Matthew Hockenos
To help 21st-century students learn about the recent past, an alumna and her husband
have endowed the Harriet Johnson Toadvine '56 Chair in 20th-Century History. In honor
of her 60th reunion, Harriet and Steve Toadvine worked with Skidmore's gift-planning
director to establish the $2.25 million fund through a combination of outright gifts
and a bequest in their estate plan.
The first Toadvine Professor, announced this summer, is Matt Hockenos, a specialist
in 20th-century European history. The author of A Church Divided: German Protestants
Confront the Nazi Past, he has earned Fulbright, Mellon, and other grants for his
scholarship. Through the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, for example, he researched
the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews, analyzing Nazi anti-Semitism
and missionary attitudes.
Hockenos says the donors feel strongly about "helping students understand the two
world wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War, economic globalization, and American ingenuity—all
of which have shaped their lives whether they know it or not." By establishing the
professorship, he says, their gift is "sure to have an important impact on the historical
literacy of the next generations of Skidmore students."
Steve Toadvine, a naval aviator in postwar Korea, ran businesses that supplied military
aircraft components and electromagnetic shielding and later taught business ethics
at Johns Hopkins University and University College in Dublin, Ireland. Finding his
Irish students better versed in history, he wanted to help Americans understand the
advancements and mistakes of the 20th century that fundamentally transformed the human
experience.
In just a few years, students entering college will be the first cohort not born in
the 20th century. The donors hope that the new chair, funded by interest from their
endowment in perpetuity, will enable a wide range of students to apply history's lessons
to address current and future challenges.