Victor Davis Hanson
May 13, 2008 MEMORANDUM FOR A.S. PRESIDENT / EXECUTIVE COUNCIL FROM: Robert Stevenson President, Biola Marines (Society of Officer Candidates of the United States Marine Corps) SUBJECT: Proposal to A.S. Senate 1. Proposal: A speaking event at Biola by Victor Davis Hanson. Professor Hanson is a syndicated columnist, author of 16 books and a (if not the) leading authority on Greek History and how the Classical world relates to our own. Event titles: “Understanding Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars” (for lecture #1) and “300: The Spartan Battle Experience” (for lecture #2). Both events will be eligible for Chapel Credit and Torrey Context Lecture Credit. Lecture #1 will primarily serve to provide context for the Thucydides readings required for approximately 120 Biola students each year. (At present, about 450-500 current Biola students have read the translation of Thucydides “History of the Peloponnesian Wars” which contains critical notes by Prof. Hanson.) The timing of the lecture is such that it will correspond directly to the coursework of around 100 freshmen and related to past coursework for around 420 more students. Attendance: Approx. 250. Lecture #2 will be an exposition of the Battle of Thermopylae. Although the focus will be on the battle itself and on the 300 Spartans who fought there, the topic will necessarily provide context for understanding the region of the Peloponnesus during the classical period. There is no scholar in the world better tailored to discussing the worldview and culture of Athens and Sparta and making them relevant to our world today. Attendance: 400+ 2. Amount Requested: $5,668 (Broken down on Pg. 2) 3. Problems with the Status Quo: a. This year’s budget for lecture events for the history department was $200. b. The appetite for ancient history has been wetted in popular culture by books like “Gates of Fire,” by Stephen Pressfield and films like “300,” but universities have not taken advantage of this situation and used it to expand serious academic discussion into popular student culture. c. Biola is not taken seriously as an institution of highly learning in many academic fields, including history. This event will establish credibility for the institution by making Biola a destination for academic thought for students of other local universities (a global center for Christian thought not only in name but in deed), by an aggressive media campaign to spread the word about Biola’s high-caliber education throughout the nation and by increasing the appetite for intellectual discourse among Biola students.
Expenses Breakdown for “300: The Spartan Battle Experience” Speaking fee for Prof. Hanson $5000.00 Travel Expenses for Prof. Hanson Gasoline Room (Holiday Inn) $100.00 $118.00 Advertising Posters Graphic Design Production Costs (Dup Center) Posters for Local Campuses (USC, UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, etc.) Posters For Biola AM Radio promotion Syndicated on 130 Stations Nationwide 870 KRLA drive-time in LA/Orange County
$75.00
$150.00 $150.00
Donated Donated Room Expenses Tech (Audio-Recording for Lecture #1) Tech (Microphones/PA for Lecture #2) Donated $75
Grand Total $5,668.00
Victor Davis Hanson Fact Sheet: Hanson received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz (1975) and his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University (1980). Hanson is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Fellow in California Studies at the Claremont Institute. Until recently, he was professor at California State University, Fresno, where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classics program at that institution. In 1991 Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award, which is awarded to undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin. He has been a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), as well as holding the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03). He was a visiting professor at Hillsdale College in 2004, 2006, and 2007.[1] Hanson writes two weekly columns, one for National Review and one syndicated by Tribune Media Services, and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, American Heritage, City Journal, The American Spectator, Policy Review, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, and The Weekly Standard, among others. In 2006, he started blogging at Pajamas Media. In 2007, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal.
Books: • Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece. University of California Press, 1983. ISBN 0-520-21025-5 • The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. ISBN 0-394-57188-6 • Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience, editor, Routledge, 1991. ISBN 0-415-04148-1 • The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0-02-913751-9 • Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, Free Press, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82299-7 • Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, with John Heath, Free Press, 1998. ISBN 0-684-84453-2 • The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny, Free Press, 1999. ISBN 0-684-84502-4 • The Wars of the Ancient Greeks: And the Invention of Western Military Culture, Cassell, 1999. ISBN 0-304-35222-5 • The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer, Free Press, 2000. ISBN 0-684-84501-6 • Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age, with John Heath and Bruce S. Thornton, ISI Books, 2001. ISBN 1-882926-54-4 • Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, Doubleday, 2001. ISBN 0-385-50052-1 Published in the UK as Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam, Faber, 2001. ISBN 0-571-20417-1 • An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism, Anchor Books, 2002. ISBN 1-4000-3113-3 A collection of essays, mostly from National Review, covering events occurring between September 11, 2001 and January 2002 • Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, Encounter Books, 2003. ISBN 1-893554-73-2 • Ripples of Battle: How Wars Fought Long Ago Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think, Doubleday, 2003. ISBN 0-385-50400-4 • Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq, Random House, 2004. ISBN 0-8129-7273-2 A collection of essays, mostly from National Review, covering events occurring between January 2002 and July 2003 • A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, Random House, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-6095-8