Arriving Faculty Workshop (AFW), a two-month program designed to prepare us for the start of the academic year in mid-August.² On a basic level, AFW familiarized us with how West Point turns cadets into Army officers and how a historical education factors into that transformation. While the Academy’s core curriculum has always emphasized math, science, and engineering—and indeed, all graduates earn a Bachelor of Science degree—the current version also features a healthy dose of the humanities and social sciences, including a survey course in American history, another in military history, and a regional history course that is typically aligned with whatever language a cadet is taking.

For me, the most useful part of AFW by far was the several weeks we spent teaching practice lessons under the watchful eyes of our program director and other senior faculty. Their feedback and the pedagogical discussions that accompanied each of our sessions gave me an excellent idea of what the department expected of us as instructors.³ More than anything else, we were told to avoid rote memorization and lecturing and instead focus on small group discussions and active learning; cadets gaining historical knowledge was important, to be sure, but our primary goal was to show them how a critical examination of past events could help make sense of the complex problems they’d face as military leaders. 

After an entire summer of training, I felt more than ready by the time classes began in mid-August. Once I began teaching, I enjoyed it immensely. Since I had earned my officer’s commission through ROTC at a civilian university, there had always been a distinct separation between my Army training and college studies. By contrast, I found the West Point classroom experience to be a unique mix of military discipline and academic rigor. Much of the former takes place at the beginning of each lesson; class always opens with the cadet designated as section marcher (a class leader of sorts) calling the room to attention, inspecting everyone’s uniforms, taking roll call, and then reporting to their instructor once the section is ready for instruction. Attendance is mandatory, and late arrivals are referred to their chain of command for disciplinary action.

Once class is underway, however, the experience is similar to what you might find in a graduate seminar or upper-level undergraduate course. Small class sizes (no more than fifteen or so cadets per section) allow for in-depth discussion on the assigned reading, with the instructor acting as facilitator. For cadets, earnest participation in these discussions does more than just prove that they did the reading. It also provides an opportunity to hone their critical thinking and communication skills by grappling with questions posed by the instructor and responding to comments from their classmates. This emphasis on active in-class learning as opposed to the passive receipt of information through lectures has its origins in the Thayer Method, a mode of instruction developed in the early nineteenth century by former Academy superintendent Sylvanus Thayer.⁴

Cadets provide brief results of their board work to the class.

When appropriate, group learning also occurs at the chalkboard, with cadets working through historical questions and problems and then briefing their findings to the class. For my part, I found board work to be a great way to practice thesis writing. I would often pose a question related to the lesson’s theme (for example: “What was the U.S. Army’s most important mission during the Early Republic period?”) and have cadets write out an answer. They would then swap boards with their neighbor, critique that person’s thesis, and explain their thoughts to the rest of us.

The author answers questions during a class visit to the USMA Archives & Special Collections reading room. The terrain map on the table was used by General Omar Bradley in the planning and execution of the D-Day landings during World War II.

Some of my favorite lessons as an instructor took place outside the classroom. As cadets in my fall course geared up to write their first research paper, for example, I worked with the History Department’s liaison librarians and a staff member from Archives & Special Collections to ensure they were aware of the resources they had at their disposal and where to find them. We spent a lesson each at the archives reading room and the library, where staff members gave classes on the fundamentals of historical research, analysis of primary sources (like the D-Day map featured above), engagement with secondary literature, and how to navigate databases and research guides. During our reading room visit, archivists also brought out some of their most historically significant and interesting artifacts for us to examine.

One of the artifacts from the author’s lesson on Civil War material culture: a slouch hat worn by Major General John Sedgwick at the time of his death during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in 1864.

I also took advantage of the department’s relationship with the West Point Museum, which loans certain artifacts to instructors for classroom use, to incorporate material culture into my teaching. This proved very popular; in one instance, I collaborated with several other instructors to set up a combined class for our lesson on the Civil War, where cadets rotated through four stations stocked with different artifacts related to one of the lesson themes. Whether it was a rifled musket, a camp stove, or the general’s epaulettes worn by Ulysses S. Grant during the Siege of Vicksburg, being able to see and handle these tangible pieces of history inspired some fantastic discussions about the technological and human aspects of warfare.

My year at West Point was one of the most rewarding of my career so far. Seeing the value that the nation’s most prestigious military academy places on historical study, and being challenged as an instructor to communicate that value to cadets, had reaffirmed my belief in history’s relevance, even to those outside the field. The critical thinking and communication skills that make me a good historian are the same ones that make cadets better problem solvers—and by extension, better leaders—and it felt good knowing that my efforts in the classroom had helped foster these attributes within a new generation of officers. I was sad to leave campus, but did so feeling prouder than ever of my chosen profession.

I also left with a newfound respect for the military and civilian faculty I worked alongside. No matter how things may have changed for them in the short time since I left West Point, I know that they’ll continue to do their part in producing leaders of character that embrace the study of the past (warts and all) as a valuable tool for understanding the challenges of the present.⁵ Now more than ever, these are the kinds of officers our Army needs.

1. My time at West Point was part of a two-year active-duty tour I completed as the U.S. Army Center of Military History’s 2023-2025 Scholar in Residence. Established in 2021, the Scholar in Residence Program offers National Guard and Army Reserve officers with advanced degrees in history the opportunity to spend a year teaching history at West Point and the second serving on the Center of Military History staff at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.
2. The history department typically takes on eight to ten new instructors each summer. Known as “junior rotators,” most of each cohort consists of active-duty officers who have spent the previous two years earning an M.A. in History at a civilian college through the Army’s Advanced Civil Schooling (ACS) program. In return for their degree being paid for, they spend three years teaching at the Academy before moving on to their next assignment. Some may return to West Point later in their careers for a second tour in the department or as a member of the permanent faculty.
3. Junior faculty within the department are entrusted with a fair amount of responsibility. I taught two different courses (four sections per course, one course per semester), and although I worked for a course director who wrote the syllabus and assigned the topic and readings for each lesson, how I covered that material in class was left entirely up to me. I did all my own grading and determined the allocation of points for things like class participation and quizzes. I was also the primary point of contact for company commanders, advisors, and coaches if a cadet in one of my sections was having an issue (academic or otherwise).
4. Thayer is known as the “Father of the Military Academy” due to the wide-ranging reforms he instituted while serving as Superintendent from 1817 to 1833. Thayer’s reforms influence modern-day West Point’s academic curriculum, disciplinary system, and Honor Code.
5. This way of thinking was evident in the survey course I taught on the history of the United States Army. We studied many of the Army’s greatest battlefield victories, and how over the years it has helped liberate the oppressed, stop genocide, and provide humanitarian relief around the world, while also discussing negative events like Indian removal, segregation, and the My Lai massacre. Examining both the good and the bad gave cadets a better understanding of how and why the Army became the organization it is today.