If asked for a short list of his avocations, Jefferson Cowie would certainly include rock climbing, Bruce Springsteein, and the study of history. His scholarly interests include workers and the problem of social class in the postwar United States as well as issues in international and comparative history, but his desire for a life in academia was not always so clear. He wasn’t driven to become a historian from the start, it just happened. Reminiscing on his own history, Cowie laughs, “I really was an accidental professor.”

Jeff grew up in a small town outside Chicago. He characterizes his childhood and teenage years as “Midwestern claustrophobic.” He felt trapped by his circumstances, including the offer of a four-year, full scholarship to the University of Illinois. But the young man yearned to go west and informed his family of his plan to pass up the academic scholarship during his high school graduation party. The news was not well received. Soon after, he moved to California, supporting himself by working in the building trades and trying to spend as much time climbing the rock faces of California.“I have been fascinated with climbing since I was in the third grade,” says Cowie. “I had it made, living in Yosemite Valley in a Volkswagen bus and doing what I loved to do.” But somehow his pursuit of education kept getting in the way. Cowie applied to the engineering program at Berkeley, secretly believing he had no chance of admission. “I got in and lasted three semesters before I dropped out,” he says. “Dropped out for the first time, that is.” Cowie left academia twice more before finally earning his degree.

It wasn’t until he gave up on the idea of college education as a labor market tool and pursued history—the other passion that had been with him since grade school—that he was able to find meaning in higher education.

History became the focus of his studies and his life. He started down “his path” and earned a degree in history from Berkeley in 1987. “My friends and I laughed over my prospects of ever getting a job, but I was so happy with what I was learning and the new ways I was thinking.” Researching and writing his honors thesis, however, had created a desire to do more. He went on to earn his Ph.D., also in history, from the University of North Carolina in 1997.

Cowie’s interest in labor issues stems from his own life among working people in the Midwest, as well as his involvement in issues like solidarity work with Central America and divestment from South Africa in the 1980s. “We were trying to get the University of California to divest when we heard that the longshoremen had refused to unload cargo from South Africa,” he explained. “Now that was power that campus politics would never have,” he realized. “It deepened my interest not just in organized labor, but in how class worked in the strange and allegedly classless realm of U.S. history.”

Cowie espouses two values in his research and personal life: freedom and responsibility. “All areas I have been drawn to are areas of great autonomy,” he says. “Cornell gives me absolute freedom and supports me. What a gift!” Responsibility, he says, is important not just in your obligations to other people, and to society, but also in your obligations to yourself. Severing the ties with his family was an important first step for him. “Finding ways to separate from one’s family of origin, not in a major way but in developing one’s independence, is a key component to finding yourself.” The professor’s advice to any student is to have faith in your inner voice and to search out a path of your own. It may be scary, but you’ll find it most fulfilling to take this level of responsibility for your own life and let it guide your decisions. It will scare him when his own two children do it, but he is sure they will.

Jeff describes ILR students as quick and bright, and he finds engaging them in the learning process is extraordinarily rewarding. He strives to know his students and prefers classes where he can grade papers himself in order to better know them. He also caps the size of his classes to better allow for first-hand knowledge of his students. It is not always easy because the demand for his classes outweighs his availability and class capacity. “A good professor imparts knowledge, and an even better one teaches students how to think,” he explained. “But the best offer models for living and acting in the world. I would like to succeed in all those categories.” He constantly tweaks his teaching methods in response to course reviews. For example, Jeff lengthened lectures to integrate more discussion time. Then he dropped some of the mandatory TA-led discussions in favor of voluntary drop-in discussions. This has improved the quality of the discussions in Cowie’s opinion. “Only the most motivated and prepared students show up for voluntary discussions.”

The author of Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy- Year Quest for Cheap Labor, Cowie has received numerous fellowships and grants, as well as teaching and research awards, including the Philip Taft Prize for the Best Book in Labor History for 2000. He has extended his RCA research to investigate similar issues in Taiwan. Other areas of current research include studies of environmental issues, politics, and popular culture. He has an edited volume on deindustrialization due out this summer, is working on a booklength study of workers and national civic culture in the 1970s, and one day he may just write a book on Bruce Springsteen. Says Cowie: “The lyrical thread that runs through his musical creations rings true to my life.”

In talking to him, one hears Cowie’s own lyrics conveying a true passion for history—for research, for writing, and for teaching. ILR is fortunate to have him sharing his enthusiasm with our students.

—ILR Connections, Spring 2003