Harvey J. Strum

Professor of History and Political Science Harvey Strum taught at Syracuse University, Onondaga Community College, and SUNY Oswego, and served as a civilian historian at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, when the offer of a tenure-track position brought him to Russell Sage College in 1987.

In the ensuing 36 years, he has become one of the most prolific conference presenters and journal authors on the faculty at Russell Sage College.

In this Q&A, he talks about the personal record he achieved during the 2022-2023 academic year and what sparked his research interests: Jewish history in New York’s Capital Region; American responses to famine in Ireland; and foreign policy and politics related to the War of 1812.

During the 2022-2023 academic year, you delivered eight papers at conferences and published four more articles and three book reviews in history journals, in addition to reviewing conference proposals for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. 

Is that a typical schedule of presentation and publications for you?

That’s a record for me. Three to six conferences or articles a year is average. 

In addition to the academic conferences, I was part of an online panel discussion hosted by Saratoga Jewish Community Arts, to discuss a film from 1924: The City Without Jews, by Austrian filmmaker H. K. Breslauer, based on the novel of the same title by Hugo Betttauer. 

I also delivered an online author talk for the New Jersey State Library, about New Jersey’s role in the War of 1812 and in March, I advised former Governor of New Jersey, Richard Codey, on the history of the Irish in New Jersey.

What led to your record-breaking year?

I felt in the mood. Sometimes, the spirit takes you. 

Please tell us what sparked your research interests; what inspired your research into Jewish history in the Albany area?  

I have been researching American Jewish history off and on for 50 years.

Jim Richard Wilson [founding director of Russell Sage College’s Opalka Gallery and former director of Sage’s Little Gallery] and I were friends.

In 1997, I worked with Jim and others on an exhibit on Jewish Farmers in Rensselaer County and went on to collaborate on four more exhibits on local Jewish history and another four on Jewish history themes, like Ethiopian Jews.The first one was at the Little Gallery in Rathbone Hall, and the final one was at Opalka Gallery.

As I was working on these exhibits, my interest grew, and I went on to write 14 articles on Jewish communities in the Capital District.

Early this year, I presented, “Jewish Women’s Organizations of the Capital District” at the Capital District Feminist Studies Consortium 2023 conference.

I presented “Yiddishkeit: Preserving Jewish Identity in Albany, 1850-1930,” at the New England History Conference at Springfield College. That was about how Jewish secular organizations like B’nai B’rith, Workmen’s Circle, the National Council of Jewish Women, and Pioneer Women sought to preserve Jewish identity in a secular German or Yiddish based culture and language. 

The paper was also published in the New York History Review. 

Tell us about your interest in the American response to famine in Ireland. 

I had a sabbatical once in 36 years. In spring 1998, I was roaming through the New York State Archives and ran across documents related to money raised in New York for famine relief in Ireland. 

New York state was a huge source of famine relief, and the upstate committee was centered in Albany. 

Four original documents related to famine relief were at the Albany Institute and became the basis for my research. 

This year, my article, “Aid from Central New York to Ireland During the Great Hunger,” appeared in the New York History Review. 

I’ve also looked at responses in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. 

I became interested in Canadian aid to Ireland on a visit to the Nova Scotia archives. When I became the Betty Harder McClellan Distinguished Professor in Humanities at Sage, I used part of my stipend to conduct research in Ottawa. Canadians and Americans were quite generous in aid. 

In April, I delivered a paper on Quebec aid to Ireland for the International Conference on Humanities, Social, and Education Sciences via Zoom. 

Tell us about your interest in foreign policy during the War of 1812. 

My interest in foreign policy during the War of 1812 grew from doctoral dissertation. It was my third topic!

A paper on foreign policy chaos in New York politics in the leadup to the war was the first of last year’s eight projects, and I just delivered my first paper for the new academic year at a virtual conference of the National Social Science Association. 

That was “Trojan Whig Society and Federal Young Men, 1809-10.” It is about the activities of a Troy political organization. The New York State library has 30 documents related to Trojan Whigs’ role in that contentious election season.

What are your favorite classes to teach?

My favorite class to teach is American Ethnic History, and my second-favorite is  a one-credit I’ve taught for 30 years called Holocaust and Genocide. 

What are you looking forward to this academic year?

I’ll teach Hollywood as Historian again in the fall. It’s an updated version of the American Film History class I took over for a former colleague in the 1980s. The course covers the history of film and how film portrays historical issues and events. 

I like teaching film courses. I also developed Tragedy Tonight, Comedy Tomorrow: Film History and Politics. It weaves in documentary films, major motion pictures, visual arts, literature, and history as it examines how films represent American politics, race relations, society, and culture. 

History of Crime and Film is a class I’ve never actually developed, but I’ve been thinking about it for 36 years.  

I also proposed a new class for spring — American in the 1800s — an in-depth study of that time covering slavery, Civil War, and political conflicts, including four disputed elections. It’s an interesting period to me; although, most of my work is at the beginning of the 19th century.