John M. Janzen - Undergraduate Education

Undergraduate Education

Janzen attended high school in the nearby town of Elbing, Kansas at Berean Academy. Upon graduation from high school, he attended Bethel College in North Newton for four years. Here he met his future wife, Reinhild Kauenhoven, a then student-colleague from Göttingen, Germany. After his second year in school, Janzen joined the PAX program of the Mennonite Central Committee that took him to Africa for two years of service in lieu of joining the U.S. military. During this time, Janzen worked on projects involving education, and helped in the construction of a hospital in the late colonial setting of the South Savannah of Belgian Congo. It was during this time that Janzen became interested in learning more about Africa. Returning home, Janzen received encouragement from a professor of sociology, also a colleague classmate who studied the Kurds of Iraq and continued graduate work in anthropology, to pursue a graduate degree in anthropology. to pursue a graduate degree in anthropology. He graduated from Bethel College in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in Social Science and Philosophy, and was accepted to the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology.