Seth Jacobs in his office at 21 Campanella Way.

Paper chase

Seth Jacobs

“For my class in foreign policy, which has 250 students, I have to make copies of every lecture outline, the syllabus, and a style sheet called “Tips for History Papers.” These are stacked up all over my office alongside piles of exams and papers from the last semester that students will come in to pick up. I need to have all these stacks easily accessible. The office was a train wreck by the end of last semester; it’s still a train wreck; it’s just slightly more navigable. During winter break, I also attended a historians meeting and saw advance copies of my new book, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam. And I worked on a paper that I’ll present at the Society for the Historians of American Foreign Relations conference this spring, in which I’m trying to draw a parallel between the current U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and American policy toward Vietnam in the 1950s.”