William Appleman Williams - Academic Career, 1968-1988

Academic Career, 1968-1988

After witnessing the turmoil of the 1960s in Madison and tiring of the grind of teaching graduate students, he moved to Oregon State University in 1968 to, in the words of his biographer, Paul Buhle, "teach undergraduates, live by the ocean, and live in a diversified community of ‘ordinary’ Americans.". While in Oregon, Williams "called for a return to the Articles of Confederation and a radical decentralization of political and economic power." "Not only did he see the U.S. under the Articles as a relatively anti-imperial era, he also believed that the strong localism made possible under the Articles was the only form of governance suitable to real Americans living real lives."

Williams served as President of the Organization of American Historians in 1980, retired in 1988, and died in Oregon in 1990. Always a bit eccentric and not a little idiosyncratic, Williams gave his interpretation of the nation's past a moralistic tone, finding soul mates in conservatives like John Quincy Adams and Herbert Hoover. He always distrusted cosmopolitanism and championed small communities, while distrusting intellectuals who sneered at the unwashed masses. For all his radicalism, he never outgrew the kind of populist approach that he believed was an important part of the American heritage. In this sense he fit in well with his Wisconsin colleagues, William B. Hesseltine and Merrill Jensen, all of whom added to what has been called the "Wisconsin school" of historical interpretation.