Biographical Information:
Richard Kezirian began his teaching career at Monterey Peninsula College in 1971 while working on his Ph.D. at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Kezirian is one of the founding faculty members of the Gentrain program and the Gentrain Society, and is the founder of the MPC Lobo Hall of Fame.
Dr. Kezirian is the author of American History: Major Controversies Reviewed, a textbook that has gone into three editions and that has been used at several colleges and universities across the United States. He is also the author of approximately fifty Op/Ed essays that have appeared on the pages of the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union, Fresno Bee, and Monterey County Herald.
Dr. Kezirian was the recipient of the Allen Griffin Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1986, is a three-time winner of the MPC Honor Society’s Teacher of the Year Award, and was voted by the readers of the Monterey County Weekly the Best Professor in Monterey County for 2007, and the Best Professor in Monterey County for 2008.
A former president and board member of the World Affairs Council of the Monterey Bay Area, Dr. Kezirian is also Professor of History and Politics at the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy.
Educational Philosophy:
Two key convictions lie at the heart of my educational philosophy: a great love for the study of history and a profound respect for students.
In my opinion, the study of history is the best liberal education that a student can have in today’s world. Balanced historical thinking is both interdisciplinary and cross-cultural. It opens new worlds, not only in the past, but also in the present. We gain insights into who we are and we gain insights into other selves.
The perspective that history lends is invaluable. It enjoins us to remember the long span of time and the fleeting brevity of our lives. It induces modesty and humility. It pulls and tugs us from our ethnocentrism so that we understand that we are not the beginning and the end of things, and that our problems are perhaps not as bad as they seem, nor our triumphs as enduring as we may believe.
A careful study of history teaches patience—patience with the unpredictability of nature and with the complexity of human character. It encourages patience in our struggle with the riddle of good government, and in the struggle to live up to our ideals. It teaches patience with the foibles of humankind, while it warns us to be on the lookout for the unexpected and the unforeseen.
The study of history encourages an attitude of empathy. A good historian will find in the past many people who believed that they were the special children of God, who believed that their religious faith was the true one, and that their system of rule was the best. Then, the historian watches as those people pass from the historical scene. As a result, it is difficult for the historian to avoid an attitude of empathy toward those of different ideals. A historian learns to be understanding of the unfamiliar.
History especially demonstrates that character counts. There are a host of examples where individual character was crucial to the success or failure of a grand project or great event. In the United States, one wonders how Revolutionary Era patriots would have managed without the monumental good character of George Washington. More recently, one expects that the horizons of American women would have been immeasurably lowered without the tenacious example of Eleanor Roosevelt. Indeed, the study of history demonstrates that the character of a nation counts for much also. One marvels at the courage of the Athenians who faced the great Persian Empire in ancient times; the Florentines, who, with their brilliant civic humanism, launched the Age of the Renaissance; the British who pioneered in the creation of political democracy; and those hearty Puritans of Colonial America who helped found one of the greatest success stories in the history of our modern age.
A second great love lies at the heart of my educational philosophy—a love and respect for students. Without a love for the profession of teaching and a deep respect for the student, all else in this vocational calling is lost. Only through respecting the student will the teacher open up the real secret of the whole educational process—the necessity for students to rigorously think for themselves.
The teacher in truth offers the student a model—a model of how a thoughtful, careful person makes sense of the world, and a model of how a scholar weighs the facts, tests the hypotheses, and formulates conclusions. I have been especially inspired by an insight offered by Henry Adams: “A teacher affects eternity; no one can tell where his influence stops.”