There was a real upsurge in student interest in politics, and the issues were sort of global in scale. Martin Luther King was assassinated, the war, the Kent State shootings - a lot of American history packed into one year. N-L: Was that when things started to heat up on campus politically? Police courted the area off and they let students blow off their steam and come back. In the spring, there was a strike, and many students walked out and occupied Charles Street. Later that year, the on-campus focus shifted from cities to Vietnam. I had no TAs and had to do all of the grading myself. My specialty is urban politics, so when I was at MIT, because of the interests of the students, not many students were involved in political science.īut the first time I walked into a classroom here in 1969, over 100 students were in the class. I did my undergrad here from 1959 to 1963, then I had my first teaching job at MIT, then I was at Brookings, where I did my dissertation. Matthew Crenson (MC): I was actually at Brookings at the time - I came back to Hopkins to teach in 1969. News-Letter (N-L): Were you on campus during the Baltimore riots in 1968? He spoke to the News-Letter about the changes he has seen in students over the many years. The political science professor first studied at the University, then later returned to Baltimore during the tumultuous Vietnam era.Īfter almost four decades of teaching, where he helped create a popular City Council internship program and did extensive studies of local neighborhoods, Crenson is set to retire. Matthew Crenson lived through the aftermath of the Baltimore race riots, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, and he has shared his experiences in the classroom.

Matthew crenson baltimore