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Campus and Beyond

The Campus and Beyond: Higher Education and Social Inequalities in Europe and North America, 1890s-2000s

October 9 – 10, 2025 | German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation

International Conference at the German Historical Institute Washington | Conveners: Raphael Rössel (GHI Washington), Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (University of Georgia), and Stefanie Coché (Gießen University)

Photo Credit: Magnussen, Friedrich (1914-1987) – Stadtarchiv Kiel Permission details CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Conference Venue, Hotel, Directions, and Transportation

Conference Venues

German Historical Institute Washington
1607 New Hampshire Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20009

Textile Museum at The George Washington University Museum
701 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052

Hotel

The Churchill Hotel
1941 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20009


Directions from the Dupont Circle Metro stop to the hotel and the GHI Washington


Directions from the hotel to the the Textile Museum at the George Washington University Museum


Public Transportation tickets

You can pay your DC Metrorail fare with a contactless credit or debit card using the “Tap. Ride. Go.” system at Metrorail station faregates, which works with physical cards, mobile wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay, and smartwatches. To use the system, simply tap your contactless card or device on the faregate to enter and tap out to exit, and the fare will be automatically calculated and charged. Please note that “Tap. Ride Go.” currently only works for rides on the DC Metrorail. For Metro parking garages and lots, Metrobus routes, MTA, and partner regional bus providers, use mobile pay or reloadable fare cards to pay for your trips.

Directions from Dulles International Airport, Reagan National Airport, and Union Station to the hotel

FROM: WASHINGTON DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (IAD)

Metrorail – Silver Line

International Airport Dulles (IAD) is metro accessible. Follow airport signs to the metro entrance at Arrival Door 2 and 6. Purchase a SmarTrip Card from machines inside the metro station and take the silver line in the direction of Largo Town Center. Transfer at Metro Center to the red line in the direction of Shady Grove. Exit at the Dupont Circle station. Use the North Exit (Q Street).At the top of the escalator, go straight, cross Q Street and follow Connecticut Avenue for approximately 5-6 blocks uphill (you will pass Hillyer Place, R Street, S Street, Bancroft Place and Leroy Place). The Churchill Hotel is located on the left-hand side of Connecticut Avenue, next to the Courtyard Washington and across the street from the Washington Hilton. It is a 10-minute walk from the metro station and a 15 minute walk to the German Historical Institute Washington

FROM: REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT (DCA)

Metrorail – Yellow Line

Reagan National Airport (DCA) is metro accessible. To reach downtown Washington, DC, follow airport signs to the metro entrance, located outside (in front of the airport) on the upper level. Metrorail SmarTrip cards may be purchased from machines at the metro station. Please keep SmarTrip card handy during the ride; you will need it to exit the station. Metrorail hours of operation are weekdays 5:00am until 11:30pm and weekends 7:00am until 3:00am.

Passengers should take the yellow line in the direction of Mt. Vernon Sq./Fort Totten to Gallery Place-Chinatown. Transfer to the red line in the direction of Shady Grove to Dupont Circle. Use the North Exit (Q Street). At the top of the escalator, go straight, cross Q Street and follow Connecticut Avenue for approximately 5-6 blocks uphill (you will pass Hillyer Place, R Street, S Street, Bancroft Place and Leroy Place). The Churchill Hotel is located on the left-hand side of Connecticut Avenue, next to the Courtyard Washington and across the street from the Washington Hilton. It is a 10-minute walk from the metro station.

FROM: UNION STATION

Metrorail – Red Line

Take the red line in the direction of Shady Grove to Dupont Circle. Use the North Exit (Q Street). At the top of the escalator, go straight, cross Q Street and follow Connecticut Avenue for approximately 5-6 blocks uphill (you will pass Hillyer Place, R Street, S Street, Bancroft Place and Leroy Place). The Churchill Hotel is located on the left-hand side of Connecticut Avenue, next to the Courtyard Washington and across the street from the Washington Hilton. It is a 10-minute walk from the metro station.

Participant Contact Information

Click here to see the password protected information

 
Schedule
Thursday, October 9, 2025
Location:
German Historical Institute Washington
1606 New Hampshire Ave NW

9:00 a.m.

Arrival and Check-in at the GHI Washington

9:30 – 9:45 a.m.

Welcome Remarks
Ulrike von Hirschhausen (GHI Washington)

9:45 – 10:15 a.m.

Introduction 
Raphael Rössel (GHI Washington)
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (University of Georgia)
Stefanie Coché (Gießen University)

10:15 – 11:05 a.m.

Panel I: Barriers to University Access

Chair: Axel Jansen (GHI Washington)

Christopher Getowicz (University of Illinois): The Origins of Black Studies at the University of Minnesota: Black Women, Community, and Campus Protest 1966-1970

Stefanie Coché (Universität Gießen): Diversity as a Challenge and Resource for Evangelical Universities: Balancing Conservativism and Diversity at Evangelical Colleges

11:05 – 11:15 a.m.

11:15 a.m. – 1:05 p.m.

Coffee Break

Ida Ograjsek Gorenjak (Universität Zagreb): Breaking Barriers: Women in Croatian Higher Education (1892–1940)

Joshua Ward Jeffery (Northland Pioneer College, Arizona): A Dream Delayed Too Long: The Contested Founding of Northland Pioneer College as a Catalyst of the Tribal College Movement

1:05 – 2:05 p.m.

Lunch Break

2:05 – 3:55 p.m.


Panel II: Campus Inequalities in a changing Global Order

Chair: Raphael Rössel (GHI Washington)

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (University of Georgia): From Winning Hearts, Minds, and Stomachs to Generating Revenue: The Evolution of US Universities’ Foreign Programs 

Aaron Schulze
(Technische Universität Dresden): Producing (NEW) Inequalities? Post-Socialist Transformation in Higher Education after 1989/90 as an East-West-Gap

7:00 p.m.

Conference Dinner

Friday, October 10, 2025
Location:
The George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum
701 21st Street, NW


10:00 a.m.

Arrival and Check-in at the Textile Museum

10:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.

Panel III: Reforming Higher Education before World War II

Chair: Eric Arnesen (The George Washington University)

Jonathan Voges (Universität Hannover): “Une existence décente et dégagée de soucis matériels”. The League of Nations and social inequalities in higher education

Timothy R. Cain (University of Georgia): “Taking the ‘professor’ out of the category of the ridiculous”

Olga Sparschuh (Universität Wien): The Rise and Fall of “American Dentists” in the German Kaiserreich. Foreign Doctorates between Individual Aspirations and National Regulations, 1890-1920

12:45 – 1:45 p.m.

Lunch Break

1:45 – 3:35 p.m.

Panel IV: Campus Communities: Inclusion and Exclusion

Chair: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (University of Georgia)

Mary Kate Steinbeck (University of Georgia): Spreading the “Old South”: Fraternity Parties as Exclusionary Ritual during the Civil Rights Movement

Raphael Roessel (GHI Washington): No More Hell Week? Student Reactions to Hazing Reforms (1890-1920s)

3:35 – 3:50 p.m.

Break

3:50 – 4:30 p.m.

Roundtable and Concluding Discussion

Moderator: Raphael Roessel (GHI Washington)

Timothy R. Cain (University of Georgia)
Olga Sparschuh (Universität Wien)

4:30 p.m.

End of Conference


 
Organizers
Raphael Rössel

Raphael Rössel is a research fellow in North American history at the German Historical Institute Washington. His current research project focuses on the history of hazing at nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century U.S. colleges. He received his PhD at Kiel University in 2022 with a dissertation on the history of family care for children with disabilities in the Federal Republic of Germany. The study analyzes the social history of the everyday lives of households raising children with disabilities. It received multiple awards and was shortlisted for the prestigious Hedwig Hintze Preis for the best dissertation which is awarded by the German Association of Historians. The thesis appeared in book form as Belastete Familien? Eine Alltagsgeschichte westdeutscher Haushalte mit behinderten Kindern (1945–1990) (Campus 2022). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Modern European History, Studies in Contemporary History, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, and elsewhere.

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (she/her) is a professor of history at University of Georgia, where she teaches courses on labor, capitalism, and politics. She has written about those topics in op-eds, academic articles, and scholarly books, including Sunbelt Capitalism (2013) and Indentured Students (2021), as well as edited collections, such as Barry Goldwater and the Transformation of American Politics (2013) and The Right and Labor, a 2012 volume done with Nelson Lichtenstein. Her forthcoming work looks at the public/private character of American higher education, tentatively titled, The Business of Education.

Stefanie Coché

Stefanie Coché is an assistant professor (PD, akad. Rätin) at Justus Liebig University Gießen (Germany) and has recently published her second book (Habilitation) on religious leaders in 19th and 20th century America (Religiöse Erweckung und Irdische Macht. Religion und Demokratie, Hamburger Edition 2025). In addition, she is leading a research group on “Evangelical Colleges in the US since 1945”. Her first book (Dissertation) deals with Psychiatric commitment in the age of extremes (Kritische Studien für Geschichtswissenschaft 2017, english translation: Routledge, Studies in Modern European History 2024) and has won five awards (including: Herbert-Steiner-Preis des Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands; Dalberg Preis für interdisziplinäre Forschung der Akademie gemeinnütziger Wissenschaften zu Erfurt).

 
Participants

Eric Arnesen

Eric Arnesen is the Teamsters Professor of History at George Washington University and the author of two award-winning books — Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality and Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 — and also the author, editor, or co-editor of five other books.   In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he has published reviews and review essays in the Chicago Tribune, as well as the New Republic, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and Dissent. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Harvard’s Charles Warren Center, he held the Distinguished Fulbright Chair at Uppsala University in Sweden. He served as the co-chair of the Washington History Seminar at the Wilson Center from 2013 to 2025 and is currently co-director of the Albert H. Small Normandy Institute at George Washington University. Currently, he is completing a biography of A. Philip Randolph.    

Timothy Cain

Tim Cain is a professor of higher education at the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education, a fellow at the American Association of University Professor’s (AAUP) Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, and an associate editor of the Review of Higher Education. He studies and teaches about historical and modern issues involving academic freedom, faculty and graduate student unionization, campus activism, and other higher education issues. He is the author of Establishing Academic Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Campus Unions (ASHE Higher Education Report/Jossey Bass, 2017), and, with colleagues at the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2015) among other works. Ongoing projects include studies of LGBTQIA+ student lawsuits against their universities, examinations of academic freedom cases investigated by the AAUP since 1990, and a book on the history of faculty unions.

Christopher Getowicz

Christopher Getowicz is an alumni of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, former Minneapolis Public School educator, and PhD candidate studying the history of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Using historical research methods, he is writing a dissertation that examines the intersection of African American and Native American education in Minneapolis between 1945-1985.

Axel Jansen

Axel Jansen is Deputy Director of the GHI Washington. He has published widely on the history of the United States from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries in transatlantic context. His key works include the first analytical biography of Alexander Dallas Bache, a leader of American scientists in mid-nineteenth-century America. In several recent articles on developmental biology since the Cold War, he has charted the scientific profession’s response to antagonistic public efforts to curtail its work, on the one hand, and public enthusiasm that has come with its own set of challenges, on the other.

Christopher Getowicz is an alumni of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, former Minneapolis Public School educator, and PhD candidate studying the history of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Using historical research methods, he is writing a dissertation that examines the intersection of African American and Native American education in Minneapolis between 1945-1985.

Joshua Jeffery

Joshua Ward Jeffery is the Director of Early College Programs at Northland Pioneer College, as well as a historian and religious studies scholar. He holds an MTS in American Religious History from Vanderbilt University, and an MA in United States History from the University of Tennessee. Josh previously served as a Professor of History/Diné Studies at Navajo Technical University in Chinle, Arizona.

Ida Ograjšek Gorenjak

Ida Ograjšek Gorenjak is an assistant professor (docent) at the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Her research focuses on women’s, gender, and cultural history. She has introduced elective courses on women’s history at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels and has participated in organizing conferences and round tables on this topic. She has written and presented papers on various aspects of history of women’s education and intellectual history, including Zagreb’s First Women’s High School, “the women’s side” of Zagreb University in interwar period, the self-perception of Yugoslav intellectuals, female teachers in Zagreb secondary schools in interwar period, women journalists in The Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Association of University-Educated Women.

Aron Schulze

Aron Schulze is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at the Technical University of Dresden. He studied History, German Studies and Education at Leipzig University from 2017 to 2023, where he completed the First State Examination for Teaching at Grammar Schools. His doctoral project “Special Status in Transformation? The Technical University Dresden in the ‘Hochschulumbau Ost’ after 1989/90” is supervised by Prof. Dr. Dagmar Ellerbrock.

Olga Sparschuh

Olga Sparschuh, studied Modern/Contemporary History, Social Sciences, and European Studies in Berlin, London, and Turin. She worked as a researcher in Modern/Contemporary History at Free University Berlin, coordinated the DFG research group “Evidence Practices in Science, Technology, Medicine and Society” at Technical University Munich and held fellowships at the German Historical Institute in Rome and the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. Her PhD Fremde Heimat, fremde Ferne. Italienische Arbeitsmigration in Turin und München, 1950-1975, Göttingen 2021, has been awarded several prizes, among others the Antonio Gramsci Prize of Vienna Chamber of Labour. Currently she is a PostDoc at the
Department of Education at the University of Vienna with the project “Travelling Titles. Imported Doctoral Degrees and the Regulation of Educational Qualifications in a Globalized World, 1890-1920”. On this topic, she recently published “Zwischen ‘Ausländerfrage’ und ‘Bewertungssystem’. Die preußische Auskunftsstelle in Immatrikulationsangelegenheiten von Ausländern, 1904-1914”, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 64. 2024, 143-168.

Mary Kate Steinbeck

Mary Kate Steinbeck is a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia’s Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. Her research looks at the cultural history of college traditions through exploration of their lifecycles on campuses and the roles they play in campus culture. Mary Kate has also done work looking at the impact of crises on campus culture. Prior to her research studies she worked in student affairs and university advancement for UGA, Harvard University and Georgetown University. Mary Kate has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from University of Virginia and a Master of Education degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Jonathan Voges

Jonathan Voges studied history and German literature and language in Hanover and St. Louis. In 2016 he defended his dissertation dealing with home improvement and do-it-yourself in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2021 he finished his habilitation about intellectual cooperation under the roof of the League of Nations. At the moment he works in a project dealing with pandemic preparedness planning by the WHO. Jonathan published broadly about the history of consumption, the role of science and culture in international relation, German-Jewish relations and the international history of health.

Andrea Walton

Andrea Walton is an Associate Professor in the History of Education and the Higher Education and Student Affairs programs at Indiana University Bloomington, with a faculty affiliation at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy in Indianapolis.Her research centers on the histories of women in education, higher education, and philanthropy. She has published articles in journals such as the History of Education Quarterly, The History Teacher, and The Journal of African American History, among others. Her work has been supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana University. She has also edited or co-edited three books. Most recently, in 2020, she served as the Bloomington campus historian during IU’s Bicentennial and edited Women at Indiana University: 150 Years of Experiences and Contributions (Indiana University Press, 2022). Her current book project focuses on the role of philanthropy in shaping U.S. higher education.